<HTML>Marta: I have been contemplating our thread on abortion and disability, thinking about what it is that we see differently. I have come to the conclusion that I disagree with the paradigm you pose for understanding disability, one which poses an opposition, in what I think is an undialectical way, between a medical model posited by the medical professions and society at large [which sees the body as a medical qua natural object] and a social model posited by disability activists [which sees the body as a socially determined qua political object]. I do not think that one can separate the natural and the social, the medical and the political aspects of the body; they are mutually determining. The body is, in my view, the quintessential medium in which one can only apprehend the natural through the social, and the social through the natural. This is certainly true of ourselves as sexual beings, for example. What do you think of this conclusion of mine? Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --</HTML>