Becoming Disability Proud
"Fight for disability rights and disability pride so expecting parents won't be afraid after a diagnosis..." These words by an anonymous woman born with a genetic condition have stayed with me since I read her essay Where Love Ends . It struck me that she would list disability pride as one way to prevent abortions. In her essay, she points to the fact that in the United States parents abort two-thirds of fetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome. She also talks about her experience with a doctor who asked if she was planning to have children, and who informed her that nowadays there were treatments for ensuring that children did not have her condition. "I naively asked what the treatment was," she says. "It was early detection of the genetic mutation in fetuses, and abortion. Of course, I should have known." I tried to put myself in her shoes. What would it be like to be told that they can prevent people like you from being born? There might be some disab