Disability Community and Identity: Perceptions of Prenatal Screening
By Deborah Kaplan and Marsha Saxton,
Excerpt from Our Bodies Ourselves (2005 edition)
| 11. 30. 2004
People with disabilities come to the genetic screening debate from a perspective that perplexes many scientists and medical professionals. We are purportedly the ones helped by genetic advances, yet we are critical of much of the research. Those with disabilities who have lived their lives creatively managing the logistics of a disability, as well as fighting disability discrimination, may regard the new genetic "options" as a way to promote selective abortion. In an attempt to "eliminate disability," medical science may harbor motivations that spur the prenatal technologies in the direction of eliminating disabled people before they are born rather than addressing fundamental social causes of disability discrimination and the resulting lowered socio-economic status of citizens with disabilities.
This article explores the social origins of disability discrimination and its implications for prenatal diagnosis, and examines some of the objections to screening expressed by people with disabilities.
Definitions of Disability
Disability policy scholars describe four different historical and social models of disability: (1) A moral model of disability which regards disability as the result of sin; (2) A medical model of disability...
Related Articles
By Justin McCurry, The Guardian | 07.03.2024
Photo by Roméo A. on Unsplash
Japan’s supreme court has ordered the government to pay damages to dozens of people who were forcibly sterilised under a now-defunct eugenics law, saying the practice had violated their constitutional rights.
Wednesday’s ruling by...
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 07.11.2024
Louise Perry’s recent article in The Spectator cautions against “The quiet return of eugenics,” a threat she locates in preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders. The technology is billed as a way for parents undergoing IVF to select which embryo to implant based on information about each embryo’s genetic risk factors and traits. These reports, she says, give parents “a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become”––from their child’s risk of developing different diseases to their “likely...
By Shivam Jadaun and Shivani, JURISTnews | 06.27.2024
Image by European Council from Flickr
In some European Union nations, the forced sterilisation of people with disabilities is still a widespread and concerning practice that blatantly violates their fundamental rights and human dignity. The scope of forced sterilisation in...