I discussed preimplantation screening in my medical ethics class, and just taught lab & diagnostic testing to a midwifery class.

One of the issues I made sure did not get ignored in either conversation is the ethical issue with assuming many conditions that can be screened for should be eliminated. In my ethics class, this was after correcting the woefully inadequate professor, who could only say “But if you decide not to transfer an embryo, that’s killing babies!!!”
MomTFH´s last blog ..Moving during labor

“I tend to think that if one is pro-choice, it’s best to not qualify that position AT ALL, because in qualifying, one may say or imply things that one doesn’t mean.”

Do you see this post as being in this category? (Your “one” construction is difficult to interpret.) Do you think I have said something that I don’t mean here?

This is not an “I’m pro-choice BUT” post. This is an “I’m pro-choice AND” post. Looking at what choice is and how it is constrained and directed is, or should be, an absolutely essential part of feminism. Without it, all we would have is hard libertarianism, and look how disastrous that would be for women with disabilities.

Marginalised groups are as likely to be fighting for their right to reproduce as their right not to – people of colour, trans people, lesbians, and of course women with disabilities, who have been denied sex education and forcibly subjected to contraception and sterilisation for centuries.

This this this. This is never centred in mainstream (white TAB cis straight middle-class) feminist discussion, which is largely about the right to abort.

It’s ironic/infuriating that forced-birthers may not give a shit about the lives of women…unless they’re disabled. And haven’t been born yet.

We live in a world where temporarily-abled people feel quite comfortable going up to people with disabilities and saying “If I were like you, I’d kill myself.”

I am just waiting for some pitying, clueless mfer to read about my life and say, “If I got to be [suicidal] like you, I’d kill myself.”

There is a link to the full article here. (I have tried to learn more about Dr. Remen, but my apologies if I have overlooked anything in her background or beliefs that is ablist, demeaning, or otherwise inappropriate to this blog.)

This is an excellent post. The subject of reproductive rights, definitions of personhood, and choice are incredibly complex, with varying intersections of privilege created by the misleading status quo. It is heartening to see more people taking on and talking about the important complications rather than dismissing them as irrelevant or simplistically distorting them.

Kaninchenzero, I too would be someone else if somebody took away my disability. I like being who I am, when I’m left to my own devices. It’s like Leelee said….it’s only when somebody tries to fix me, or compel me to fix myself according to their definition of what fixed is, that I realise that in comparison to everybody else, I’m broken.