Human diversity exists for a reason, and being disabled /= a worthless life.

I stated from the start: there is no such thing as an Especially Bad Disability that makes life not worth living. I will not support the hierarchization of disability. The minute we make an exception for this disability as being Especially Bad, we concede the most core value of disability activism: that there are certain states of being that are more/less valuable than others. If we make exceptions, we are enforcing the same ableist structure that oppresses us, and using other people’s lives to do it.

Life with pain is life. Period. It can be a bad life or a good life. Just like life without pain. There are people without pain who have completely shitty lives, full of misery and suffering. And there are people with pain who have wonderful, deep, connected, enjoyable, fantastic lives. That’s the thing about life. It can become just about anything.

I grew up under abuse, poverty and an untreated chronic pain condition. And I’d still rather exist than not exist. Now, when it comes to pregnancy, birth or abortion, the argument changes somewhat: it is your decision whether to create another life and allow it to come into existence. You are not obligated to create that life just because the person who results might prefer to exist. That is an anti-choice argument. But at the same time, if you are open to creating that life, and just choosing what kind of life to create… when you make a decision about which life is better to create, and which life you “shouldn’t” create… you are putting a value judgment on the lives that already exist. You are telling them that you don’t think they “should” exist.

It’s one thing to decide “I cannot handle taking care of this person in these circumstances in my life right now.” It’s another thing to decide “I don’t think this kind of person should ever be brought into existence” [by anyone or by yourself individually].

That’s the distinction I am trying to make when it comes to everyone’s personal choices. Everyone has a right to their own choices! But the reasoning that underlies some of them is fairly unsettling, from this perspective.

It never sits well with me when people bring up women’s role as caretakers as a sole response to anything that advocates positively for PWD and the elderly: it feels a little bit like “You can’t make me,” like being told “I am going to fight my oppression by entrenching yours.” It is one thing to acknowledge the culture that hangs women out to dry on the matter, but it is quite another to use this fact as a refutation when PWD argue that their lives are not, and should not be, expendable.

And, frankly, you’ve described having a child with a disability as the “endless grind of caretaking” – because what? Having a child with a disability is nothing but pain and suffering? Because it makes one’s life miserable? Because merely having disability in your life = endless grind and caretaking and misery?

You are talking to *actual people* with disabilities – adults who were that “endless grind of misery”, adults who have children you’ve just characterised as an “endless grind of misery”.

I’d like to know why.

Yes – totally, 100%, in a world where there are limited supports for families affected by disabilities (except for other families with disabilities), even in Socialist Canada where the health care is “free” it is damned difficult to get support for a child with a disability. It’s rolling a rock up hill. But it is NOT an endless grind of misery, and telling people that their birth was nothing but misery to their parents is not actually helping it. Attitudes like that fuel ideas like “women who chose to have children with disabilities are doing something wrong and don’t deserve help and support.”

There is No. Way. she could have made a “correct” choice in terms of societal acceptability.

Terminate the pregnancy? ZOMG, MURDER!* at least according to our pretty fundamentalist religious community.

Remain on medication while continuing the pregnancy? HOW SELFISH CAN YOU BE? WHAT IF YOU HURT YOUR BABY?*

Discontinue medication while carrying the pregnancy to term? WTF, YOU CANNOT PARENT YOUR BORN CHILD WITHOUT MEDICATION — YOU’RE BIPOLAR, FOR CHRISSAKES!*

* All of these are close paraphrases of how my mom characterized people’s reactions when talking about this with me as an adult. I have taken liberties in shortening “ZOMG” and “WTF” into ‘net acronyms.

But you know what? Mom’s a smart, compassionate, capable person. Always has been. When she decided to do what she thought would be best… it turned out okay.

@Anna

It may be true that early eugenicists used that argument, but that doesn’t erase the fact that women ARE expected to be the automatic caretakers, even nowadays, to the point where their own personal life and autonomy falls by the wayside. And that’s a problem too. No mother’s, no woman’s life should have to be dominated by the endless grind of caretaking (this applies to abled children as well: it’s exhausting, unrewarding labor) because the rest of the world won’t pick up the slack.