Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
In “Selection against Disability: Abortion, ART, and Access,” Alicia Ouellette probes a particularly vexing point of intersection between ART (assisted reproductive technology) and abortion: how negative assumptions about the capacities of disabled persons and the value of life with disability infect both prospective parents’ prenatal decisions about what pregnancies to pursue and fertility doctors’ decisions about providing services to disabled adults. This commentary on Ouellette’s contribution to the symposium titled “Intersections in Reproduction: Perspectives on Abortion and Assisted Reproductive Technologies" first briefly describes Ouellette’s key points and her article’s most valuable contributions. It then suggests further expanding the frame of reference in the discussion linking prenatal selection against disability, laws prohibiting prenatal sex selection, and fertility specialists’ discrimination against disabled adults. Viewing decisions about who can reproduce and what children will be born as fundamentally decisions about family suggests ways of drawing on intersectional approaches and growing public acceptance of nontraditional families to promote acceptance of people with disabilities as valued family members – without limiting reproductive liberties.
Recommended Citation
Mary Crossley,
Normalizing Disability in Families,
43
Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics
224
(2015).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles/411
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Disability Law Commons, Disability Studies Commons, Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons, Family Law Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legislation Commons, Other Anthropology Commons, Reproductive and Urinary Physiology Commons