Disability, the Backlash at Ms., and Why it Matters

Recently Ms. Magazine ran a piece called "Kevorkian and the Right to Choose." The summary is that it is about how anti-choicers took up the cause against Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who provided physician-assisted suicides, and rounded up the hive-minded monolith that is PWDs (people with disabilities) to prove that soon we would all be forced to do our duty and die like good little cripples. In short, it offended me on about every level that I could be offended. That is saying a lot.

As a woman who supports choice, this article offended my sensibilities. Choice is so nuanced and personal that for anyone to claim that the right to choose to end your life is so cleanly yolked to the right to choose not to be forced to be a human incubator is disingenuous at best. It didn't even stop there, though. The original run of the article's text read, "The 'right-to-lifers' enlisted the disabled in their cause when they cautioned that allowing people to choose to die would soon become their 'duty to die.'" [emphasis mine] It was only changed after many commenters pushed back and at least one disabled feminist emailed them. Feminists and people with disabilities (never occurring to her to apply that latter modifier) could not possibly be synonymous.

Funnily enough, there is a whole blog (and I know it isn't the only one), by Feminists With Disabilities, and one of the contributors, Anna, wrote an open letter to Ms. delineating why this article was problematic. "Some people with disabilities support the right to die. Others do not. Others do in some cases and not in others. Each of us has come to the conclusions we have because we are reasoning individuals. Gosh, some of us are even feminists who use a feminist lens to come to our decisions, regardless of which of the many places on that particular spectrum of opinion we find ourselves."

The reason that what happened at Ms. should matter to feminists is that women with disabilities are often treated as unthinking, empty vessels. PWDs are seen as if we should just sit and smile and nod, waiting until we are told to take our medicines and comply. It's not that different from being told as women that we are supposed to play human incubator by forced birthers or that our lady brains can't comprehend the gravity of an abortion until a doctor mansplains an ultrasound to us. PWDs are people, unique and individual, who are fully capable of making their own choices about their own health care, even about topics as charged as end of life care and whether or not we would choose to end our own lives.

Editors at Ms. Blog apologized and edited the piece, but I wonder just how much of the point has gotten through.

Photo credit: DirectDish