Recently, there has been an ugly spate of posts, supposedly by parents of children with learning disabilities. The circumstances of each poster varied, but the gist of the posts was generally, monotonously and sadly, the same.. If these parents had known that their children were going to have disabilities, they would have terminated their pregnancies..
And, while some of theses posts were couched in terms of the child's quality of life, some went so far as to say that actually having and raising a child with learning disabilities was a bummer for parents since their lives changed completely... I know, my jaw hit the floor while reading these posts too... At least, they were honest! They did not hide their ego behind a cloak of pity!
I make no secret that I am pro-life, and that for me the notion of terminating a pregnancy is just not on...
But these kind of posts, I find particularly hard to stomach... Is this what we are becoming??? So obsessed with our need for perfection that if deemed defective, even humans need to be ejected from the assembly line???
Worse, this past two weeks the UK news have been dominated by the despicable statements of the social welfare reform minister, Lord Freud.. For those not in the know, he claimed that disabled people are not "worth" the minimum wage.
And Lord Freud's perceptions are backed up by his actions...in his reform, this man has imposed spending cuts on services offered to people with a disability, causing incredible hardship to people who have difficulty opening a bottle of water or turning on a tap, things we do effortlessly, things we take for granted.
What I fail to understand is why this person is still in office, why no one seems to consider what these spending cuts actually mean to people with disabilities, why do we still talk of numbers when we are effectively talking about people? Is it that we are ashamed to come out and say to people with disabilities "Yes, I know that this will make your life more difficult than it is already, but tbh, I don't give a sh*t !"
David Cameron has some experience of what life with disability is like...Is he ok with of this? Is this what he really wants??
In all honesty, the mind boggles!
The word "inclusion" went through many stages.. It went from being a mere buzzword, to a dirty word, to a more concrete reality, and now it seems to be moving towards becoming an empty word devoid of any meaning.. We talk of inclusion, but we annihilate budgets that would ensure that inclusion. We have inclusion within the education environment (which is a good thing, when it really happens) but we somehow fail to extend the inclusion to the rest of life.
People with learning disabilities have a life outside and beyond school...inclusion cannot be limited to school.
I spent around fifteen years working with children and young adults with learning disabilities. I consider myself lucky to have been able to do what was at the time, pioneering work in my country. It was, hands down, the biggest and best learning experience of my life.
I was a home tutor, but I learnt so much myself.. I got so much.
How can we even think that people with Down Syndrome have nothing to offer to their families or to society? How can we perceive them solely as a burden?? How are we meant to evolve into an inclusive society if we feel like we cannot include people with disabilities inside our own families, presumably because of the disruption they would cause???
Having a child, any child, disrupts your life.. It does not have to a child with learning disability.. So should we stop having children, then?
I will finish this post with this ..this is currently my cover photo on fb..it has replaced my photo of Malala Yousafzai. Like Malala, people with learning disabilities are also fighting a battle for equality.. And like Malala they face tough opposition ..
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