This month, we asked Rahnee Patrick, a disability rights movement organizer from Chicago and one of AAPD's 2008 Paul G. Hearne / AAPD Leadership Award recipients, to share some of her thoughts. Rahnee's column follows.

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Neither Political Party Represents Us
By Rahnee Patrick

Somewhere on the Internet (I ♥ Google) is a picture of my face hanging over a large piece of red poster board, hand painted, with the word LIFE. The photo is for sale, right now. I imagine how the picture will be used: my round face protesting legal abortion. I envision the photo placed on websites and other propaganda that strives to criminalize abortion and other reproductive health even further. I do not want to limit access to reproductive health for women in the United States and around the world although the photo floating around the Internet could tell a different story.

Actually, I made the sign I held but the words I painted read: LIFE + DISABILITY = LIFE WORTH FEEDING. If you’ve ever made a sign to hold at a protest, you know you only have so many square inches to send a message. I was referring to Terri Schiavo, whose stomach tube that delivered nutrients to her disabled body was being removed. I do not agree that her feeding tube should have been removed so I joined other disability rights activists to protest and celebrate all the tubes that the disability community uses to live our lives – tubes for breathing, for hearing, for feeding, for peeing. However, there I stood, next to a man holding a sign with a photo of the fetus – a pro-life protester. I quickly moved away from him but the collective effect was present for the media and passers-by: we wanted to not only keep Terri fed but that we also supported making abortion illegal in this country. The overall effect made my stomach turn. 

I support women to be able to feely make choices about our own bodies, especially when it comes to our reproduction. Women with disabilities cannot afford to ally ourselves with criminalizing abortion in our country and in our world. Our country’s limited access to abortions and general reproductive health services has endangered so many women’s lives. Three years after Roe V. Wade, Congress decided Medicaid dollars cannot be spent to cover the cost of an abortion. The decision leaves those of us in poverty and on Medicaid to often forego abortion services, when we need them. Mississippi has only one clinic in its entire 898 square miles to provide abortions and is not the only state to limit its women’s rights to reproductive health services. We are grinding back to a time when women had to depend on a loose, underground network of people to access abortions, at the risk of the woman’s life and dignity. Other countries in the world, such as Romania, where abortion is illegal, leave women powerless, without any control or self-determination in their own lives. 

Meedia coverage of Senate Bill 609, the Prenatally Diagnosed Condition Awareness Act, co-sposored by Senators Brownback – R (KS) and Kennedy – D (MA) strikes a chord. The bill aims to amend the Public Health Service Act to increase the provision of scientifically sound information and support services to patients receiving a positive test diagnosis for Down syndrome or other prenatally diagnosed conditions. Too many times, disability or even its possibility, in a fetus has been cause for support of legal abortion. Disability is a part of the natural diversity of our human and animal lives. Its eradication diminishes the genetic diversity of our world and devalues the disability experience. People’s worth cannot be measured by whether s/he has a disability, whether we can work, do step aerobics or appreciate a Woody Allen movie.

Please note the phrase, “support services.” We disabled folks use a lot of support services, to feed, bathe, dress ourselves, to provide respite to our caregivers and families and to pay our bills. Support services means having government-funded help to improve the quality of our lives with our disabilities. Past and looming cuts to S-CHIP, educational acts, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security threatens our lives as much as a mother and father who fear disability in their child’s life.

The disability community’s issues must bring the two political parties together, as Senators Brownback and Kennedy have done. But neither camp solely represents us. It’s important that we, women with disabilities, do not ally ourselves with either political party on the issue of reproductive health. They don’t quite understand our position. Yet.