Disability Rights Florida advocates for the rights of people with disabilities. Our mission includes a commitment to protect and advance the rights of all people with disabilities, including the right to bodily autonomy, the right to equitable access to health care, and the right to make their own decisions. Historically, the disability community has endured atrocious violations of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights that persist today including forced sterilizations, disproportionately high rates of physical and sexual violence, and unwarranted interference with parental rights. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs is yet another attack on the rights and bodily autonomy of people with disabilities. Making abortion harder to access will only cause further harm to a community that already experiences significant inequities in access to healthcare.
Ableism, misinformation, and stigma have long contributed to the barriers people with disabilities face when accessing health care. Despite federal protections prohibiting discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), health facilities are often physically inaccessible to people with mobility and other physical impairments, with narrow doorways and nonadjustable chairs and equipment. Clinic forms are often confusing and inaccessible for individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Patients may have a hard time even getting to a health care facility due to unreliable or inaccessible transportation.
In a recent national survey of practicing physicians, only 40% felt confident that they could provide an equitable quality of care to their disabled patients. Despite research indicating that the majority of people with disabilities rate their quality of life as good or excellent, 80% of physicians believe that people with disabilities have a worse quality of life than non-disabled people. These misconceptions about disability can create just as many barriers to accessing care as architectural barriers. For example, people with disabilities often report having their needs dismissed or overlooked by their health care providers, making it harder to access critical resources such as contraceptives, preventative screenings, and maternal health services. As a result, they are more likely to have conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease caught at later, deadlier stages, and women with disabilities experience higher rates of pregnancy complications than the general population.
People with disabilities face additional challenges in regard to reproductive healthcare and related services. Paternalism and lack of understanding cause many to wrongly assume that people with disabilities do not experience the full range of human emotion or that they should not be allowed to engage in romantic relationships. This often leads to the failure of schools, families, and healthcare providers to educate people with disabilities, or allow them to educate themselves, about reproductive health. This lack of education inhibits access to reproductive healthcare and leaves people with disabilities at increased risk of becoming victims of sexual violence and resulting in unwanted pregnancy. For individuals under guardianship, reproductive health care decisions may be entirely out of their control. They may be denied access to care or forced to undergo unwanted procedures without consideration of their wants or needs. The Supreme Court’s 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell upheld forced sterilization of people with disabilities or “perceived” disabilities. This harmful precedent has never been explicitly overturned. According to the National Women’s Law Center, 31 states still allow forced sterilizations. Multiple marginalized communities such as Black disabled women are at an even greater risk of enduring such violations.
We recognize that abortion is a complicated topic within the disability community. It has been argued that many choose abortion when they believe their baby will be born with disabilities because of the perceived difficulty and expense of raising a child with disabilities and that these disability-selective abortions, as well as the history of eugenics in the United States and worldwide, require all in the disability community to rally against abortion rights. We cannot let these “disability rights” arguments be used as justification for restricting abortion rights for all Americans. Instead of using the disability community as a pawn in the fight to limit access to abortion, those truly interested in making parenting a child with disabilities seem less onerous must work aggressively to eliminate stigmas about disability and to ensure necessary education, supports, and services are affordable and accessible for all.
People with disabilities are as diverse in their viewpoints as everyone else. This is why Disability Rights Florida is committed to fighting for the dignity and autonomy of individuals with disabilities and for the right of each person to make healthcare decisions for themselves.