Normalizing Disability in Families

Abstract

In “Selection against Disability: Abortion, ART, and Access,” Alicia Ouellette probes a particularly vexing point of intersection between ART 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 first briefly describes what I view as Ouellette’s key points and her article’s most valuable contributions. It then suggests further expanding the frame of reference for Ouellette’s discussion. 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.