It’s been a while since I attacked an article from #TheAtlantic, so, time to get back into old habits!
Sarah Zhang’s “The Last Children of Down Syndrome” isn’t the worst take I’ve ever read -- elimination of disabled people is not depicted as an unqualified good; anti-eugenics disability advocates are quoted; the fact that Down Syndrome is not a life-threatening condition was acknowledged. This is an incredibly low bar for an article that was, once again, about us, without us. Zero people with Down Syndrome were interviewed. Zhang sat and talked to the mother of a man with Down Syndrome while ignoring the man himself, who was right there. Disabled people are not extensions of their parents. If Zhang had interviewed some DS people themselves, she might have avoided some other extremely basic flaws in the article.
Zhang describes parents “mourning” their image of “the child whom they were going to walk down the aisle, who was going to graduate from college, who was going to become president.” She acknowledges that none of these things are guaranteed with any child, but doesn’t mention that they’re also entirely possible for DS people as well, even though later in the same article, she references DS people going to college. They can also get married! And run for office! Or choose to do none of those things, if they don’t want to! She also notes that “Most people with Down syndrome learn to read and write. Others are nonverbal.” This is technically accurate, but misleading. “Nonverbal” literally means “without words” (therefore, a person who reads and writes is not nonverbal), but is more commonly used to mean “nonspeaking,” which is an entirely different skill. It would be more accurate to say: Most DS people (like most 21st century people in general) communicate with both spoken and written language. Some use only written language, but not spoken. Some use only spoken language, but not written. Some use neither spoken nor written language. The important point I’m making by being pedantic, here, is that speech is not a prerequisite for reading and writing. Plenty of people can read and write, but not speak. A major barrier to education and opportunities for disabled people is the common assumption that learning has to come in “typical” chronological order, but it’s not at all unusual for neurodivergent kids to learn “more advanced” skills like reading and writing, before they learn “easier” skills like speaking.
As an example of the supposed tragedy of “nonverbal” DS people, one mother says she wishes she’d aborted her now six year old, because he hits and bites her. Setting aside that plenty of “normal,” abled six year olds hit and bite, Zhang takes the mother’s word for it on the cause and effect relationship -- kid bites mom, therefore mom wishes kid had never been born -- when an equally plausible (I would guess, more plausible) mechanism is the reverse: mom wishes kid had never been born, therefore, kid responds to the stress of having his existence resented by biting his mom.
Fundamentally and repeatedly, Zhang refuses to consider the possibility that the state of being unwanted, either by family or by society as a whole, is, in and of itself, detrimental to DS people and other disabled people. She mentions that reducing the number of DS children being born could harm existing DS people due to fewer resources being available, which is a vague and tenuous connection, but not the more pertinent harm -- a society in which a majority of the population wishes a minority group to not exist is inherently hostile to that minority group. Zhang uncritically accepts the talking point that Denmark is a good place for DS people to live, but that is self-evidently not true. Would you feel welcome in a society in which most people actively wanted to ensure that their children wouldn’t be like you? Would you feel welcome in a country that discouraged or forbade disabled people from moving there (that’s almost all countries, not just Denmark)? You can’t expect to receive equal opportunity from people who think your existence is an unfortunate glitch. You can’t be an equal citizen in a country that considers preventing people like you a valid public good. Disabled people can’t have equal rights until the societies we live in abandon the entire premise that one combination of chromosomes, genes, body parts, or brain cells, is somehow better or worse than another.
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