UN Human Rights Committee: stop equating life with a disability to suffering

....and dont take away our equal human dignity

During a recent gathering Mr. Yadh Ben Achour, member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) declared that 'though it is necessary to help disabled people once they are born, this doesnt mean that we have to accept to allow a fetus suffering with impairment to live. He added we must do everything we can to avoid disabilities. At this point, the Chairman had to intervene to remind the Committee members that the debate is recorded. The statements clearly reflect a eugenic ideology.

If Mr. Ben Achour's statement was intented to promote the prevention of impairments caused by drunk driving, perhaps many would agree. However the statement was intended to promote the prevention of impairment by selective abortion.

Disabilities like Down syndrome and other genetic and congenital differences are a naturally occurring part of our human species. They have always existed in every social class and every society on earth. To promote their deliberate selective elimination based on presumed suffering is a sign of moral and social regression.

In response to Mr. Achours statement I would like to quote self-advocate John Franklin Stephens who -at a United States congressional testimony last week- said: "I completely understand that people are pushing for a particular 'final solution', saying that people like me should not exist. That view is deeply prejudiced by an outdated idea of life with Down syndrome.

U.N. Human Rights treaty is founded on the equal dignity of every human being.

Society is constantly bombarded with messages that only those people who are capable of being independent and able to generate money are valuable. It is no wonder that approximately 90% of parents who receive a diagnosis of Down syndrome, make the 'individual decision' to abort their child.

When confronting authorities that these alarming rates diametrically oppose the initial U.N. Human Rights treaty; the equal dignity of every human being, they hide behind a woman's invididual choice. However, we have to question who is ultimately responsible for the elimination of disabled people in a materialistic, utilitarian society: The parents who make the decision, those who instigate a eugenic mentality or authorities who fail to protect us from this extreme form of inequality?

Human achievements

Life doesnt become less valuable if achievements cannot be measured in money. Society doesnt need more successful entrepreneurs who are mainly interested in filling their own pockets. We need more cohesion and more people who are able to accept and love unconditionally.

While other committee members remained silent on the issue of disability-selective abortion, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) protested by saying that Laws which explicitly allow for abortion on grounds of impairment violate the CRPD. It added that such laws perpetuate notions of stereotyping disability as incompatible with a good life. But the Human Rights Committee did not take this into account, its most active members remaining firmly committed to their objective to deny an equal right to life to the unborn.

However, even the U.N. cannot deny that the selective targeting of disabled fetuses extends to those living with disabilities.

In a comparable situation of sex-selective abortion of unborn baby-girls, several UN committees have blamed prenatal selection as the root cause of violence against women ; an extreme form of inequality.

If there is International consensus that sex-selective abortion is a threat to the human rights of women, then WHY does the same U.N. push disability-selective abortion as a human right?

The negative conditions that lead to an individual decision to selectively abort do not magically disappear after birth. The social inequality and stigmatization perseveres and takes root in all aspects of our society. Blackbook Downs is an initiative by a group of parents who collect testimonies how lives are affected by the culture of screening and selective abortion.

Shame on those committee members that have spoken against our equal dignity and shame on those members that omitted to speak up on our behalf.

Besides the fact that equating a life with a disability to suffering is discriminatory rubbish -research points out that people with Down syndrome rate life better than the average population- it is disturbing that members of the UNHRC, charged with protecting and promoting our equal dignity, instigate the exact opposite: The elimination and discrimination of disabled people. Both the fundamentalist statements made during the UNHRC meeting and the silence that followed, are devastating and inadmissable.

Renate Lindeman is a mother of two daughters with Down syndrome. She is also a spokesperson for Saving Downsyndrome and Downpride and the StopDiscriminatingDown Campaign