Glenn Little, president of the Disabled Persons Association, in Victoria Australia, who has cerebral palsy:
“If I had been given the choice about whether I wanted to live with my brain damage or to be allowed to die, I would have chosen to live. I believe that I am serving a worthwhile purpose in my own way….
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard any disabled person say that they would prefer not to have been born. That’s after 20 odd years of mixing in and out of the disabled community. If another disabled person and I decided to have a child and we were told that the child would be born disabled, we would go ahead and have the child…
I think that if you find out during pregnancy that the baby is likely to have a disability you will find nine times out of 10 that they won’t know the severity…
The child might well grow up into someone like me or any of the other people you have met here at the Association today.
Should we have been aborted? It’s not just a question of what people need in the way of assistance – it’s also a question of what they can give.”
Miriam Claire The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue (New York: Insight Books, 1995) 199
Share on Facebook