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Wolbring 12:
From: Asian Bioethics Review
Volume 4, Issue 4, December 2012
Gregor Wolbring. I am a ability governance researcher, a health researcher, a vari-ability//ability/disability studies scholar, a governance of science and
technology researcher, a bioethicist and a biochemist.
Nearly every issue that arises in ethics including, but not exclusively, end-oflife decision-making; the allocation of healthcare resources; the use of
genetic technology (gene therapy, genetic testing); research on individuals who are not
competent; questions of futile care; selective non-treatment of newborns; debates about personhood; mercy killing and disability adjusted life
years; nanotechnology; bionics; and info ethics affects disabled people
e, their self-perception and how they are perceived by others . Certain
ethical principles examine, and exemplify certain abilities are put forward time after time ,
namely the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. However, these principles are
41
often interpreted differently by different social groups based on their different ability preferences and ability expectations. For example, whether one follows
an ableism that favours species-typical body abilities 41versus an ableism that cherishes body ability diversity leads to different thoughts and actions related
to the principles. Given this, the question arises over whose interpretation is visible in the discourses around ethics and which of the two forms of ableisms?
40 ,42
48
43 ,48 51
be important. Which abilities are seen as essential in a discourse, and what forms of ableism are exhibited, does not only impact disabled people.
When the affirmative views expanding access to medical autonomy as a moral goal,
it assumes that it ought to be a goal to improve ones functionality, which
perpetrates ableist views.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asian_bioethics_review/v004/4.4.wolbring.html#f21text
2) The concept of autonomy that the aff replicates creates a
destructive dichotomy between autonomous and nonautonomous.
Placing value on autonomy devalues those who are seen as
dependent.
Secker 99
Barbara Secker, Associate Director of Education and Practice at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, 1999 (The Appearance of Kants Deontology in
Contemporary Kantianism: Concepts of Patient Autonomy in Bioethics, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 1999, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 436, Published by Swets &
Zeitlinger, Available online at http://jmp.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/1/43.full.pdf, Accessed 08-15-15) JaL
52 53
to have the obligation to modify themselves or the entities who believe the people have the obligation?
B. Impact
The negative social view of the impaired impact all of society, causing it to
recreate an ethic of exclusion Barnes 921
the vast majority of information about
disability in the mass media is extremely negative. Disabling
This section has demonstrated how
also clear that recent attempts by some elements in the media to remedy the situation and 'normalise' disabled
that this figure will increase dramatically in the next few years due to several factors including medical
advances and an ageing population - the likelihood of acquiring an impairment increases significantly with
age. Disablism in the media is no longer simply morally and socially reprehensible it is economically inept.
AND
Ableism controls the internal link to all forms of oppression
Siebers 10 . First, despite my statement that disability now serves as the master trope of human
disqualification, it is not a matter of reducing other minority identities
to disability identity. Rather, it is a matter of understanding the work done by disability in oppressive systems. In disability
oppression, the physical and mental properties of the body are socially
constructed as disqualifying defects, but this specific type of social construction happens to be integral at the present
moment to the symbolic requirements of oppression in general. In every oppressive system of our day, I want to claim, the
oppressed identity is represented in some way as disabled, and although it is hard to understand, the same
process obtains when disability is the oppressed identity. Racism disqualifies on the basis of race, providing justification for the inferiority of certain skin colors, bloodlines, and
Classism
disqualifies on the basis of family lineage and socioeconomic power as proof of
inferior genealogical status. Ableism disqualifies on the basis of mental and physical differences, first selecting and then stigmatizing
physical features. Sexism disqualifies on the basis of sex/gender as a direct representation of mental and physical inferiority.
them as disabilities. The oppressive system occults in each case the fact that the disqualified identity is socially constructed, a mere convention, representing signs of
C. Alternative
The alternative is to reject negative views on people with disabilities perpetrated by
species-typical conceptions of autonomy.
Wolbring
Ableism against disabled people (Wolbring, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c) reflects a preference for
species-typical normative abilities leading to the discrimination against the )m
as less able and/or as impaired disabled people (Wolbring, 2004, 2005). This type of ableism is
supported by the medical, deficiency, impairment categorization of
disabled people (medical model) (Wolbring, 2004, 2005). It rejects the variation of
being, biodiversity notion and categorization of disabled people (social model). It leads to the focus on fixing the
person or preventing more of such people being born and ignores the
acceptance and accommodation of such people in their variation of
being (Wolbring, 2005). Ableism has also long been used to justify hierarchies of rights and discrimination between other social groups, and to exclude
people not classified as disabled people.
histories of disability and disabling practices, and critiques of ableist films and novels all apply rhetorical solutions to the problem.
Identifying ableism as rhetoric and exploring its systems dynamic reveals how these
corrective practices work. We can use such information to refine the successful techniques, reinvent those that
fail, and realize new tactics. Third, I contend that any means of challenging ableism must
eventually encounter its rhetorical power. As I explain below, ableism is that
most insidious form of rhetoric that has become reified and so widely
accepted as common sense that it denies its own rhetoricity it "goes without
saying." To fully address it we must name its presence, for cultural assumptions accepted uncritically adopt the mantle of "simple truth" and
become extremely difficult to rebut. As the neologism "ableism" itself testifies, we need new words to reveal the places it resides and new
measures that give the appearance of change yet elide a recalcitrant ableist system.
SO
Based on the role of the ballot vote neg because
1) Im promoting discussion and interrogation of ableist rhetoric,
2) The affirmative advocacy causes increased ableism