don't forget about us: disability and roe v. wade

featuring the late judy heumann's words in lookdeeper zine issue 3

CW; ABORTION, REMOVAL OF ABORTION RIGHTS.

People with disabilities are more than three times more likely than non-disabled people to experience violent sexual crimes. 90% of those with developmental disabilities will experience sexual assault. More than 80% of women with disabilities have been sexually assaulted – 50% of those are frequent occurrences in those situations.

‘So I went out with this guy and it was really terrible. I had met him and talked to him, met him at my voice teacher’s place,’ Judy Heumann told us recently in an interview. ‘We were going out, but he took me to his apartment and I had no control over what was going on. And I frequently say that had it not been for my long leg braces, it wouldn’t have ended up the way it did. So it’s very personal with me too.’

24 June 2022 is a day that many people remember all too well. Within moments of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, phones lit up like Christmas trees and fear ran like a detonated smoke bomb through the air. The implications of not having Roe flickered through marginalized communities across the country like a flame being snuffed out – the disabled community being one of them.

Judy Heumann is a disability rights activist, author, speaker and all-around human powerhouse. In her 74 years of being alive, she’s helped get Section 504 and the Americans with Disabilities Act passed, served as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the Department of Education, co-founded the World Institute on Disability and so much more.

She was also alive pre-Roe and when Roe was originally passed in 1973 – her final year of college. She helped raise money for her roommate to get an abortion in Puerto Rico pre-Roe and recalled how terrifying it was due to all of the unknowns. A friend of her parents had a daughter who had a botched abortion, prompting her parents to tell her that they’d support her if she ever needed one during the height of protests.

‘That’s really part of my background because in the 60s disabled women were beginning to get involved in the women’s movement, but are not really major players, although you know we had the same opportunities to get pregnant,’ Heumann said. ‘We had more limited opportunities to be able to get birth control. I think also the issue of assault against women, disabled or not, was really not yet being that openly discussed.’

When Heumann was swept into the information cloud of the 2022 decision, she wasn’t surprised by Roe’s overturning. She had noted the shift in the opinions of conservatives regarding human rights in recent years, many even being against contraception. As a Jewish woman, not having access to abortion infringes on freedom of religion – as banning abortion adheres to fundamentalist Christian ideals. Voting and participating in democracy are important, and Heumann believes that the lack of recent voting inadvertently allowed Roe to be overturned, beginning in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump instead of Hilary Clinton.

‘What we have now in my mind, is the result of people not responsibly voting,’ Heumann said. ‘I really worry about people not voting in the fall [of 2022] because we lost eight seats in the House of Representatives in the last election. We should not be losing seats, we need to be gaining seats. I just hope that people really recognize there are implications for all the actions we take.’

Especially in the post-Roe world, those with disabilities have been commonly used as scapegoats for anti-abortion propaganda, particularly due to the factor of disability-selective abortion. Heumann held tight to her belief in a person’s right to choose and that we can’t roll the dice in a non-disabled’s game. Education about those with disabilities and ensuring that new parents to disabled children have adequate support systems and meet those with all types of disabilities is essential.

‘I think we can’t play their game,’ Heumann said. ‘We are proud of ourselves as disabled people who can get pregnant and as disabled individuals, we’re looking for equality in our country and equality means that we have the right to choose and we will educate people and we will fight for legislation that provides appropriate support and implementation of laws so that when people are making the decision, this is something. If it’s an issue for them, they know there will be support. But that’s not the only reason why people have abortions.’

We must continually fight to overturn these laws and help uplift voices that are being silenced. Heumann encourages everyone to get into politics and join in with direct action, particularly regarding voting and marginalized communities.

‘I really hope that people invest more in the political system, run for office and be poll watchers,’ Heumann said. ‘Be involved with the League of Women Voters, work in states to overturn these terrible new pieces of legislation that will restrict the rights of so many people to vote, disabled people, disabled people of color, people of color, people who are poor – those are the people whose voices are being repressed by what’s going on.’

Disabled individuals who can become pregnant in trigger states are already worried about the potential impact coming. Madison Lawson is a disabled journalist and model from Missouri, a state whose trigger ban went into effect immediately after the overturning. She told us that disabled people are disproportionately affected for a myriad of reasons, including the potential for further medical neglect.

‘There’s going to be a lot of children born into families who might not want them, and if you don’t even want a healthy baby to begin with, there’s going to be a lot of medical neglect that takes place,’ Lawson said. ‘It scares me for our community as a whole because I know there is a lot of neglect happening already in families that did want a baby. So I am heartbroken and devastated.’

Lawson emphasized that in addition to disabled children born after the ban, pregnant disabled individuals are also in grave danger as our bodies not always being capable of growing a child and delivering it safely. Two-thirds of disabled people also live below the poverty line, and the financial strain of a child would likely push those affected deeper down into hardship.

‘It’s definitely going to affect us in deeper ways because now you’re putting disabled people at higher risk of poverty when that’s most likely where they originally started,’ Lawson said.

Heumann highlighted the importance of community organizing and fighting for our rights continually to make politicians incorporate disability issues into the mainstream conversation. She stressed the significance of voting, to keep people who want to infringe any rights out of office before they can do harm.

‘People need to raise their voices in many ways,’ Heumann said. ‘Not all people feel comfortable equally in every way, but to me, it’s everything from using social media to express your view, getting more people to run for office, asking people who are running regardless of the position they’re running for to tell us what their position is on disability in whatever area you’re concerned about. I believe that one of the reasons they’re not speaking up about their positions on disability is because we’re not asking enough.’

FOR THOSE IN BANNED STATES, THE FOLLOWING RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE.

Online pills:

- plancpills.org/guide

- heyjane.co

- aidaccess.org

Abortion funds:

- National Network of Abortion Funds

- Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project

- The Brigid Alliance

- Localised funds in banned states

Mental health & legal support

- exhaleprovoice.org

- abortionfnder.org

- reprocare.com

- reprolegalhelpline.org

- mahotline.org