Tag: disability justice

State of California flag on a flagpole.

California’s Reproductive Freedom Efforts Should Meaningfully Include People With Disabilities

Joelle Boxer 1 Comment

By Joelle Boxer

Last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of nine reproductive health care bills, following the passage of fifteen such bills in 2022. While the state should be lauded for its efforts, it has come up short. Recent legislation largely excludes up to 25% of the adult population: Californians with disabilities.

People with disabilities in the U.S. experience wide disparities in accessing reproductive health care, rooted in a long history of oppressive reproductive control. California should take action now to address these disparities and fulfil its goal of becoming a “reproductive freedom state” for all.

This article will examine recent movement on reproductive health care legislation in California, explain its failure to meet the needs of Californians with disabilities, and suggest a path forward in line with principles of disability reproductive justice.

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Building a Disability Organization Rooted in Disability Justice

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Dom Kelly

There’s a lot to say about the nonprofit sector and how it so often burns out, underpays, and devalues the humans who do the labor. There’s a pervasive narrative that this should just be accepted as a cost of doing good in the world. But for marginalized people who find themselves in this work for reasons that are connected to their identities, this kind of thinking ultimately pushes us out of the sector altogether.

Disability organizations are no exception to this.

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Washington, D.C. skyline with highways and monuments.

COVID-19 as Disability Interest Convergence?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Jasmine E. Harris

Some have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic could be a moment of what critical race theorist Derrick Bell called “interest convergence,” where majority interests align with those of a minority group to create a critical moment for social change.

It would be easy to think that interests indeed have converged between disabled and nondisabled people in the United States. From education to employment, modifications deemed “unreasonable” became not only plausible but streamlined with broad support.

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A stethoscope tied around a pile of cash, with a pill bottle nearby. The pill bottle has cash and pills inside.

We Haven’t ‘Learned the Lessons of COVID’ Until We Remake the Political Economy of Health

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant

Over the course of the pandemic it has been popular to claim that we have “learned lessons from COVID,” as though this plague has spurred a revolution in how we treat illness, debility, and death under capitalism.

Management consulting firm McKinsey, for example, writes that COVID has taught us that “infectious diseases are a whole-of-society issue.” A Yale Medicine bulletin tells us that we successfully learned “everyone is not treated equally, especially in a pandemic.” These bromides reflect the Biden administration’s evaluation of its own efforts; a recent White House report professes to have “successfully put equity at the center of a public health response for the first time in the nation’s history.”

We have learned nothing from COVID. The ongoing death, debility, disability, and immiseration of the pandemic are testament only to a failed political economy that pretends at magnanimity.

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Lady Justice blindfolded with scales.

Achieving Economic Security for Disabled People During COVID-19 and Beyond

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Robyn Powell

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the pervasive inequities experienced by historically marginalized communities, including people with disabilities.

Activists, legal professionals, scholars, and policymakers must critically examine the limitations of our current disability laws and policies, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to elucidate why disabled people continue to endure these inequities, including those related to economic insecurity.

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The Import of the UNCRPD and Disability Justice for Pandemic Preparedness and Response

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By Joel Michael Reynolds and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

During the COVID-19 crisis, many nation-states did not consult or substantively take into consideration treaties protecting the rights of people with disabilities when developing their pandemic responses.

For example, the United Nations’ 2008 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is an international human rights treaty intended to protect the rights and dignity of all persons with disabilities. It articulates principles of non-discrimination (see especially Articles 2, 3, and 5) and broader obligations upon specific parties, such as states parties, which are obligated to protect the rights and freedoms of people with disabilities (see Article 4, et al.).

The failures to uphold these principles and obligations during the COVID-19 pandemic were met with a swift response. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) produced guidelines on COVID-19 and the rights of persons with disabilities in April of 2020, as well as a policy brief in May of that year.

This commentary outlines three of the more important considerations for international pandemic lawmaking — both for specific instruments and wider deliberation — with respect to people with disabilities in general and the United Nations’ 2008 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in particular.

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