genetically- if this disability is a less desirable property in the society that they are
bringing their child into?
However, regardless of how convincing we may or may not find identity politics or
social definitions of disability, the fact remains that screening in order to prevent
disabilities has substantial social and political implications (McMahan, 2005).
McMahan (2005) refers to multiple arguments against the screening for and abortion
of disabled foetuses, perhaps the most substantial arguments he puts forth that counter
Brecher’s (2011) claims are that the attempts to prevent disabled people from being
born are not only harmful to the disabled community as a whole but to each disabled
individual. McMahan (2005, p.129) claims that in trying to prevent disabled births, not
only are we telling disabled people that we are “‘trying to prevent the existence of
people like you,’”, which itself alone is arguably ableist and damaging to the disabled
community, but we are also reducing the number of disabled people- making each
individual disabled person more isolated, which arguably could lead to further
discrimination of disabled people. We as a society would also suffer loss from a
reduced number of disabled people as it would result in a loss of diversity, and
McMahan (2005) argues that the existence of disabled people provides valuable
lessons about respecting differences in our society and the value of life as a whole.
Additionally, McMahan (2005) argues that trying to reduce the number of disabled
people is comparable to attempts to get rid of any particular group of people, for
example, race, and the shrinking of the disabled population via preventative abortion
would not only damage the visibility of disabled people but would weaken their
political power. These could arguably lead to discrimination issues and make fighting
against discrimination much harder. Choosing to endorse practices that would reduce
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