Not only is the birth of a disabled child 'inconvenient', its entire life into adulthood is likely to be considered burdensome and its existence regarded a waste of space (Rights are for the living, 24 August). The story before and after birth is the same: inequality for disabled people. Well-articulated arguments for the prevention of disabled lives do nothing to redress this inequality. Rather they lead to the situation where disabled children have no legal entitlement to powered wheelchairs, or the provision of a lift to upstairs classrooms . Thus they are denied opportunities to grow up freely alongside their non-disabled friends. Ms Toynbee wants it both ways. But life and death are opposites. She'll stop a disabled life before it starts, wash her hands of the problems thereafter, leaving it to the largely benign Disability Rights Commission to make everything alright for the disabled people who (mistakenly?) get born or who acquire an impairment after birth. Ms Toynbee would decide that a disabled life is a life not worth living. Thus, disabled people's demands to participate and contribute on equal terms with non-disabled people are subjected to ridicule in respected journals. Better that they had never been born? Or better that the articles had never been written? I choose the latter. I suggest Ms Toynbee gets real by accompanying me (a disabled person) for a week in my work. I guarantee she'll witness fear, loathing and rejection of a group of people for whom the call to celebrate diversity amounts to little more than an invitation to roll up for the 21st century freak show. Deborah Sowerby |