(dis)ABILITY RIGHTS A Forgotten Claim

People with (dis)Abilities face economic oppression as the more severe the (dis)Ability the greater their chance of living in poverty (Wall, 2017). They deal with social marginalization created in part through limited access to transportation. For example in Nova Scotia Access-A-Bus is only available for medical appointments booked a week in advance (Halifax Access-A-Bus, 2013); the thought of a (dis)Abled person using this service to attend a concert or to go to the bar with friends is unthinkable. People with (dis)Abilities experience psychological abuse sometimes delivered through public stares or worse, being totally ignored, and made to feel invisible (Garland-Thomson, 2009). Physical barriers, such as inaccessible physical structures like stairs or heavy doors keep (dis)Abled people isolated or dependent upon others for assistance. Discrimination can also come in the form of political discrimination where people with (dis)Abilities’ voices are not heard and their concerns and needs are not validated (MacDonald, 2016). For example, it was only after organized protests and strategic lobbying that people with (dis)Abilities were included in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms(1982);(dis)Abled people were almost left out of this foundational bill of rights that forms the first part of the Canadian Constitution. The oppression and exploitation of (dis)Abled people dates back to the beginning of known civilization. The Greeks and Romans both exercised infanticide for children who were born showing obvious signs of imperfection (Barnes, 1997). More recent history included practices of locking (dis)Abled people away in state institutions (Mackelprang & Salsgiver, 2015), sterilizing them against their will (MacDonald, 2016) and targeting them as victims of eugenics (MacDonald & Friars, 2010). In her film Almost Normal (2004), Dr. Seana Kozar recounts how her parents were encouraged to institutionalize her when they were told of her Cerebral Palsy diagnosis shortly after she was born. The doctor believed Seana would be an ‘invalid’ with limited capacity and therefore it would be in everyone’s best interest if she was put in an institution. Thankfully her parents did not accept the advice. Today Seana is a PhD graduate, a film director, a partner and a mother, among many other things. Leilani Muir was not as fortunate, as she was admitted to the Provincial Training School for Mental ‘Defectives’ in Alberta at ten years of age. Muir vs The Queen in the Right of Alberta, 1996 is a landmark case that ended with Leilani being awarded $740,780 for wrongful sterilization and wrongful confinement. When Leilani was 15 she was told she needed to have an appendectomy, however this was a calculated deception for forced sterilization resulting in a hysterectomy along with the removal of her appendix (Muir vs The Queen in the Right of Alberta, 1996; Withers, 2012). This deception was not revealed to Ms. Muir until she tried to conceive as an adult woman. Leilani came from an abusive home where she was denied food, yet one of the noted behaviours on her training school admittance form was that she took lunches from other children at school. Leilani was classified as a ‘moron’ yet no psychometric testing was done to confirm this diagnosis (Muir vs The Queen in the Right of Alberta, 1996). Sterilization of (dis)Abled women did not stop in Canada until the 1970s. One of the most grievous examples of abuse came with Hitler’s T-4 eugenics program from 1939 to 1941, aimed at “purifying the race” (Chadwick, 2003). Between a quarter and a half a million (dis)Abled people were killed. Propaganda portrayed the (dis)Abled as ‘subhuman’ and their murders as ‘mercy killings’ (Mackelprang & Salsgiver, 2015). Publically, the Nazis were …