Republican Rick Santorum Drives Harold Pollack Shrill...
…and the New York Times does not print this: it's web-only:
Do Liberals Disdain the Disabled?: Earlier this month, I was hanging out with my brother-in-law Vincent. He lives with developmental disabilities caused by an unwanted genetic sequence that deprives his brain of a critical protein. We were sitting in our family room when Rick Santorum — whose 3-year-old daughter has a different chromosomal disorder — appeared on the television.
“One of the things that you don’t know about ObamaCare,” Mr. Santorum said, is that it requires “free prenatal testing ... Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society.” Mr. Santorum’s comment echoed Sarah Palin’s famous [death panel] charge during the health care reform debate…. There is no basis whatsoever for Mr. Santorum or Ms. Palin’s comments. Disability advocates across the political spectrum strongly supported the 2010 health care reform. They had obvious reasons to do so. The new law provides protections for people with preexisting conditions, regulations to make sure insurers properly cover care for chronic illnesses and expanded coverage for young adults and low-income families.
But more is at stake here than factual inaccuracies. Mr. Santorum and Ms. Palin are spreading a poisonous meme: that liberals disdain the disabled…. They seek to insert the hateful rhetoric of the culture war into one of the few areas of American life that had remained relatively free of such rancor. Care for people with disabilities has quietly been one of the few causes in this country on which social liberals and conservatives could put aside their differences…. I fear this may be changing….
Since at least the 1970s, when the prospect of mass prenatal screening for genetic abnormalities first emerged, many people have worried that such technologies would coarsen public attitudes toward disabled citizens and erode support for essential services. Disability advocates were (and remain) divided…. Many fears regarding screening turned out to be unwarranted…. The first Special Olympics were held in 1968, in large part thanks to the efforts of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, an anti-abortion liberal Catholic, and Medicare and Medicaid, the two most important programs for financing the treatment and care of disabled Americans, were enacted in 1965 by Great Society liberals. Richard M. Nixon worked with Congress to enact Supplemental Security Income, which established income security for millions of people with disabilities. Not long after, President Gerald R. Ford signed what is now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, guaranteeing access to special education and other services. Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Robert Dole collaborated to pass the Americans With Disabilities Act…. Today, social conservatives in the Knights of Columbus sell Tootsie Rolls on street corners supporting group homes and workshops, while liberal activists fight to ensure that disabled Medicaid recipients have access to proper dental care and other services.
As a result of this hard work, things have gotten better…. [E]very day, our family experiences countless acts of kindness and acceptance: harried business travelers patiently wait as we move ever so slowly through the airport security check; tough South Side Chicago kids wave back when Vincent waves at them; students at our daughters’ school react kindly to their classmates’ unusual-looking uncle.
Liberals and conservatives deserve credit for working together to promote genuine progress in these areas. It isn’t easy, because we have genuine differences…. But Mr. Santorum wants to exploit these differences. Mr. Santorum faces an uphill political climb. But whatever happens with his candidacy, he can still tear this particularly delicate piece of our social fabric before he’s through. We can’t let him do that.
