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| Meghan Schrader |
As I’ve mentioned, there are many policies being proposed or implemented right now in America that are extremely harmful to people with disabilities.
These policy efforts are largely driven by the current administration’s determination to eliminate anything related to the concept of “diversity, equity and inclusion” and “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.” In my opinion no ideology is perfect, including those underpinning DEIA programs. Yet the current radical changes to or elimination of any initiative attached to the concept of DEIA violate social, moral and theological conceptions of human dignity.
In its zeal to eliminate anything it perceives to be a form of DEI, this administration has rolled back changes to society that have nothing whatsoever to do with our country’s moral and political deadlock other than to make the world easier for people with disabilities to navigate. In this blog post I will focus on policies affecting people with vision disabilities, wheelchair users, disabled people who make sub-minimum wages, nursing home residents and disabled people who are at risk of being institutionalized.
In 2023 the government started using Calibri font on government documents to make them easier for people with vision disabilities to read, but this administration has reverted to the Times New Roman font. I have several Facebook friends with vision disabilities, and they have said that Calibri does make documents easier to read. Making government documents easier for people with vision disabilities to read is not a “culture war” issue. But disappointingly, Secretary of State Rubio, who has done some very good work opposing euthanasia, described the return to Times New Roman as necessary “to restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program.” He called the switch to Calibri “wasteful, confusing and unbefitting the dignity of US government documents.” Denying disabled Americans the dignity of reading government documents more easily so that government documents can be “dignified” shows an extreme mismanagement of priorities.
The government has also frozen higher accountability standards for airlines that damage travelers’ wheelchairs. I have many Facebook friends who use wheelchairs and it is common to see Facebook posts about airlines treating their wheelchairs with apathy, causing experiences of humiliation and potential bodily harm. Again this is not a “culture war” issue, nor is it “woke hysteria.” I know one conservative disability rights advocate who was one of President Trump’s disability policy advisors during his first term, and she worked very hard to help implement those new standards.
The current administration also eliminated federal plans to gradually phase out subminimum wages for persons with disabilities and provide training for jobs that allow them to make at least minimum wage. This would not immediately eliminate the current system; it would put social structures in place that would allow for it to be replaced gradually. This is a change that disability rights advocates like those at the National Down Syndrome Society, the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, the National Federation of the Blind and the American Association of People With Disabilities, had fought for for years. But now we are back to square one.
Another seriously dangerous decision by the administration is to rescind a recent requirement that nursing homes maintain a minimum number of staff, a change decried by groups like the American Association of Retired Persons. Lack of staffing results in nursing home residents going unfed, unbathed, developing bedsores and even dying because of that neglect. If your loved one were in a nursing facility, wouldn’t you want to make sure that there was enough staff to take care of them? Think about this issue in terms of the Golden Rule: what if you had to live in a nursing facility?
And as I’ve mentioned, 9 states has have filed Texas vs. Kennedy, a lawsuit seeking to have all of the new disability rights protections contained in the 2024 Final Rule, an update to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, repealed. The Final Rule contains Section 84.56(a), which forbids doctors from making “quality of life” decisions that cause disabled people’s deaths. This is one of the most important tools that the anti euthanasia movement has had in decades. The Final Rule also institutes new rights for disabled parents, accessible medical equipment, internet access and more community support for disabled people at risk of being institutionalized. But all of those protections are at risk because nine states would rather not experience the “burden” of implementing them.
In order to explain the moral implications of this situation in a way that I think many other euthanasia opponents will understand, I will draw on the Catholic concept of social sin. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops defines that concept as follows:
“From the encyclical, Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate), Pope Benedict XVI: “The Church’s wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society: Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social actions and morals….Social sin resides within a group or a community of people. It exists within any structure in society that oppresses human beings, violates human dignity, stifles freedom and/or imposes great inequity.”All of these policies do exactly that. I strongly urge other euthanasia opponents not to support these policies and to work with the disability rights movement on developing policies that protect disabled people’s dignity.
Meghan is a disability instructor and a member of the EPC-USA board.
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