yeah, sigh............
Thanks,
Tamar
~~~~~~~~
When the power of love overcomes the love of power,
the world will come to know peace.
Check out my new blog!
http://disabilityrightspetspoetryart.blogspot.com/
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________________________________
From: Meir Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thu, December 16, 2010 5:25:45 AM
Subject: 'Retarded' no more
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Retarded+more/3984583/story.html
'Retarded' no more
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.Father Raymond J. de Souza, National Post . Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010
In October, Barack Obama signed a new law that prohibits the U.S. government
from referring to the "mentally retarded" in any of its laws and
regulations. The term to be used instead is "intellectual disability." Given
the harshness with which it strikes the ear, the word "retarded" has long
since dropped out of common usage, but it still survives in official
policies.
The law is called Rosa's Law, after a nine-year-old Maryland girl with
Down's syndrome. Her official classification at school was "mentally
retarded," which struck her mother as hurtful. The U.S. Congress passed the
law in response to Rosa's case, but also in response to a long campaign by
the Special Olympics to end the use of the "R-Word," as their campaign puts
it.
Timothy Shriver, president of the Special Olympics, was on hand with several
special Olympians for the signing ceremony. All of which brought to mind
another White House ceremony -- the one in which president Reagan conferred
on Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Timothy's mother and founder of the Special
Olympics, the Medal of Freedom. It was 1984, sensibilities were different
and the president praised Ms. Shriver for her heroic labour "on behalf of
America's least powerful people, the mentally retarded."
Ms. Shriver-- whose character and achievements far surpass those of her more
celebrated brothers, JFK, RFK and Teddy -- did more than anyone else to
bring the mentally disabled out of the shadows and into the light. She long
used the language of her day, of course, but latterly campaigned against the
use of the R-word.
Yet it was her willingness to use it that began to break down the stigma and
shame around mental disability. She wrote a landmark article in 1962 --
while JFK was president -- in The Saturday Evening Post in which she put the
matter starkly: "Rosemary [Eunice's and JFK's sister] was mentally
retarded." In 1962, the frank admission that there was, in the most
glamorous American family, a mentally disabled daughter was a major
milestone.
"Like diabetes, deafness, polio or any other misfortune, mental retardation
can happen in any family," she wrote. "It has happened in the families of
the poor and the rich, of governors, senators, Nobel Prize-winners, doctors,
lawyers, writers, men of genius, presidents of corporations -- and the
President of the United States."
It was Eunice's love for Rosemary that motivated her to improve the lot of
the "retarded" children of her time. Six years later she would found the
Special Olympics. That 1962 article illustrates the urgent need for her work
then, so great was the shame around mental disabilities.
"Even within the last several years, there have been known instances where
families have committed retarded infants to institutions before they were a
month old -- and ran obituaries in the local papers to spread the belief
that they were dead," Ms. Shriver wrote. "In this era of atom-splitting and
wonder drugs and technological advance, it is still widely assumed that the
future for the mentally retarded is hopeless."
It's hard to imagine that parents would send their mentally disabled
children away and pretend they were dead, rather than bear the blessed
burden of raising them.
If Rosa had been born in the 1950s, she would not be in a regular Maryland
school, classified -- as she is now -- as intellectually disabled. She might
well have been shuttered in an institution, thought to be dead.
Yet today, Rosa's situation is even more remarkable. Approximately 90% of
all babies diagnosed with Down's syndrome in the womb are aborted. The
technological advances that Mrs. Shriver thought would help the mentally
disabled are now employed to prevent them from ever seeing the light.
We insist that harsh words are not used in regard to the mentally disabled,
but the most lethal words today in medicine are those that announce Down's
syndrome. It is far better to be diagnosed with terminal cancer as an adult
than to be diagnosed with Down's syndrome as an unborn baby. No cancer has a
90% death rate within a month.
In 1962, there were live children and fake obituaries. In 2010, there are
dead children and no obituaries. The late Ms. Shriver did not consider that
an improvement.
If Rosa is like almost all Down's syndrome children, she is probably
preternaturally gifted at showing love and transmitting joy. Those who know
such children would be horrified to speak of them in anything but the
gentlest language.
If, that is, they get a chance to speak of them at all.
.
Read more:
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Retarded+more/3984583/story.html#ix
zz18HTAgKKF
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