I have a range of impairments and conditions.  But that’s not what disables me.  I’m disabled by a society that fails to recognise my needs and those of other disabled people.

We are regarded as lesser, lacking, often described as “helpless” or “vulnerable”, to be pitied or subject to charity rather than respected as equals. 

Disabled women are regarded as asexual in many countries. 

Despite the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People’s ruling that bans forced sterilisation, forced contraception or forced  abortion, for disabled women many countries continue such practices.  Only nine EU countries criminalise forced sterilisation as a distinct offence, whilst thirteen allow it to be performed on disabled people – and in three of those countries this includes minors.

Last year a conference of the European Economic and Social Committee on Disabled Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights discussed numerous examples of stereotyping of, lack of support for, and numerous abuses of disabled women, including, for example, deaf women, forced to have abortions in case they gave birth to deaf babies. If that had happened to my grandmother or mother I would not be standing here talking to you.

As a feminist I believe in a woman’s right to choose.  For disabled women this needs to include the right to refuse abortion or sterilisation when it is recommended – often on uninformed and spurious grounds – and the right to be allowed to give birth to children.

I will conclude with an account written by a friend and excellent disability activist who died last year:

This is her story:

“I was born in 1963 having a congenital impairment called Spina Bifida. My mother had no knowledge of my impairment before I was born and was shocked and distressed at giving birth to a disabled baby.  She was given the worst-case scenario by the medical profession and was told my life expectancy was unknown.  My mother spent the first few years of my life expecting me to die.

As the years passed it became clear that the medical predictions  and assumptions were not necessarily accurate, and this helped to increase her confidence as the mother of a disabled child and she was able to progress and think of ways that I could be independent and live the life I wanted.

When I reached adolescence my mother wondered if having children of my own would be possible, so arranged for me to see a medical specialist on my reproductive situation. The specialist advice was for me not to have children, as this could potentially result in increasing my impairment and miscarriage.

When I became pregnant with my first child it was a tense time for all concerned and I was advised by a doctor to have an abortion, but I wanted to have my baby and nothing was going to stop me. My first child was a girl and several years later I went on to have a boy.  My children are now grown up and I am the grandmother to five grandchildren.

“When I was in my twenties, my mother told me that the day I was born at one time seemed one of the worst days of her life, but she had grown to realise it had been one of the best because she had a daughter in her life”

I want to finish what i have to say with another quotation, this time from Ani DiFranco:

“My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it’s very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.”