Preventing Harm from Polyvinyl Chloride

Polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC or vinyl, is a compound present throughout the environment, including everyday household products such as baby bottles. It is disproportionately present in communities of color. Yet it is complicit in such harms as various cancers, respiratory disorders, and fetal/newborn disabilities.**

The Center for Health and Environmental Justice runs a campaign against PVC.

PVC (polyvinyl chloride) products are everywhere and are dangerous to our health and environment from start to finish - in the factory, at home, and in the trash... The good news is that safe, cost-effective, alternatives to PVC are readily available and responsible companies are phasing it out.

The fight is by no means over, despite these most welcome developments. Please visit the campaign's site to find out how you can support socially responsible companies by purchasing alternative, safe products--and how you can challenge the firms still guilty of monumental disrespect for life.



**Why did I say "fetal and newborn disabilities" instead of the more common "birth defects"?

A disability rights consciousness calls this term into question, because it implies that people with disabilities are "defective" as human beings.

(Just as a feminist and/or prolife consciousness calls into question the term "illegitimate children"--because how can human beings be somehow invalid?)

In fact, the branch of medicine that studies disabilities in the earliest stages of human life is still called "teratology"--literally the study of monsters. A characterization that I and (I'd venture to assume) most people with disabilities find objectionable.

Down Syndrome & the Human Rights to Live & Thrive

Disability rights blogger Patricia Bauer brings news of an online petition by parents of people with Down Syndrome to protest the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' recent call to screen all fetuses for the condition, regardless of maternal age.

The petition quite correctly notes that this actually means a push for even more in-the-womb elimination of people with Down syndrome. Already, over 90% of babies with that particular prenatal diagnosis are aborted--a number that reflects widespread fear and misinformation.

I can't say it any better than Anya Souza, an artist, disability rights educator, and all-around kick-ss human being who has Down syndrome:

"I am a person, not a disease."

And of course this awareness must translate into support for parents and other loved ones who face the prospect of caring for a disabled child.

If you yourself now face this daunting prospect, please visit the Nonviolent Choice Directory's resources on Mother & Child Health: Disabilities (direct URL http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/motherchildhealth.html#dsb.html)as well as the rest of our resources on Help With Crisis Pregnancy & Beyond (direct URL http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/crisisand beyond.html)Here you can find much information and encouragement for the journey ahead, including Light at the End of the Tunnel, a booklet written by parents who chose life for their children with Down syndrome. Please take heart.

Why I Can't Get Out & Rock My Vote Today--and Am Not Singular in This

Today is the big 20+ state primary election in the US. I live and am registered in one of those states. And though my politics run way off the leftist end of the US political spectrum, and very few politicians stand up for every life, I vote in every election possible. I've delved too much into the lives and work of the suffragists, who knew that they might not be on this Earth long enough to achieve their own right to vote, but knew they had to win it for the women of the future. Like you and me. They did not know our names or faces, we had yet to be conceived, but they were quite consciously looking out for us.

And I live among black folk who not only remember the civil rights movement--they *were* it. And are. I am moved to the polls by the faces of these living and the spirits of those who labored before, especially one of my alltime heroes, the late great Fannie Lou up-from-the Delta Hamer--a prolife feminist, incidentally. (Her story and words are in ProLife Feminism Yesterday and Today too.) Mrs. Hamer got beaten in prison for trying to get everyone their voting rights. She got death threats. Her house was shot at and firebombed.

How can I *not* vote after people like this labored so hard to make sure all US Americans can vote?

Well, today I am not voting. I want to, but I can't. Like a number of other US Americans, I have disabilities that today prevent me from going to the polls. Most of the time, whatever else they do, my particular disabilities do not keep me, personally, from doing that. But a cavalcade of medical crises have knocked me out and stranded me in our top-floor walkup, without a chance to vote early or absentee. For some people with disabilities, every election day is inaccessible.

Just as the gains of the civil rights movement were necessary but haven't yet undone racism and white privilege, the Americans With Disabilities Act has left us crips a bit short of the ramp-equipped, Braille-captioned, allergen-free, medicalized killing-free et al Promised Land. Brian Willoughby's 2004 article Unable to Vote: Fighting for Accessibility remains pertinent.

In the meantime, if anyone has a big forklift handy and wants to fetch me down from the third floor and take me on a joyride down the block to the polling place at the gospel-rockin' MB Church...feel free...