Uninformed comments on autism are resonant of dangerous ideas about eugenics

by Cornelia Schneider, Mount Saint Vincent University and Martha E. Walls, Mount Saint Vincent University

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary in the United States, held a recent news conference and made uninformed comments on autism. His remarks created an uproar, especially among people with autism and other disabilities.

The news conference was related to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about autism.

Among other comments, Kennedy Jr. said:

“Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this … And these are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

Earlier, during a cabinet meeting, he promised to find the cause of autism by September.

We are researchers whose combined focus covers the rights of people with disabilities in educational systems and the history of disability in medical discourse. One of us is a sibling (Cornelia) and the other a parent (Martha) to people with intellectual disabilities.

These comments were deeply worrisome for us due to their resonance of dangerous ideas espoused during the eugenics movement.

Origins of eugenics

Eugenics is the belief that society can and should be “improved” through selective breeding. It is based on a pseudo-scientific ranking of humans in a racist and ableist hierachy that judges non-White and disabled people to be the least desirable.

During the height of the movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eugenics was promoted by scientists, physicians, politicians and clergy, authoritative voices who encouraged the “fittest” to reproduce while recommending that those people with “undesirable” physical or intellectual traits be removed from society. Part of achieving this goal meant people with disabilities were sterilized or institutionalized.

Margaret Sanger, who founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, speaks before a U.S. Senate committee in Washington. Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced in 2020 it was removing Sanger’s name from a clinic because of her ties to the eugenics movement. (AP Photo, File)

Eugenics was applied in its most extreme form in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and ‘40s. Six million Jews, and millions more people, including an estimated 250,000 people with disabilities, were killed.

A formal condemnation of Nazi actions in the form of the Nuremberg Trials fostered a popular backlash to these Nazi horrors after the Second World War, resulting in a global repudiation of eugenic ideas and a gradual phasing out of practices such as sterilization and institutionalization of people with disabilities.

‘Eugenic logic’ seen in many places

However, Kennedy Jr.’s comments remind us that eugenic ideas are alive and well, including, but not exclusively, amid the radical right and tech-enabled ideas about a return to “strongman” values.

Eugenics ideas exist in the form of what bioethicist and humanities scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson calls “eugenic logic.” This is the ongoing belief that erasing disability and people with disabilities is a desirable and common-sense objective.

The power of eugenics logic surrounds us. It shapes immigration policy that penalizes disability. It means reproductive technologies and medical practices are used to eliminate certain conditions that cause disabilities.

For example, recently, the Québec College of Physicians called for legislation to allow the euthanasia of severely disabled infants. This also affirms the views of popular but controversial philosopher Peter Singer, who argues that babies with disabilities lack qualities of personhood and therefore could be killed.

Linking human value to ‘productivity’

RFK Jr.’s eugenics ideas resonate strongly today. They square politically with neoliberalism to create a form of ableism that regards the individual citizen as “an able-bodied entrepreneurial entity.”

Neoliberal ableism links human value to their capacity to work, to what disability studies scholars Dan Goodley and Rebecca Lawthom refer to the ability to “productively contribute … bounded and cut off from others, capable, malleable and compliant.”

People with autism, and others who cannot serve society in this way, threaten the neoliberal order and capitalism. They are seen as a detriment to society.

Autism organizations heavily criticized Kennedy Jr. for his portrayal of autistic people as incapable.

However, some critics unwittingly reinforced his neoliberal and eugenic framing of human value. These critics rightly contradicted Kennedy Jr. by pointing out that many people with autism have capabilities that he denied them. However, focusing on those abilities gave support to the devaluation of people with autism — and others with disabilities — who do not possess them, and who cannot be independent or will never be “productive workers.”

The social model of disability

Uninformed comments about autism by people in official health leadership positions threatens to undo decades of work that led to remarkable gains for people with disabilities.

The 1970s and ‘80s saw the development of what disability activists and scholars discuss as the social model of disability. This shifted the understanding of disability away from the “problem” of individuals’ physical/intellectual conditions. Disability is seen as a mismatch of the interactions between the impairment and the barriers it faces in the (social) environment.

This important shift in how disability is understood rejected the notion that disability is a personal fault or flaw. For the first time, it paid attention to environmental, financial and attitudinal barriers. It allowed people with disabilities unprecedented access to education and other aspects of society.

The progress made remains fragile.

Important to push back

All who value human diversity and the continued expansion of the rights of people with disabilities must push back against eugenics politics.

Political parties and broader society must commit to full participation and belonging of all people with disabilities by continuing to remove physical, attitudinal and financial barriers.

Accessibility legislation at the federal and provincial levels must be implemented and enforced. In Canada, this includes the re-establishment of a federal minister for disabilities, a post that previously existed as minister of diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities) but is lacking under the new Liberal government and its smaller cabinet.

It means we need to heed the voices of disability advocates who have launched a court challenge against a key provision of Medical Assistance in Dying legislation. A recent version of this legislation accepts disability without a terminal condition as a reason to end life. As advocates recently told the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, this implies that a disabled life is not worth living.

Lived experiences must inform decisions

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (signed by the U.S.; signed and ratified by Canada) lays out the key ideas that Kennedy Jr. appears to reject: “Disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers.”

The lived experiences of the disability community must always be included in political decision-making.

It’s our responsibility to uphold and protect the human rights of all persons with disabilities, including those who require more intensive support.

Cornelia Schneider, Associate Professor of Education, Mount Saint Vincent University and Martha E. Walls, Associate Professor, History, Mount Saint Vincent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.