Mr. Santorum, STFU About Liberals Disdaining The Disabled
Do Liberals Disdain the Disabled?
By HAROLD A. POLLACK
Published: February 27, 2012
“One of the things that you don’t know about ObamaCare,” Mr. Santorum said, is that it requires “free prenatal testing … Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society.” Mr. Santorum’s comment echoed Sarah Palin’s famous charge during the health care reform debate: “My parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.”
There is no basis whatsoever for Mr. Santorum or Ms. Palin’s comments. Disability advocates across the political spectrum strongly supported the 2010 health care reform. They had obvious reasons to do so. The new law provides protections for people with preexisting conditions, regulations to make sure insurers properly cover care for chronic illnesses and expanded coverage for young adults and low-income families.
But more is at stake here than factual inaccuracies. Mr. Santorum and Ms. Palin are spreading a poisonous meme: that liberals disdain the disabled and look down upon parents who raise children with physical or intellectual limitations. They seek to insert the hateful rhetoric of the culture war into one of the few areas of American life that had remained relatively free of such rancor.
more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/opinion/do-liberals-disdain-the-disabled.html?_r=1&src=tp
= new reply since forum marked as read
ask Tom Harkin, for example, how much disdain he has for the disabled (he was a principal author of the ADA).
Santorum is implying a creepy eugenics motive to prenatal testing, which I find repugnant.
Oh...and... 
