Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email [email protected].

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/
Sign up for our newsletter

Menu

  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships
    • From the Collection

      Changing Child Care

      Illustration of a woman feeding a baby a bottle
      • 1 in 4 parents report being fired for work interruptions due to child care breakdowns

        Chabeli Carrazana · February 2
      • Washington, D.C., offers financial relief to local child care workers

        Orion Rummler · September 20
      • As climate change worsens hurricane season in Louisiana, doulas are ensuring parents can safely feed their babies

        Jessica Kutz · May 5
    • From the Collection

      Next-Gen GOP

      Illustration of a woman riding an elephant
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • A banner year for Republican women

        Amanda Becker · November 11
      • Republican women could double representation in the U.S. House

        Amanda Becker · November 4
    • From the Collection

      On The Rise

      Illustration of three women marching
      • Can Cheri Beasley build a winning coalition in North Carolina?

        Candice Norwood · October 11
      • Los Angeles has never elected a woman mayor. Karen Bass hopes to change that.

        Nadra Nittle · September 8
      • Judge J. Michelle Childs is confirmed to D.C. appeals court

        Candice Norwood · July 20
    • From the Collection

      Pandemic Within a Pandemic

      Illustration of four people marching for Black Lives Matter with coronavirus as the backdrop
      • Some LGBTQ+ people worry that the COVID-19 vaccine will affect HIV medication. It won’t.

        Orion Rummler · November 23
      • Why are more men dying from COVID? It’s a complicated story of nature vs. nurture, researchers say

        Mariel Padilla · September 22
      • Few incarcerated women were released during COVID. The ones who remain have struggled.

        Candice Norwood · August 17
    • From the Collection

      Portraits of a Pandemic

      Illustration of a woman wearing a mask and holding up the coronavirus
      • For family caregivers, COVID is a mental health crisis in the making

        Shefali Luthra · October 8
      • A new database tracks COVID-19’s effects on sex and gender

        Shefali Luthra · September 15
      • Pregnant in a pandemic: The 'perfect storm for a crisis'

        Shefali Luthra · August 25
    • From the Collection

      The 19th Explains

      People walking from many articles to one article where they can get the context they need on an issue.
      • The 19th Explains: Who will be most impacted by Medicaid changes — and when

        Rebekah Barber · March 28
      • The 19th Explains: What we know about Brittney Griner’s case and what it took to get her home

        Candice Norwood, Katherine Gilyard · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why the Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t codify same-sex marriage rights

        Kate Sosin · December 8
    • From the Collection

      The Electability Myth

      Illustration of three women speaking at podiums
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • Stepping in after tragedy: How political wives became widow lawmakers

        Mariel Padilla · May 24
      • Do term limits help women candidates? New York could be a new testing ground

        Barbara Rodriguez · January 11
    • From the Collection

      The Impact of Aging

      A number of older people walking down a path of information.
      • From ballroom dancing to bloodshed, the older AAPI community grapples with gun control

        Nadra Nittle, Mariel Padilla · January 27
      • 'I'm planning on working until the day I die': Older women voters are worried about the future

        Mariel Padilla · June 3
      • Climate change is forcing care workers to act as first responders

        Jessica Kutz · May 31
    • From the Collection

      Voting Rights

      A series of hands reaching for ballots.
      • Connecticut voters approved early voting. Here’s how their new secretary of state wants to make it happen.

        Barbara Rodriguez · February 13
      • Women lawmakers in Minnesota are in the vanguard of the democracy movement

        Barbara Rodriguez · February 3
      • Election workers believe in our system — and want everyone else to, too

        Barbara Rodriguez, Jennifer Gerson · November 8

    View all collections

  • Explore by Topic

    • 19th Polling
    • Abortion
    • Business & Economy
    • Caregiving
    • Coronavirus
    • Education
    • Election 2020
    • Election 2022
    • Election 2024
    • Environment & Climate
    • Health
    • Immigration
    • Inside The 19th
    • Justice
    • LGBTQ+
    • Military
    • Politics
    • Press Release
    • Race
    • Sports
    • Technology

    View All Topics

Home
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th Represents Summit

Don’t miss our biggest event of 2023!

Register Today

Become a member

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Illustration with various disabled people in the foreground and a crowd protesting on either side.
(Rena Li for The 19th)

Abortion

Exclusive: How do people with disabilities feel about abortion? New poll sheds light for the first time

People with disabilities themselves have been largely absent from the public debate on abortion rights — until now.

Sara Luterman

Caregiving reporter

Sara Luterman, The 19th

Published

2022-05-10 05:00
5:00
May 10, 2022
am

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

Disability has been used as something of a political football in the abortion debate. For decades,  fetal abnormality and disability have been part of abortion-rights advocates’ argument that people need access to the procedure. Anti-abortion advocates, meanwhile, argue that disability-motivated abortion is discriminatory and devalues disabled life. 

But people with disabilities themselves have been largely absent from the public debate on abortion rights. Now, new poll results, shared exclusively with The 19th, shed light for the first time on how people with disabilities view the issue. 

Pollsters have been checking the temperature on abortion since the 1970s. They’ve asked respondents about their race, gender, religious beliefs and more. They have not, however, asked respondents if they are disabled, even as some polls asked whether abortion is acceptable in cases where the “child would be mentally disabled.”

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

The new poll, conducted by progressive firm Data for Progress, suggests that the opinions of Americans with disabilities are largely similar to the opinions of non-disabled Americans. The polling was done after Politico reported on a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. 

The Data for Progress national poll indicates that 55 percent of non-disabled people and 53 percent of people with disabilities believe that abortion should be legal in most circumstances, which largely reflects recent data from other polling firms. 

Fifty-eight percent of all respondents would prefer for Roe v. Wade to remain in place, while 59 percent of people with disabilities feel the same way. 

“Disabled Americans support abortion,” said Matthew Cortland, a senior fellow at Data for Progress who has been leading the effort to include disabled Americans in the firm’s polling since they joined last year.  “Disabled Americans know this affects them. Disabled women in particular know that this affects them.” 

The poll did show a few differences. 

  • More from The 19th
    Julia Bascom poses in her DC office. There are pictures on the wall and knickknacks on the desk. Behind her two posters read
  • Autistic people have been excluded from advocacy conversations. Julia Bascom is changing that.
  • What happens if Roe v. Wade is overturned? LGBTQ+ legal experts are worried about civil rights.
  • Corporate America has little, if anything, to say about abortion

People with disabilities say they are more likely to vote in November if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Forty-nine percent of disabled respondents said they were much more likely or somewhat more likely to vote in November if Roe is overturned, as opposed to 41 percent of non-disabled respondents. 

It is impossible to know whether the public opinion of people with disabilities has matched general public opinion over time. “With some other issue areas and demographics, you can say, ‘Based on five years of polling, here’s what we expect.’ We just don’t have that data. It’s why it’s so important that we’re doing this,” Cortland said. 

Still, even without polls to confirm it, people with disabilities have had complex views on abortion for a long time.  

In “No Pity,” the seminal history of the American disability rights movement published in 1993, the  journalist Joe Shapiro wrote, “to their secret horror, almost every disabled person knows that had his or her condition been [detected before birth]… he or she likely would not have been born at all.” Approximately two-thirds of American parents who are given a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis chose to terminate their pregnancies between 1995 and 2011, according to one systematic review. The numbers are similarly high for spina bifida, another common congenital disorder. 

Melissa Ortiz has spina bifida, and it is part of what informs her anti-abortion stance. 

“Is my life perfect? No, but I think it freaking rocks. It’s certainly better than the alternative,” she told The 19th. 

Ortiz was appointed to head the Administration for Community Living, a small agency in the Department of Health and Human Services dedicated to disability and aging, by President Donald Trump in 2017. She left a year later due to health problems. 

Like many older people with lifelong disabilities, Ortiz was told she would die young. “When I was three, doctors told my parents that I’d be lucky to graduate high school. Well, my 40-year reunion is coming up in a couple of years, and I plan to be alive for it. Doctors don’t know everything,” she said. 

Ortiz has worked extensively with the anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List, and was nominated for their hall of fame in 2019 for her advocacy. She was pleased by the news that Roe will likely be overturned, but also felt that it still wasn’t enough. “I don’t just want abortion to be illegal. I want it to be unthinkable,” she told The 19th. 

Having a disability also informs an abortion rights stance for  Mia Ives-Rublee, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the progressive Center for American Progress. 

“For someone like myself who has osteogenesis imperfecta, who may not be able to safely bring a baby or fetus to full term, my life is on the line if Roe drops,” she told The 19th. 

Stories by experienced reporters you can trust and relate to.

Delivered directly to your inbox every weekday.

Please check your email to confirm your subscription!

Submitting…

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please try again later.

But it isn’t only a question of safety. Ives-Rublee feels that bodily autonomy, control over one’s own body and medical choices, is central to both the disability and reproductive rights. The Center for American Progress published an extensive report on reproductive justice for disabled women last year, which Ives-Rublee co-authored. 

In the report and in interview, Ives-Rublee drew parallels between abortion access and other issues of bodily autonomy in the disability community like forced sterilization. 

“I think it’s extremely important for us to expand the way we talk about the impact of having a bodily autonomy, to include abortion access, but to include all of these other issues that particularly affect the disability community,” she said.

Ives-Rublee acknowledges a problem with the way doctors often talk to expectant parents about disability. “After genetic testing the parent hears from all of these doctors and professionals that the individual isn’t going to have a good life, that they might not live to adulthood, and it’s often misinformation,” she said. But for Ives-Rublee, restricting abortion isn’t the way to combat the issue. 

Instead, she says, the issue is “nuanced” in ways that may not be obvious to non-disabled people. “Individuals in the disability community want people to have bodily autonomy. What we also want is for parents to get the information they need to make good, well-thought-out decisions,” Ives-Rublee told The 19th. 

National disability organizations have also rarely tipped their cards on how they think about abortion. Historically, disability organizations have been reluctant to put out statements indicating their viewpoint, and only two put out statements on the news that the Supreme Court appears poised to overrule Roe v. Wade from the Supreme Court. 

Cortland believes that the new polling should be a wake-up call for disability organizations. “It’s really important for disability leaders to realize that disabled men and women care about abortion access. In the past, we’ve seen disability leaders fail to show up to defend abortion access. That’s the wrong call. Based on these numbers, that’s the wrong call, even from just a transactional point of view,” Cortland told The 19th. 

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

The 19th Represents Summit

Don’t miss our biggest event of 2023!

Register Today

Become a member

Up Next

Ron DeSantis looks solemn on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Abortion

Republican state lawmakers prepare to quickly limit abortion access if Roe v. Wade is overturned

Through the courts, new bills and special sessions, Republican state lawmakers are working to make sure they are ready to limit access as soon as is legally permissible.

Read the Story

The 19th
The 19th is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our stories are free to republish in accordance with these guidelines.

  • Donate
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Search
  • Jobs
  • Fellowships
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Community Guidelines
  • Membership
  • Membership FAQ
  • Major Gifts
  • Sponsorship
  • Privacy
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram