A society should be judged by how it treats its weakest members

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn says Gov. Sarah Palin has handed Sen. Barack Obama an opportunity to move past the ‘culture wars’ over abortion.

Palin has prominently featured her son with Down syndrome on the campaign trail, pushing for the removal of barriers to opportunities for children with special needs. She has proposed full funding for the federal commitment to special education, and allowing children with disabilities to use federal funds at either public or private schools.

An excerpt:

Now there is little in this that is uniquely Republican, except perhaps the idea of letting these kids use federal funds for private schools. In policy terms, Democrats conceivably could even improve upon it. At the very least, a presidential candidate who has positioned himself as postpartisan should recognize the opportunity here — and grab it.

Conceding that Mrs. Palin has a point here would not require Mr. Obama to give up anything, and would underscore a commitment to real choice instead of just abortion.

… At times, Democratic leaders have been reluctant to celebrate the humanity of some of our most vulnerable members of society, lest they be thought to be starting down a slippery slope leading to a no-Roe America. Mr. Obama in fact used something of that logic in the Illinois Senate to explain why he opposed the state version of the federal Born Alive Act.

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Guest commentary:

What Kind of Advocacy

Do Americans with Disabilities Really Need?

By Paul K. Longmore

Ever since Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, the “needs” of children with disabilities have gotten a lot of press. Palin pledged to be a “friend and advocate” for those children. News stories have reported the excitement of parents and other people in the disability rights constituency that disability issues are finally getting some attention. Some of them have decided to support the election of Palin and John McCain. But do the Republican candidates offer the kind of advocacy Americans with disabilities really need? I don’t believe they do, and I want to explain why I am voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden instead.

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From a series on National Public Radio called “The Autism Chronicles,” the story of Amy Thompson. She’s a single mother from Michigan who is trying to get an appropriate education for her 6-year-old son Kolin.

Marguerite Colston of the Autism Society of America says in an interview that services for children with autism are uneven and inadequate, leaving families in the lurch. Autism often bankrupts families, she says, and many families move from state to state in search of appropriate services for their children.

Colston offers suggestions on how families can learn their rights and get the services to which their children are entitled. Parents should not be deterred by school officials who say they just don’t have the resources to help.

“What we need to do is make autism a national priority so that families … don’t have to move, and don’t have to suffer.”

Editor’s note: Coverage of the disability angle in relation to the candidacy of GOP vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin continues to mount.

Rather than present each item as a separate post, we’re grouping them here. Please click on the headline above to get the full version, or on ‘read the rest of this entry’ below, and check back to our home page throughout the day for further developments.

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Palin’s pitch to parents of disabled raises some doubts; Support is pledged, but GOP ticket seeks spending cuts — Wall Street Journal

Disability rights activists wondered whether Palin’s pledge of advocacy would be undercut by the Republican ticket’s pledge to reduce government spending, although many said they hoped Trig Palin’s appearance at the convention would lead to greater public acceptance of Down syndrome.

Republican strategists predicted Palin would unify people with disabilities behind their party.

Many parents fear that Down syndrome is on the leading edge of a eugenics movement to eliminate children with abnormalities. Others are wary of being labeled as social conservatives if they choose to have a child knowing it will have a cognitive disability.

Those concerns are likely to move into the mainstream now, along with questions about what either party is likely to do for children with disabilities.

Among items on the legislative agenda of disability activists are: special education funding, outreach programs for parents who have just received a diagnosis of Down syndrome; housing and employment programs, greater access to Medicaid benefits, “best-practices” clinics, a national registry of people with Down syndrome and tax-free savings accounts for their long-term care.

Life expectancy is approaching that of healthy children, raising questions about who is to care for them.

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Fusing politics and motherhood in a new way — New York Times

Struggling to accept the diagnosis of Down syndrome and fearful of public criticism of a governor’s pregnancy, Sarah Palin concealed the news of her condition from everyone until her third trimester. But by the time of her baby shower a month after her son’s birth, she had come to regard baby Trig as a blessing from God. “Who of us in this room has the perfect child?” a friend remembers her saying.

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From USA Today:

Groups representing people with Down syndrome say Sarah Palin could help boost efforts to help people with disabilities live more independently.

Among the priorities they cited were additional funding for physical therapy after birth, long-term financial incentives to help people with Down syndrome pay housing and medical bills into adulthood, and strengthening the No Child Left Behind law.

They also called for lifting the $2,000 cap on assets for Medicaid eligibility requirements, because the cap encourages people with disabilities to make less money in order to qualify for federal benefits.

Madeleine Will, vice president of public policy for the National Down Syndrome Society, said advocates also want Congress to make changes such as:

• Requiring doctors to provide more detailed information about Down syndrome to parents who receive prenatal and postnatal diagnoses, including life expectancy data and contacts of local support groups. The idea has support from lawmakers on both sides of the abortion issue.

• Allowing families to save money in tax-exempt accounts that can be used to pay for expenses associated with education, medical treatment and employment training.

‘Parents of Special-Needs Children Divided Over Palin’s Promise to Help’ — New York Times

Some parents of children with disabilities are enthusiastic over Gov. Palin’s pledge of support, but advocacy on behalf of the disability community has not been “a centerpiece of Ms. Palin’s 20-months in office or any of her campaigns for office.”

“I never heard Governor Palin say as governor, ‘You have an advocate in Juneau,’ ” said Sonja Kerr, a lawyer specializing in disability law in Anchorage.

A spokeswoman for Palin would not elaborate on her decision to give disability issues prominent placement in her acceptance speech.

John McCain has voted against increasing federal special education funding, and also opposes legislation that would help states move people with disabilities from institutions into community living arrangements. Both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain are among sponsors of pending legislation to update and strengthen the Americans with Disabities Act.

Ms. Palin’s effort to rally parents of children with disabilities has also prompted reaction among those who fear that her idea of advocacy might really mean preventing abortions of fetuses with Down syndrome, rather than lobbying for the early medical and developmental assistance that is so crucial to their children’s well-being.

(New York Times photo of Nancy Iannone and daugher Gabriella. Nancy is a contributor to the book Gifts, and comments regularly on these pages.)

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Candidacy is a chance to shed light — Beverly Beckham, in the Boston Globe, writes another in an occasional series of columns offering glimpses of her lively and inquisitive granddaughter. She describes five-year-old Lucy as she runs, bounces and skips through her life, and sits on the floor reading “book after book.” Lucy has Down syndrome. Beckham says it would be valuable if Palin’s candidacy …

… illuminated the facts about DS. Because without public education, her 4 1/2-month-old baby boy may see his whole life defined by what he can’t do instead of by what he can do. He will be pigeonholed and pitied and underestimated. And he will make people turn to their own offspring with a sigh and a whispered prayer of thanksgiving, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”

Unless the world learns better.

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From Samantha Henig in Newsweek magazine:

Disability rights advocates were enthusiastic about GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, but wondered how she will follow through on her promise to be “a friend and advocate in the White House.”

While some parents were delighted at the prospect of being represented by another parent of a child with a disability (Trig Palin, above), other advocates questioned whether a Republican administration would fund needed services. Special education funding was named as a big concern, as well as supports for employment and housing.

Among those quoted were David Braddock, executive director of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado (”"These are words that are easy to say, but apparently more challenging for some presidents to implement”) and Peter V. Berns, executive director of the Arc of the United States (The country is “on the precipice of a major crisis.”)

David Tolleson, executive director of the National Down Syndrome Congress, said he wasn’t troubled, as some liberal bloggers were, at Palin’s bringing her infant son along to the convention celebration. “So far, all that I’ve seen is what I’ve seen from every other candidate as long as I’ve been watching conventions,” he said.

(AP/Newsweek photo)