From KCCI-TV, Des Moines:

Iowa voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to remove outdated language defining mental competency for voting rights from the state Constitution. The measure will eliminate a phrase withdrawing voter eligibility from anyone found to be an “idiot or insane person.” With the revision, the Constitution would read “a person adjudged mentally incompetent to vote.”

Rep. Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, who advocated for revising the 1857 language, said the change reflects heightened societal respect for people with disabilities. Jochum’s 31-year-old daughter has an intellectual disability.

The measure was leading by a more than 4-to-1 margin with 63 percent of precincts reporting.

Writing in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta resident Susan Haines says she sympathizes with Tysheema Brown, a Georgia woman who dropped off her 12-year-old son with behavioral issues at a hospital in Nebraska under the “safe haven law.” The controversial law allows parents to drop off children as old as 17.

Haines says parents of children with special needs often feel “thwarted by local and state bureaucratic roadblocks and indifference” that leave them desperate with nowhere to turn.

An excerpt:

We understand Brown’s heart-rending dilemma and support what she saw as her only option. Her love of her child is so strong that she was willing to make this choice. I am outraged that the state of Georgia has countermanded her legal right as a parent. When a parent or surrogate has advocated to the limit of his or her ability, Georgia offers nothing but a cold shoulder.

From the New York Times, AFP:

South Korea’s Constitutional Court left in place a century-old goverment policy that allows only blind people to be licensed masseurs. The policy had been challenged by sighted masseurs who are working illegally, who said the law violated their constitutional right to choose jobs.

Blind masseurs have objected bitterly to the court challenge, waging protests that left three dead.

“Massage is in effect the only occupation available for the visually handicapped and there is little alternative to guarantee earnings for those persons,” the Constitutional Court said in a statement.

It said the livelihood of the blind outweighs the freedom of ordinary people to choose an occupation.

Earlier post here.

Writing in the Rocky Mountain News, Helen Collins says she risks being labeled “against the disabled” because she opposes a measure that would raise the Colorado sales tax and allocate the funds to assist people with developmental disabilities. She says the tax increase in Amendment 51 amounts to “another government welfare program” and encourages voters to “recognize the role of emotions here - feelings of guilt, sympathy and relief that we are not in their plight.”

Among her arguments:

“The state already spends 1 percent of its budget on this one service for 0.2 percent of the population. This group wants twice as much, plus all the other services we all get.”

“It isn’t fiscally responsible to make taxpayers pay for every individual health concern. We should not politicize or bureaucratize personal problems.”

Helen Collins is a resident of Colorado Springs.

See also: Disability 101: Amendment 51 is needed — Summit Daily News

See earlier posts here, here, and here.

Governor Palin has portrayed herself as a friend and advocate of people with disabilities, but nothing could be further from the truth, says Steve Eidelman in a column for the [Wilmington, Delaware] News Journal.

He says her opposition to a Colorado ballot initiative that is designed to help people with developmental disabilities demonstrates both hypocrisy and naivete. An excerpt:

Senator McCain has opposed or taken no position on much of the major legislation in Congress focused on helping people with disabilities and their families live decent lives in their communities…

It appears that Senator McCain and Governor Palin do not think that people with disabilities and their families are part of the “Real America” they talk about. What a shame for America. Governor Palin and Senator McCain do not speak for people with disabilities and their families. If they did, they would support these and other measures that build stronger communities, strengthen families and help adults with disabilities be full participants in American society.

Editor’s note: It’s not noted on the op-ed, but Steven M. Eidelman is the University of Delaware’s Robert Edelsohn Chair in Disabilities Studies.

Helping disabled is ‘not a free ride’

From the Rocky Mountain News:

Kelly Stahlman, a mother of twins with cerebral palsy, says she was a conservative Republican and never dreamed of seeking government services until faced with the reality of caring for her children.

Now she supports Amendment 51, which would increase Colorado’s sales tax by a fraction of a percent to raise $186 million for services for people with disabilities. Stahlman’s sons require round the clock care. She says she enjoys her children but also says “it’s physically demanding, it’s emotionally demanding and it’s heart demanding … Just because we’re parents doesn’t mean we can do it all.”

Colorado’s spending is one of the nation’s lowest, and more than 8,000 are on waiting lists for immediate services …

David Braddock, executive director of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado, told the legislature last year that Colorado’s expenditures for the developmentally disabled were 73 percent below the national average.

See earlier posts here and here.

AP/Washington Post:

Autism advocates are working across the country to pass legislation that would require health insurers to cover intensive and costly behavior therapy for autism.

Six states have passed such laws over the past two years. Advocacy group Autism speaks has endorsed bills in New Jersey, Virginia and Michigan. Similar measures will be under consideration in more than ten states next year, including New York, California and Ohio.

“This is the hottest trend in mandates we’ve seen in a long time,” said J.P. Wieske, a lobbyist for an insurance coalition that argues that these state requirements drive up insurance costs for everyone. “It is hard to fight them.”

Families want to see funding for applied behavior analysis (ABA), a system of structured interactions that they believe helps kids learn. Experts say research results on the method are mixed.

See also: A look at state laws forcing autism coverage — AP/Chicago Tribune