No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights. - book reviews

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1994 by Steven J. Birenbaum

The notion of transforming Americans' feelings of pity toward the disabled into empathy is at the heart of No Pity, an overview of the disability rights movement. Shapiro, an associate editor for U.S. News and World Report, combines a fast-paced history of the movement and its key players, culminating in the passage of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, with a number of personal stories about people with disabilities. The combination sometimes is reminiscent of another superbly researched civil rights history, Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters.

Starting with a more diverse coalition than their 1960s predecessors in the black civil rights movement, disability rights activists have been successful by focusing on similar aims-changing the social consciousness of the nation, while simultaneously asserting political muscle in lobbying for equal rights under the law. There is little doubt in Shapiro's mind that the latter has been easier to achieve than the former.

Confrontation has played a large part in transforming both attitudes and laws. In Washington, members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) illegally occupied the Capitol building and the Department of Transportation to protest physical barriers to use of the public transportation system by those with handicaps. Of course, these acts of civil disobedience were done while cameras rolled. The disability movement had absorbed lessons on how to gain wider support for their cause practiced by the earlier civil rights activists and the New Left.

Less visible confrontations also take place in No Pity. In one, a quadriplegic nursing home resident, Larry McAfee, petitioned Fulton County Superior Court to request the right to commit suicide. Warehoused after a motorcycle accident, McAfee was shunted from hospitals and nursing homes in Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio without considering his needs or wishes. Abortion foes and other groups sought to gain support for their cause by rallying against his right to die. Finally, he was able to convince Georgia Medicaid to pay for hi supported-living arrangements i an apartment instead of nursing home care.

The McAfee story reveals some of the interesting alliances between the disability rights movement and various other crusades. Shapiro notes that the right-to-life movement and the disability community have found common cause in arguing against abortion. However, an alliance with one group-in this case, the prolife movement-creates friction with other groups that have been historical allies, such as the women's movement.

Another tension point, which the author discusses in passing, is technology's role in society. Technological advancement has helped disabled people lead more independent and productive lives. interactive computers and lighter and more stylish wheelchairs, to name but two products, have been a boon to the physically disabled.

The flip side of technological advancement is its steady march toward perfection. Breakthroughs in genetic screening have made it possible to identify genes that cause debilitating diseases and retardation. Scientists have the ability to clone human embryos. All this is leading to a near-future showdown over how that power should be used. Today, many in the disability community argue that to try to prevent disability before birth is a form of eugenics, an acknowledgment that there is something wrong and inferior about people with disabilities. That is precisely the attitude, they say, the movement has worked so hard to change.