Teaching Ethics

Volume 21, Issue 1, Spring 2021

Removing Disability in Children: An Essay on Barnes’s The Minority Body

In this paper, I respond to one aspect of Elizabeth Barnes’s argument in The Minority Body: a Theory of Disability. To do this, I first explain her argument as it applies towards children: in order to have a genuine “mere-difference” view of disability, one may not cause nor remove disability. The consequence of this theory is that it is impermissible for parents to choose to remove their child’s disability. I argue this is incorrect. Barnes’s assumption relies on a non-interference framework, which is inappropriate when applied to children. When we use an interest-protection framework instead, it becomes at least permissible for parents, and in some situations obligatory, to choose to remove their child’s disability. Because the permissibility or obligation is situationally dependent, this view is consistent with Barnes’s overall argument for the mere-difference view of disability.