Colloquium - Professor Katharina Heyer

Wrongful Birth, Genetic Gatekeeping, and Reproductive Choice: The Disabled Body on Trial by Katharina Heyer, Associate Professor of Political Science This presentation traces the reappearance of the disabled body in public deliberations over reproductive and genetic politics that use disability to frame arguments about which bodies are worthy of protection, how and why we limit reproductive choices, and how families may seek financial support for the raising of their children with disabilities. The disabled body features prominently in these debates, used by both proponents and opponents of abortion rights, prenatal testing, and wrongful birth claims. I will argue that the re-emergence of the disabled body contributes to a re-medicalization of public conceptions of disability that stands in direct contrast to the types of rights-claiming and antidiscrimination campaigns waged by the contemporary disability rights movement. At the same time, it offers new opportunities for a disability politics that affirms reproductive autonomy while simultaneously challenging public perceptions of disability and refocusing debates to larger questions of health care and social justice. Katharina Heyer Associate Professor & Graduate Chair Department of Political Science University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

Ticket Information
Free

Event Sponsor
Philosophy Department , Mānoa Campus

More Information
Pat Pimental, (808) 956-8649, philo@hawaii.edu, Katharina Heyer (PDF)

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