Parenthood, disability, ethics, and the crooked way of grace
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How Poverty Affects Vaccination Rates

Last fall I pointed blog readers to my colleague Rachel Stone’s post on vaccination as an expression of neighborly love. Today, Rachel has a follow-up post of sorts, commenting on a Mother Jones article indicating that poverty and other family is...

Parents-to-Be Have More Choices Than Ever, But We Can’t Choose Our Way Out of Pain

Jennifer Gilmore’s story is enough to scare anyone away from open adoption. (It also provides the best supporting evidence ever for my contention that “Why don’t you just adopt?” might be one of the stupidest questions known to huma...

Taboo Stories About Disability: What We’re Not Allowed to Say

Last week’s New York Times featured a story about Joshua Miele, who at the age of four in 1973, answered the door of his Brooklyn home to a man he recognized as a neighbor. The man, for no reason other than his disordered thinking due to mental i...

When Conflicting Stories Are Both True: Illness, Identity, and the Tales We Tell of Living with Disability

In his vast and gripping book, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, journalist Andrew Solomon discusses the two narratives that we use when we talk about life with disability in general, and/or with particular conditions, ...

Bless Those Who Curse You (& Don’t Call Them Eugenicists, Moral Monsters, or Murderers)

A friend recently sent me an article written by an Australian man who has the same bone disorder I do (osteogenesis imperfecta, or OI). Writing for the Christian journal First Things, Philip C. Burcham tells a compelling story of his family’s OI hist...

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