I just saw a video of a teenage boy with a disability getting bullied by other teenage boys and read through some of the comments and it brings me back to what I’ve been saying for years. The only way those things will change is if the way society views people with disabilities fundamentally changes. And I don’t mean by regularly changing the words we are allowed to use to refer to them or laws or any of that superficial bullshit.

I mean society recognizing their value and accepting and respecting them for who they are and seeing them as the beautiful humans they are. There is so much we can learn from them and their attitude towards life and people.

What doesn’t help with all of this is the approach that abortion is okay if the child would have a disability and would therefore be a “burden” for the parents. Really? So, people scream inclusivity, everyone is equal and should be treated as such but maybe it’s better if disabled children never get the chance to live. And yet people are surprised when there is no progress, and those children are still being bullied. Well, why wouldn’t they be if society screams at the top of their lungs that those children are worth less and shouldn’t be alive anyway.

Mixed messages that confuse children and teenagers is what society sends them. Stop saying disabled children should be killed in their mother’s womb and start teaching children the true value of those children, those people and of being different and not fitting into the mold society has given us. Just because they are different and there might be additional strain on their parents doesn’t make them worth less or not worthy of being born. Who’s to say that a “normal” child won’t come with difficulties for the parents? No one knows how life is going to turn out and the path a child will take.

If you really want change, you need to fundamentally change how people view other people and that isn’t done with laws and vocabulary it is done by teaching children the value of every single person and that our differences are the beauty of life and how we can profit from each other and that we can learn things from every single person and grow through that.

A ”normal” person doesn’t have more value than a disabled one. And a disabled child has as much a right to live as any other child and as long as society claims it isn’t so by encouraging women to get abortions if their child might potentially not be “normal”, nothing will ever change in the way disabled people are viewed by the majority of society.