type:Article

Is prenatal testing a discrimination against people with disability? The almost tautological statement “better not to have disabilities" could be considered problematic because it entails to negate people with disability. How are “negation of disability" and “negation of people with disability" mutually related? Not only do psychological and social relations but also logical and conceptual ones play a vital role here. By means of an abstract intermediary term “someone with disabilities," the meaning of the relationship between “negation of disability"and “negation of people with disability" would become clearer. This problem is closely related to the estimation of the social model of disability. It has turned the seemingly self-evident negativity of disability into the socially constructed character and has enabled the transition from dependence on medicine to social criticism. However, on another front, arguments against the social model are harsh, and so it is necessary to refl ect on the relation between impairment and disability as well as on the implication of preventing or curing impairments and diseases. Impairments and diseases are impressed with negativity as general abstract conditions, but, when integrated into the unity of individual concrete life, they could be affi rmed as a form of life