Never Walked In High Heels

How do you introduce yourself to someone who thinks that you ought to be dead?

It’s a situation that probably happens more than I know. I’m very aware that there are people out there who think that disabilities and ailments found in the fetuses of unborn babies should mean that the child is to be aborted. This is becoming more common on a worldwide scale, and there’s other fools like Peter Singer who claim to be philosophers of the modern age, but yet insist that animals have more rights than disabled babies. I am sure I have shaken hands with people who believe this either consciously or subconsciously, or think that having a disability would be among the worst things in the world. I usually do not know that they believe this, and it’s probably a good thing that I don’t. But in this occasion I did know.

My mother was taking a graduate level course last spring when she befriended a young woman named Linda. Linda is from China and there she is a gynecologist. She has come to America to know that she can practice medicine here and yet needs a different degree to do so. A statistical wizard and brilliant at mathematics, my mom immediately spotted her as a potential friend and aid in her biostatistics course. The two became fast friends, Linda being eager for company as she was so far from home. One day my mother showed Linda my picture. It’s from my senior year in high school and I am in a black gown with my hair down long, seated in my wheelchair. On my lap are three books, three hardback old-fashioned books. I forget what they are now, but they are classics. When Mom pulled out the picture, Linda did a double take and immediately asked what was wrong with me. My mother told her and Linda looked at her in disbelief. She said, “you don’t really mean…?” explaining my condition in the precise medical terms that she was taught. “Yes,” Mom said. I do.

Perhaps at this point I should explain that children with disabilities don’t often have the best fate in foreign countries, particularly that of China. If they have the misfortune to be born disabled it is not unheard of for a partial birth abortion to take place, or the child is left in one of the dying rooms that has recently been exposed in China. It’s worst than being born a girl. In a collectivist society, a disabled child most likely means a huge amount of tax dollars devoted to the health of somebody who probably won’t give much of anything back to the collective at large. The fact that Linda was an OBGYN meant that she too had made decisions concerning what children should live and die even while in the womb after amniocentesis. Linda explained this to my mother directly.

When I woke up, my early morning dreams the day I was supposed to meet my mother’s new friend, consisted of debates on partial birth abortions and were filled with images of doctor’s offices and waiting rooms.

One of my main faults is that when people seem confident and put together, I tend to believe them. As a result I afford grace and kindness to the people who seem to need it rather than those who are unaware, or putting on a show that everything is ok. As a result, in sort of a twisted humility, I think of myself as superior because I have no clue what I’m doing. Before meeting her, I saw Linda as one of the confident ones. I envisioned her always wearing a suit unless in her office performing surgeries and exams. She must be put together to strike out on such a limb and so bold a moral stance. I couldn’t think of any of my friends who would agree with her that doctors should have the right to decide who lives and dies before they are even born. I saw her as arrogant, proud, someone who had all her debates and facts in a line and could convince anyone to take her side.

But this was not the case. When I first laid eyes on her, Linda looked like a child, wearing a soft purple skirt for spring. She looked younger than me and still had teenage acne (although I found out later that she was five years older than myself). Everything about her demeanor said shy and humble. When she saw my mom she thrust a green paper bag of gifts into her hands, explaining that it was for both myself and my mother. She was not at all the moral extremist whom I had imagined. Looking at her I suddenly realized that people are more than what actions they take. We’re often taught that actions speak louder than words, and of course this on some level is true. But, was she choosing whether babies lived or died in her office, or did it come from higher up? Our actions are often more complicated than just our beliefs and what we want to accomplish. In a society that lived as hers did, if everyone shared everything, wouldn’t that extend to everyone sharing moral decisions as well? Even what I would consider to be the amoral ones.

So I looked at her again and smiled and said the one thing that I could think to say in such a strange situation. I stuck out my hand and said, “Hi. How are you? I’m Athena.”