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All in This Together: Disability Rights and COVID-19
risks during disasters.1 Their vulnerability is heightened when they
live in congregate and communal and often forced living environ-
ments, including large group homes, long-term care, jails, shelters,
forensic hospitals, and psychiatric facilities. Women and racialized
people with disabilities face greater marginalization at the best of
times, including higher levels of poverty and unemployment. This
economic marginalization is typically magnified during times of cri-
sis. Violence against women rises during times of crisis and compul-
sory isolation,2 particularly for women with disabilities.3
Only some persons with some kinds of disability-related needs
are vulnerable to the virus itself, including if they are immune-com-
promised, have respiratory conditions, or are prescribed antipsychotic
medications associated with diabetes, a risk factor for COVID-19 com-
plications. Many more persons with disabilities are vulnerable to other
effects of COVID-19: poverty, barriers to access to employment and
income supports, inaccessibility of information and communications
about disaster planning, transportation barriers when COVID-19 test-
ing sites encourage the use of private vehicles to reduce transmission,
and inequality of access to health care and supports.
COVID-19 lays bare society’s responsibility for the disablement
of others.4 The social model of disability proposes that factors external
to a person’s actual limitations determine that person’s ability to func-
tion within society. A person may have no functional limitations other
than those created by prejudice, stigma, and stereotype.5 A political
response to addressing ableism may be formulated through the
1. United Nations, “Preventing Discrimination Against People with Disabilities
in COVID-19 Response”, UN News (19 March 2020), online: <news.un.org/en/
story/2020/03/1059762>.
2. See Leilani Farha & Kaitlin Schwan, this volume, Chapter D-4.
3. Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Disability and Accessibility, “Joint
Statement Women and Girls with Disabilities and Older Women in Relation to
the COVID-19 Pandemic” (28 April 2020), online (pdf): United Nations <www.
un.org/development/desa/disabilities/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2020/04/
covid19-joint-statement-women-girls-disabilities-olderwomen-covid19.pdf>.
4. Nancy Doyle, “We Have Been Disabled: How The Pandemic Has Proven The
Social Model Of Disability”, Forbes (29 April 2020), online: <www.forbes.com/
sites/drnancydoyle/2020/04/29/we-have-been-disabled-how-the-pandemic-has-
proven-the-social-model-of-disability/#40ec9ef72b1d>.
5. Ena Chadha, “The Social Phenomenon of Handicapping” in Elizabeth Sheehy,
ed, Adding Feminism to Law: The Contributions of Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé,
(Toronto: Irwin Law, 2004) 209.
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Title
- VULNERABLE
- Subtitle
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Authors
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Publisher
- Ottawa Press
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Size
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Pages
- 648
- Categories
- Coronavirus
- International