The Doorbell is Ringing! Who's at the Door?

Stuff I found out (where has this info been?!?!):

The Women With Disabilities Educational Program (see www.womenwithdisabilities.org) is designed to improve healthcare access and to educate medical professionals about women with disabilities. Right on! Better bookmark it.

The policy agenda of the National Council of Women's Organizations is kinda...well, I don't see disability in it much. Check it out at http://www.womensorganizations.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=45. What's up over there?

NOW (National Organization of Women) has dropped the ball on women with disabilities. See http://www.now.org/issues/disability/index.html. All the stuff is cool...but is at least three years old. There's a fantastic quote from Stephanie Thomas of ADAPT though:

"Who lives in a nursing home? She is over 60 with disabilities. Who is paid to provide long-term care? She works for minimum wages with no benefits. Who performs this work unpaid? She is young — she cares for her mother, her father, an older family member. Or she is old herself and cares for a spouse, a sibling, a child, perhaps still for a parent. One of these women will be you."

We looooooooooooove you Stephanie. A lot. And I didn't know you had a quote on NOW!

I visited the Feminist Majority website (see http://feminist.org) and saw an action alert for "affordable, accessible birth control." Naturally, I was all oooooh oohh ohhh!!! But yeah, they didn't mean accessible like we mean accessible...there's over-the-counter accessible and there's crip-accessible, OK? They have a thing about sports and women with disabilities, and while that's fine, there really isn't much else that's disability specific. You'd have to dig.

Oh, and I looked at the National Women's Law Center. Nothing really disability specific there either. See www.nwlc.org. Hmm. Nothing about sterilization isses for women with disabilities, even. Wonder why...

What I want is not to shoot down women's orgs for being disability-exclusive, but rather, to point out that a lot of the bigger women's organizations, RIGHT NOW, just don't have disability issues on their radar (especially as opposed to a few years ago!)...and that's a problem because there's stuff happening that's affecting 28 million of us women with disabilities in the US. I mean, what's going on? What do we need to do here? We have lots and lots of talented women with disabilities working to make things right, and that's good...I know some people prefer working back door channels, the quiet way. But while everybody's at the back door, WHO IS RINGING THE DOORBELL AT THE FRONT?

(I hope you're thinking of yourselves!!)