Seeing people like the Reverend Jessie Jackson weep proves that all the dedication, faith, and struggles that Reverend Jackson and others, including the “Dreamer” himself, Rev., Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., and the ultimate sacrifice that Dr. King made for the Civil Rights Movement, has finally paid off.

While person after person, especially those old enough to remember the days when blacks were regarded as second class citizens, lamented on how they never thought they would see the day when a black man would become President, I found myself unable to share in that feeling. I understood the sentiment, of course, but to never think it would happen just did not register with me.

Although I grew up as a black man on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, and am certainly aware of the hard times and the still ongoing battles with prejudice and racism that we continue to fight today, my own battles were never so much about race as disability.

I grew up in a time when people were less accepting of those who were different, and while skin color often separates us based on culture, disability can be a means to separate us from the vast majority of mainstream society.

Being unusually short with crooked arms often felt like being a green-fleshed, 11-tentacled alien from Alpha Centauri whose head constantly spun around while pea soup spewed from its lips.

Add to that the very real distance that my physical disabilities placed between myself and other “normal” children, and you have the makings of one miserable, lonely, bitter man to be.

And yet I never became that man. I was raised by parents who never told me that I couldn’t be whatever I wanted to be. The friends I did have growing up appreciated me for who I was, and I rarely took time away from counting my blessings to fret over the things that I lacked.

Even when, in the 80s, I had trouble deciding what I wanted to do with my life, I never let the prospects of never having my dreams come true deter me from enjoying the life that I did have.

I think that’s why, when Barack Obama took the podium to accept the nomination as the next President of United States, I wasn’t overcome by the emotion of the achievement.

Whereas the President-Elect had “The Audacity of Hope,” I have “The Audacity of Belief.” I believe that anything and everything is possible. I believe that dreams are not unobtainable fantasies, but visualized goals that only we ourselves can prevent ourselves from achieving.

Sometimes it takes all of us, and not just each of us as individuals, to reach such heights, but nevertheless, the only thing we can’t accomplish are the things we fail to pursue with conviction.

The fact that disability remains a barrier today is more a matter of our societal failings to make way for every person to have a fair chance at the life they want, than any limitations our own disabilities place upon us.

As a person who has always loved to draw and create, who is now an author, a publisher, and a graphic designer, I’m proof positive that anything you conceive can be achieved, even if it takes the patience of Job to wait for it to happen.

November 4th, 2008 is a monumental day for all of us, especially those of us who fight for an equal and fair right to live a life free of restrictions. It’s a day when hope, faith, and perseverance triumphed.

And I hope it’s the start of new phase in the evolution in our world when people of any race, sex, national origin, sexual preference, or physical limitation can and will be accepted as worthwhile human beings given equal rights under the law, and I hope and pray that if our newest President accomplishes anything in the next four years, it’s to inspire and lead us into a new era of acceptance and understanding.

As bad as things are in these hard economic times, I think it’s perhaps the greatest time in human history to be alive, because it’s the first time where the prospect of freedom of choice and opportunity for everyone seems to be just over the horizon.

And hopefully we’ll all run together toward that future hand in hand.

I have the audacity to believe that such a future is only a matter of time, and even from the confines of my wheelchair, I intend to run toward it as fast as I can.

How about you?

Send your comments and questions to nathasha@audacitymagazine.com

I recently stayed up until almost 3:00am to watch a compelling 1 hour documentary film called “Rolling.” The filmmaker, Gretchen Berland, who is a physician, likes to give video cameras to people so that they can take us into their personal lives, with the intent of creating films to highlight issues critical to understanding and improving the health care system.

Berland, who is now an associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, uses her past experience working for PBS on the series “Nova” and for MacNeil/Lehrer Productions to great effect in this film, which takes us inside the lives of three disabled people.

Most of the film is shot by the three participants, wheelchair-bound people of various ailments who had cameras mounted on their chairs.

Mr. Buckwalter is a clinical psychologist paralyzed at 17 in a diving accident, who is married and is the lead singer in a band called “Siggy.”

He leads an active life, depending so much on the strength of his upper arms to lift himself in and out of his chair to get into his car, to propel his manual wheelchair, and a million other tasks, that we later see how the physical strain begins to take a toll on his shoulders.

He’s then faced with choices that could threaten the level of independence he’s enjoyed for years. Buckwalter, who refers to himself as a “proud gimp,” has one of the most poignant lines in the film when he says “My blessings don’t stop it from hurting.”

Ms. Elman was once the business manager for a department at the UCLA School of Medicine, but then multiple sclerosis put her in a chair. She is the divorced mother of a daughter in medical school, and is an active participant in the group “Californians for Disability Rights.”

She is working to pass a bill named in her honor, the “V. Elman Community Living Act,” which would make it easier for the disabled to live at home.

Elman’s story shows what it’s like for a disabled person to live alone, and all the challenges and difficulties one faces.

In one segment, we see her having to drive her wheelchair down a busy street to get past a sign mounted on the sidewalk too close to a storefront bench, and in another her wheelchair begins to stall, and after dealing with all the red tape to get her chair fixed, she’s forced to go into a convalescent home for four weeks while waiting for the repairs to be completed because her independence is so intimately tied to her power chair.

Later, one of the most frightening and angering situations occurs when, while returning home from an outing using a transport van, her chair stalls again.

Because of supposed “policies,” the driver of the van cannot enter her home, so he leaves her outside, ten feet from her front door. She cannot get reception on her cellphone, so Elman sits there for hours.

It’s well after dark before a neighbor finally drives by, sees her, and helps her inside.

When watching those scenes, I felt as if I were there with her, trapped in the most torturous cage of all, one where you sit by the wayside, scared and alone, while the world passes you just a hair’s width away from your grasp, and there’s nothing you can do to reach out and touch it.

I found the situation both chilling and sickening to know that one human being could leave another in such an awful situation.

Does “policy” now trump compassion and common decency?

Lastly, there is the story of Mr. Wallengren, a husband and father of five who suffers from ALS. He’s a TV writer, and coaches his son’s youth basketball team.

Our journey with Wallengren is one in which we see firsthand the rapid progression of his disease, and witness his struggles both to cope with his own failing health, the well-meaning but often pitying attitudes of others who stumble and fail in trying to find the “right things” to say, and ultimately, we see him make the ultimate choice between whether it’s better to live as long as possible at any cost, or to escape the imprisonment of a deteriorating body when the time finally comes.

“Rolling” is a moving portrait of disability, one that I found inspiring, but one that also hit too close to home. So many of the situations are ones I could easily see myself in, and as I’ve believed for a long time now, the most difficult thing to face is oneself.

Yes, Ms. Berland created a film that exposes the gaping holes in today’s healthcare system and compels us all to do more to fix them.

But this documentary also humanizes the disabled in a way we don’t see enough of.

In a world obsessed with the pseudo-reality often portrayed on various shows where we see the lives of celebrities who live in a media-driven fantasy world, “Rolling” takes us into the lives of real people facing real issues, who are not actually fighting to overcome their own disability, but attempting to rise above the inability of the world around them to accept them as complete human beings, to treat them with the same compassion and respect with which everyone should be treated.

“Rolling” can be seen on the web at the link below. One can also leave a note to be notified when the piece is released for sale.

I highly recommend it to everyone. Even I learned from the piece, and it left me even more determined to do whatever I can to help make the world a better, more accepting place, for all.

Be careful, or it might do the same for you.

Send your questions and comments to nathasha@audacitymagazine.com .

But what if you’re disabled, particularly in a way that is readily evident to others just by looking at you? We live in a world that, for whatever reason, insists that conformity is not only preferred, but required, to be considered a viable part of society.

A person may be judged by the way one dresses, or the amount of cash one has in one’s pocket, or the car one drives, or the neck of the woods in which one lives. Even skin color is historically one of the most prominent barriers to acceptance and integration into the society at large.

We seem to have a million different requirements one must meet to be part of the “in” crowd, and the list seems to get longer and more specific each year.

So, what are you supposed to do in a world in which even the beautiful and successful are ridiculed for proving imperfect, like the recent fiasco over some unflattering pictures taken of actress Jennifer Love Hewitt on vacation with her fiancé. Not only does she seem to be a lovely person, but she’s attractive, famous, and very successful.

She’s never out on the town without underwear or running over the feet of unsuspecting photographers or policemen, and hasn’t spent a second in the L.A. County Jail. And yet just the mere shadow of a possibility that she might have an ounce of cellulite on her body ignites an all out furor.

Sometimes people behave like a pack of hungry predators scouting their prey for the weakest link among them, desperate to find a poor, unfortunate member who they can victimize and devour.

What is a poor disabled person to do when you feel vibrant and alive, but others see you as nothing more than a shell of a human, and an incomplete one at that? Where do we go to find the sense of belonging, of purpose, that every human has burning inside?

It’s easy to say that you can find it from family, from friends, from God, or merely from within, but in all practicality it’s an undeniable part of human nature to need validation from your peers. You simply yearn to feel like you belong in the world in which you live. I’ve lived on the outside of the world for all of my 42 years. I’ve been the center of scrutiny, the subject of scornful mirth.

For many, I’m like a living, breathing curiosity that should be mounted in the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum rather than walking among the populace. I’m the sideshow freak who must have escaped from a passing circus. I’m the somebody that’s actually a nobody, because “things” are not people. We all know that, right?

To the world, I’m like Pinocchio, desperate to be a real boy but knowing that I never will be. I’m not made of wood, but I might as well be.

That’s why, rather than looking for peace on earth, I simply want “a place on earth,” a little corner of the world reserved for the specialness that is me, where I’m fully accepted and appreciated for who I am, not for who or what I’m not. I want to live in a world where neither my height, my weight, the color of my skin, the contortion of my limbs, nor the presence of my wheelchair makes me the target for unabashed scrutiny and unspoken scorn.

And while there are people in this world that do not judge me as a thing, who treat me as a human being with feelings and emotions and talents and skills that are indeed a worthwhile contribution to the human race, when I look at the wide and wild world around me, those people and those moments they provide seem like fleas picking at the flesh of an elephant, tiny insignificant moments of good in a reality ruled with by bad.

So, how do we overcome this? Either we all have to figure out how to accept each other’s differences, or learn to conform to whatever is considered the correct and proper state of dress, appearance, standard of living, belief system, etc.

And when you’re disabled, conforming is normally not an option. Unlike the character in my story “Avatar,” from my book “Phoenix Tales: Stories of Death & Life,” we can’t just discard our bodies and switch to ones that are prettier, stronger, more conforming to the public standard of beauty and acceptance, bodies which people will easily love and adore.

All humans are flawed in some way, but those flaws aren’t as readily evident as they often are with the disabled. So society singles us out, puts us down, and leaves us out of the mainstream, hoping we’ll stay locked away in a dark room, cowed and forgotten.

But I’m tired of accepting society’s definition of me. I’m tired of being the incomplete human, the voiceless, powerless body, the waste of human flesh who’s thought to be a burdensome parasite on society rather than a valuable contributor to it.

I can see, I can hear, eat, drink, breathe, taste, touch, smell, think, speak, create, and live. I’m as alive as any other human, as much a member of humanity as any “able” bodied man. My character defines me, and my achievements etch my existence into the Book of Life so that no matter what others might say, it will forever be noted in the history of the universe that I was here.

Unlike the Barry Bonds record-breaking homerun ball, there will be no asterisk attached to me as a I sit in the Human Hall of Fame.

That’s why this year I’m asking Santa to, instead of bringing peace on earth, to bring me peace of “mind.” I want to be able to open up a box of recognition and watch as it spreads throughout the world, opening the minds and hearts of each and every person to the wonder of life in all its forms.

I want the star at the top of the tree to represent more than the one announcing the birth of Christ, I want it to be the light that switches on in each person’s mind as they are touched by enlightenment and learn to love unconditionally. I don’t want to be a standout in this idealistic world in my visions, don’t want to run it or be considered some extraordinary force within it.

I just want to an equally accepted part of it, to be one of the many cogs in the wheels that turn the universe. I yearn for the days when “good will toward men” truly means “good will toward everyone,” where no one is excluded for being outside some materialistic perception of what’s normal.

So, as we all celebrate this season and spend time with our families and friends, seek out someone who may not need a new pair of socks or big screen TV, or even a hot meal or a place to sleep, and give them a simple hug or pat on the back.

Let them know that they are appreciated just for being who they are, regardless of what the world may tell them, that they truly do belong in it.

Because sometimes all a person really needs is a little bit of love.

Send your comments to nathasha@audacitymagazine.com .

Lately, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in our media, one that leaves me wondering how long it’ll be until the disabled community becomes its next target. Shows like The Insider are doing increasing numbers of so called human interest pieces on the obese.

They pick a person who is exceptionally large, tell their story in the most sorrowful and sympathetic angle they can find, play background music dripping with sadness, and then ration out their stories in small bites, manipulating the heart strings of their viewers to keep them tuned in for days, and sometimes weeks at a time.

Often we the viewers are left hanging because these stories are ongoing issues that have no conclusion as of yet. In other cases, as in the one about a mother who chose the option of surgery to aid her weight loss efforts, we are taken inside what proves to be the last tender moments with the person and their family, a moment that should have private and personal, not public fodder aired for the harvest of ratings.

Yes, I know that this sort of thing is done all the time with celebrities (Anna Nicole Smith being the most blatant example) . And yes, I know many of you wonder what this has to do with the disabled, since despite the proclamations of the ADA, the obese aren’t considered disabled by most.

But in my opinion, we’re still talking about normal people with regular lives, people dealing with real issues and afflictions, people who are being made out as freaks to be pitied and exploited for the voyeuristic pleasures of looking down at someone less fortunate than ourselves.

I believe that everything happening in this world concerns us, and in particular, those things which take advantage of, or in some way ridicule, those who are considered different. The disabled have always been the “freaks of nature,” the outcasts of the outcasts, the bottom of the outsider barrel.

The good news is that our world is becoming increasingly tolerant of those who are different, more accepting of the disabled. In my 41+ years of living, things are very different today than they were when I was a child. And yet, along with this improvement, there seems to be an accompanying sentiment of less compassion, of less concern for the feelings of others.

The only thing worse than the stares and whispers directed toward me was the pity expressed by those who felt sorry for me based on the belief that I was inferior to them, that I was flawed or less than whole.

To me, pity is a way to mentally degrade another while disguising it as compassion. They love you “in spite of” your flaws, will choose to “look past” your deficiencies even though in their minds you’ll never be “normal”.

You are like an injured puppy, a bird with a broken wing. You love and care for it because you know it’s a good thing to help something or someone that is less fortunate than yourself. I abhor this attitude.

I may have DISabilities, but I have many A-bilities as well. I may not look like everyone else, but I am unique. I may not be able to walk, but I am alive, am smart, and in many other ways, I am strong.

That’s why I don’t like seeing pity directed toward the obese as a means of getting higher TV ratings. I am sickened when I see it used as a means to draw attention to starving children in Africa. And with the disabled becoming a growing presence in today’s world, I can foresee us being increasingly exploited in the very near future…the 21st century version of the circus freak show.

Even now Little People are being given a greater presence on TV, and yet at the same time I can see times when the token Little Person is still portrayed as the “cute toy” person or the butt of the joke.

One day soon they’ll create shows that put disabled on display so people can gape at us as they go “ooh” and “ahh” within the privacy of their own homes. In a world where I fight every day to be accepted for who I am, I don’t want to go back to a time when I am reduced to nothing more than an odd, malformed “thing” shown for the enjoyment of others.

I feel the rumblings of the earth and smell the sour odor on the winds. The day is coming, and its coming soon. Be afraid, very afraid.

Or even better, stand up and voice your concerns now. Let’s not wait until there is a new mountain for us to overcome. Let’s tear the sucker down while it’s still nothing more than a molehill on the approaching horizon.

Questions or comments?
Email us at nathasha@audacitymagazine.com .

July marks the fourth anniversary of Audacity Magazine. I’ve been with the magazine for just over two years, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity that Nathasha Alvarez has given me to express my thoughts and opinions, and to share my personal feelings, desires, frustrations, and triumphs with the rest of the world.

But July in particular has an extra special meaning for me. Six years ago, on July 30th of 2001, a dream long in the making finally came true. After months of waiting, which followed months of “head banging against the wall” frustrations while trying to get the government funding I needed, I received my first power wheelchair. Up until that moment, I’d spent the previous 35-plus years being carried or pushed, never experiencing even the slightest taste of independent mobility, never truly realizing just how significant a change in my life this would be.

It was scary at first. The people at The Shepherd Center, who helped me get the chair, took me on an “obstacle course” session through the building which led down a steep ramp outside going from the second story to the firs t, around the outside of the building, back inside, through the lobby, and up the elevator. I remember thinking that all I wanted to do was to not kill myself in front of these people. Fortunately, despite a close call with the wall of the elevator while turning around, I succeeded, and I happily left with my brand new chair.

Having the chair has been freeing to say the least. Although I’m not able to go places on my own, being able to move around independently at those places has made me more attentive to my surroundings, more confident and assertive because I now feel like an active and vibrant member of society.

Of course I’ve also seen once more how little respect people have for those in wheelchairs, how, if you aren’t careful, they will walk over, into, or through you as if you don’t exist. I don’t know whether people think I should always defer to them because they aren’t “damaged goods” like me, or do they believe that if they ignore you that you will simply go away like a very bad dream?

I’m also painfully aware of the places that are not equipped to handle my wheelchair, places where only a manual chair can go because my powerchair is far too heavy to be hoisted up a flight of stairs, or where space is too limited for me to safely maneuver around without causing damage to myself, the surroundings, or to others.

When this happens, it’s frustrating, it’s hard. I wonder how would people feel if someone told them that in order to enter such and such a building you must remove your legs and crawl through the door on your belly? That’s exactly how I feel sometimes.

I love my chair! It’s not only my legs, my transport, my virtual wings that have freed me from the crushing gravity of my disability, but it’s become my sanctuary, my refuge, my home on wheels. When I’m in my chair with my hand at the controls, I feel as if the world is laid out before me, waiting for me to go exploring.

So by far, July is a monumental month for me for many reasons, to which being a part of Audacity is only one. It’s an honor and pleasure to be with the magazine as it reaches its fourth anniversary. Hopefully it will have many, many more, and I’ll continue to be a part of it as it continues to mature and grow.

Gotta go. My wings are growing restless, so I know it’s to go flying some more.

Comments and questions pertaining to this article? Email us at nathasha@audacitymagazine.com .

One of the most popular videos on YouTube.com recently was the controversial clip of Michael Richards, best known for his role of Kramer in the television show Seinfeld, where he seemed to come unglued when black patrons began to heckle him while during a standup routine at a comedy club in L.A.

Suddenly, like a Tourette’s patient on an acid trip, he spewed the word “nigger” over and over again, as if the mere weight of the word would beat the heckler into a bloody pulp. Controversy and outrage ensued which many have said may be the nails in the coffin of Richard’s acting career.

On the set of the highly popular series Grey’s Anatomy, a fight between actor Isiah Washington and the man affectionately known by women everywhere as “Dr. McDreamy,” Patrick Dempsey, erupted because of Washington’s callous use of the word “faggot” in referring to co-star T.R. Knight, who soon after publicly admitted to being gay.

Soon after news of the incident hit the press, the public outcry was so great that Washington checked into some sort of “cover-my-ass” rehab program in an attempt to save his job, if not his entire career.

A few years ago, a powerful graphics program said to rival the industry-leading Adobe Photoshop was released under a Creative Commons license, which means the program may be downloaded and used by anyone for free.

The program was named the GNU Image Manipulation Program, “affectionately” known by its acronym, the “GIMP.” Years later, the backlash for choosing such a derogatory name for such a highly regarded program has been none existent.

Some may argue that the word “gimp” is not nearly in the league of words like “faggot” or “nigger,” but I wonder how many of those people are disabled, have suffered the humiliation and scorn of being regarded as a defective human deserving pity rather than respect?

Have they faced a world where they are treated like lowliest creatures, more like a talking chimp from a circus sideshow than a loving, caring, smart, sensitive human being as alive as any other?

But then I remember that Blacks have gone through all of these things based merely on their non-white skin, and gays are still looked upon as insubordinates committing the unforgiveable sin of sharing love in non-traditional ways.

And that’s not to mention the robbing and murder of the Native Americans, who rightfully own the land we Americans stand on today, nor the Jews systematically exterminated like plague of insects. Surely they must understand our plight. Surely they all would care, right?

Yet despite the fact that the disabled hold no monopoly on discrimination, I have the sad feeling that had the ignorant word of choice been “gimp” rather than “faggot” or “nigger,” the outcry would be minimal, if not occurred at all.

And I wonder how the creators of The Gimp will react when I point out to them the true meaning of their chosen name. Will they show the compassion and understanding that every human should share with one another and respond appropriately, or will they chalk me up as some crackpot busybody looking for an ax to grind with any scapegoat I can find?

But an even bigger question at the end of the day, far more important than the intolerance of Michael Richards, the insensitivity of Isaiah Washington, or whether the world at large would show as much passion if we had been the victims of such callousness is how will you react now?

Because if we don’t give a damn about how people see us, then no one else will.

Email your comments at nathasha@audacitymagazine.com .

You’re a parent of a newborn child, a precious angel who is a gift from God. You have prayed and yearned for this child for months, maybe years, and your love for this child is without bounds long before you get to meet your little bundle of joy for the very first time.

But then you are told that your perfect little child, who turns out to be a daughter, is not so perfect after all. Doctors reluctantly inform you that she is brain damaged, that your little girl will always be a little girl in mind and spirit.

The dreams that you had for her life, watching her learn and grow and become a beautiful and smart young woman with a career and family and a future filled with limitless possibilities is shattered like porcelain.

As reality sinks in and you begin to accept the reality, you resign yourself to the care and loving of your daughter despite her disabilities, and you will do whatever it takes to make her quality of life the best it can possibly be.

So what do you do to best accomplish this goal?

First, you decide that as the child grows physically, she will become more difficult to handle. So, to improve her life, you have doctors administer high doses of estrogen to decrease her perspective height by 13 inches. Because, of course, this will make things much easier for “her”.

Next, you fear that your daughter may be subject to rape as she matures, and to protect her from this possibility, you have doctors remove her uterus. In addition, while you’re at it, you have her breast tissue removed because of a family history of cancer and fibrocystic disease.

As an added benefit, without cumbersome breasts to get in the way, the straps that will be used to hold her in place will be far more comfortable. “Besides,” you say, “she has no need for developed breasts since she will not breast feed.”

In my own mind this rings disgustingly of “Frankenstein science,” a willful attempt to play the role of a domineering God who manipulates rather than nurtures, who dominates rather than leads.

The very thought of such a fictional tale, of which I’ve read and maybe even written similar tales in the past, causes my stomach to churn at the very possibility of it becoming true one day. What’s even more terrifying is that the story I just related above is true.

When I hear or read discussion about Ashley, who is now 9 years old, she sounds as if she is some sort of science experiment or inanimate object more than a living, breathing human being.

In deciding whether or not to proceed with these treatments, the ethics committee of Seattle Children’s Hospital did a “cost-benefit analysis” to determine that the overall benefits of such treatments outweighed the potential risks.

The very fact that “benefits” were determined through an analysis based upon cost seems very telling, since this is the very same means by which all disadvantaged people, be it by race, economics, or physical condition, are judged and handled.

It is very easy to make such choices when a child is reduced to mere numbers on a page, but I wonder how easy such decisions would have been if Ashley’s face had been lying before them, or even better, if their own children’s faces had been pasted there?

Even as I sit here typing this I feel a knot in my stomach. Although Ashley is an extreme case, apparently she is neither the first, nor will she be the last, of these so-called “Pillow Angels,” a term in itself feels like sugar-coated way to refer to these victims of science gone wild.

What rights do the disabled have today, and where will such practices stop?

Consider this. Why does a paraplegic need his legs? They’re just useless appendages that must be dragged around. All they do is add cumbersome dead weight to a person’s body that’ll never need them anyway, so why not chop them off? A blind person doesn’t need eyes, so why not merely remove them and sew up the sockets?

Many will argue that these examples are crude and extreme and have nothing to do with the case at hand. But humanity has a long history of justifying acts of violence and discrimination merely because it was a generally accepted practice.

Slavery was not a practice carried out in an isolated community lead by a radical and insane human being. It was practiced and accepted by the common man.

I know this issue doesn’t share nearly the same scope as slavery, and on the surface it seems to impact only a handful of human beings. But it impacts HUMAN BEINGS nonetheless.

Isn’t it all right to carry out atrocious acts on a child because it makes it easier for those who must care for her?

One of the arguments for these actions is that she is unaware of what’s being done to her anyway. If it’s not all right to steal from a person merely because they cannot see you do it, or to mutilate a body merely because its dead, then how can it be justifiable to reconstruct a living “angel” of a girl based on the justification that she isn’t aware of what’s being done?

This practice sickens, disgusts, and angers me beyond words. But what’s even more frightening, far more people seem to see nothing wrong with it at all. When a disabled child can be so easily dehumanized for the convenience of others, I can’t help but wonder if someone like me will be next?

Or even better, maybe you should be asking the same question yourself.
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