We might have just have seen the first local report of a woman with intellectual disability becoming a mother. Please note these are women before anything else.
On an international level she is not the first and will not be the last woman with intellectual disability to become a parent. It is no great surprise to me that this woman fell in love and had a child. Woman tend to fall in love and have children, marriage or not, intellectual disability or not. The issue is that people with intellectual disability are perceived as asexual by society.
The sexuality of people with intellectual disability has been ignored and feared, from the beginning of time, and not just in our country. Yet in many developed countries the stigma of asexuality has been challenged and progress has been made in developing strategies that empower people with disability to live an equally fulfilling life, where they have the same opportunities as anybody else.
European and international entities have put agendas in place so as to protect the rights of people with disability to have such opportunities. The European Manifesto on Basic Standards of Health Care for People with Intellectual Disabilities (2003,...
↧