Many tributes have written to Harriet McBryde Johnson, a prominent US lawyer and disability rights activist who died earlier in June. She was well known for taking on philosopher Peter Singer over his views about killing babies with disabilities, and other very up-front opinions. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal published Christine Rosen's reflections on Johnson's activism, and her stance on disability as part of the human condition, under the title A LIfe Worth Living. She draws on the ongoing debate about prenatal testing for Down syndrome to illustrate how Harriet Johnson challenged strongly held views about the rights of people with disabilities to even be alive.
Harriet Johnson's response to Peter Singer's views are encapsulating in her well-known New York Times article, Unspeakable Conversations (16/3/2003), which Rosen describes as "Thankfully free of the ponderous cant that infects so much of bioethics...."
Both articles are well worth reading and re-reading.
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