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June 14, 2012 - I actually wrote this comic a month ago without any awareness of Limbs for Life which is a charity organization dedicated to providing affordable prosthetics to people in need of them that was featured on Secret Millionaire this past weekend (the show's generally not my thing so I'm not going out of my way to find a link to them. But I did see pieces of this show as I can be exceedingly lazy about changing tv stations). On the show, it sounded like they discussed a lot of the added costs of such a disability with an emphasis on the costs (and benefits) of prosthetics speciffically. Anyway, Limbs for Life seems like a group of people dedicated to doing a pretty fantastic thing, so feel free to check out the site.
Meanwhile, the specifics of Joanna's disability are intentionally vague, though I did draw her with a cane in all appearances. I imagine she was born with some genetic defect that caused her leg to be amputated above the knee some time shortly after birth. Personally, I don't know what it's like to have such a disability, and I don't think such a situation places a great limit on her capabilities. But it highlights an interesting situation with having an abortion in reaction to a potential disability which I find fascinating.
As mentioned the Secret Millionaire episode pointed out the severe cost of prosthetics alone for people in a situation similar to Joanna's, and I imagine those costs can become even greater for more severe physical disabilities or mental handicaps, not just in treatments but also surgery.
I can't answer if abortion is right in these circumstances. It's a difficult situation both from an economic and quality of life perspective that I've never personally had to face, but I think Philip makes a reasonable argument despite the reaction it invokes from Joanna.
I also should say, I don't think Joanna's wrong. Her viewpoint makes sense. She's had this disability her whole life and she tries not to have it define her, which I don't think it does. Though it may impact some aspects of her personality, such as her stance on abortion, it's not the only element of her personality (I realize it's somewhat hidden by word balloons, but did anyone notice the cane in her first appearance without me pointing it out now?). She's also a mother and a fairly protective and opinionated one at that. But just because that's her situation doesn't mean it applies for everyone.
I say this a lot, but everyone has their own perspective on what reasons determine proper circumstances to abort. Personally I think instances of rape and abuse are a perfectly reasonable circumstances, but several state laws seem to disagree with me. Other situations are a bit more gray, and I honestly struggle to come up with circumstances where someone should absolutely give birth (though I don't rule out the possiblity of a situation existing). In general, I think there's a lot of gray area in the abortion world, and until you're faced with a decision you don't know what you'd personally do. Rather than run from the gray area, I try to explore it a bit more in depth with this comic, and identifying a disability early is one of the grayest areas I can think of. But I've said enough. At some point I'll do another storyline dealing with this and we'll continue this conversation.
-D
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