As someone knowledgeable about research on children with exceptionalities, you have been given the task of presenting a report to the court on your arguments for and against people with intellectual disabilities raising children.
Do the following:
Analyze the historical, legal, and ethical issues in the video. Make sure you include the following in your analysis (in an order that flows well in your paper):
Write a 7–9-page paper (not counting the title page, abstract, or reference page) in Word format. Apply APA standards to citation of sources. Be sure to include a title page, abstract, and reference page also in APA format.
Transcript from Video:
00:10fL Filmakers Library, Inc. New York , N.Y. PRESENTS Alan Handel Productions III Inc.
00:25We want a child like everybody else. We have abilities. We don’t look at her disability.
00:30Just because we’re disabled, it doesn’t mean we can’t at least try.
00:35DENNIS LINT I don’t think they should have children. I think the risk is too great.
00:45How would you feel if the kid’s retarded or… or normal? I said, “I don’tcare how the kid is, at least I will love it.”
00:55SUE But you have to think of the child. It’s just… It’s not fair.
MARY ANN But I don’t really regret anything that I’ve done, because everything that I have done has made me who I am and I think despite everything that I’ve turned out okay.
01:05I… I really want a child, badly …and I’d be a good mom.
01:15[sil.]
01:20C. DAVID JOHNSON Who has the right to be a parent? It’s the mostelemental and the most demanding of human responsibilities. A task that many people feel is far too difficult to be managed by a retarded person. Yet, today an estimated 100,000 children are born every year to retarded parents in North America and we still know relatively little about this phenomenon. The intellectually-disabled say they can provide all the devotion a baby requires, but a growing child may need much more than love.
02:00Is Love Enough? Written & Directed by Tom Puchniak Produced by Alan Handel
02:15MIKE GODMAN Batshaw Family Services, Montreal You can look at a number of intellectually handicapped adults and you’ll see someone who visually looks like a… an adult, but you have to remember that this person may be functioning at an intellectual and an emotional stage that could be closer to eight, nine, ten, which begs the question, “Would you be comfortable with an eight, nine-year-old or 10-year-old caring full time for your child?
02:3500:02:40] MADONNA FRADSHAM Assn For Community Living Many people with intellectual disabilities are short-changed and people don’t expect enough of them and therefore, you know, people decide that they are not capable before they are even given a chance.
02:50DAVE HINGSBURGER Author/Consultant You have to realize in one generation people with disabilities have gone from being idiots and morons to neighbors and friends and that’s been quite a journey.
03:00[sil.]
03:05C. DAVID JOHNSON For hundreds of years, western society regarded the mentally retarded as sad accidents of nature to be closeted behind walls of secrecy and silence. Thousands were forcibly sterilized in an attempt to erase the genetic stain of their misfortune. But scientists now know that barely 10% of mental retardation is passed on genetically. The most common causes are illness during pregnancy and traumatic injuries to the brain. The last sterilization wards were shut down in the1970’s , but many of the attitudes which spawned them remain. And the controversy over the ability of the retarded to be adequate parents is far from over.
04:00[sil.]
04:05Atlantic Canada
04:10C. DAVID JOHNSON We cannot identify the woman whose story we are about to tell, because she was involved in legal action with child welfare. We’ll call her Susan . Susan has an intellectual disability. Fifteen years ago, she had a baby boy. Within months, child welfare officials decided she couldn’t handle the child and seized it for adoption. Two and a half years ago, she had another baby, a girl. Once again, child welfare took the child away.
04:40SUSAN PURCELL I ask one thing in life is to see my child growing up.You don’t know how hard it… hard it is not to see a child growing up, like having one child die just like Mary losing her child.
05:05[sil.]
05:10C. DAVID JOHNSON It is a frequent occurrence: the child of a mentally disabled parent removed by a social welfare system that doubts the parents’ ability to raise and educate her. Most of the time, the parents do not contest the decision. But Susan decided to fight back. She felt she was getting a raw deal and so did the local association for community living, which works with intellectually disabled people.Madonna Fradsham is an Anglican minister and executive director of the association.
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