Where is Alfie’s Army when the disabled people aren’t cute?

In Britain, there is a new drama unfolding. A baby named Alfie Evans has a degenerative brain disease that has left him in a persistent vegetative state. According to doctors, there is absolutely no hope of recovery. Thus, they have decided to pull the plug. The parents disagree and want to take him home to seek treatment elsewhere. Like last year’s Charlie Gard case, British Courts have sided with the hospital and the parents have appealed to President Donald Trump and Pope Francis. And like the Charlie Gard case, a mob, a good portion of which is made of people who have knowingly been on the wrong side of every disability rights issue ever, have declared themselves disability rights activists and has descended upon the hospital that Evans is in.

Let me state a few things. I don’t particularly care for what is happening. I hope the hospital changes its mind. If you are on the side of Alfie Evans and have been on the side of disability rights, good for you. This isn’t addressed at you. This is addressed at the ones who are silent on all other disability issues but proclaim themselves disability rights activists when there’s a cute baby they can use to scream about the “horrors” of universal healthcare. I call them adorability activists.

The activists hide when the disabled people aren’t cute

In Britain, many of these activists who care so much about little Alfie have been silent as ATOS, a firm the British government uses to see who should get government assistance, uses heavily biased fitness for work assessments that are explicitly designed to declare as many people fit for work as possible whether or not they actually are. Sometimes, ATOS breaks own rules to do so. The result is that help for disabled people is cut. They’re silent as right-wing austerity takes away what meager help disabled Brits receive and the politicians paint them as scroungers who are stealing from poor beleaguered taxpayers.

People have died as a result and I don’t see any mobs forming outside Atos offices the way that they formed outside the hospitals where Alfie Evans is staying.

Or maybe they aren’t silent. Ever since austerity started and the Tories and the right-wing papers started throwing around scrounger rhetoric, hate crimes against the disabled have been increasing.

In America, right-wing adorability activists have been complicit in attacking the disabled from the get-go of the Trump Administration. The Trumpcare debate featured disability rights activists fighting against Trumpcare because it would have brought back pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps. Fun fact for all bi-peds on Medium: All disabilities are pre-existing conditions. Every single one. Even cute little Alfie’s. And cute little Alfie would have exceeded the lifetime cap long ago if he were an American on a pre-ACA health plan. He’d need Medicaid. Funnily enough, the adorability activists have been attacking that too!

There have been attacks on the Americans with Disabilities Act (thankfully stopped by Sen. Duckworth). The disabled have been struggling to hold the line. And the response of the adorability activists has been less than stellar.

Adorability activists in (lack of) action

Ted Cruz (R-TX) has inserted himself in the Alfie Evans debate on Twitter, acting like he cares about the disabled, but when it comes time to vote, he is always a reliable vote against us. The “pro-lifers” who scream and wail about poor little Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard have been consistently for gutting Medicaid and bringing back preexisting conditions and lifetime caps. Their response to the disabled people explaining that they would be grievously harmed or even killed by these ideas was not exactly pro-life. At best, there was complete silence. At worst, they tried to blow them off with snide remarks. “We all have to die sometime” was a common one. Another common one from the libertarian types was “Well what about private charity? Why not use real charity?” They ignore the fact that private charity often doesn’t work.

For proof, look at all the GoFundMe’s that have failed. If you’re a disabled person trying to get some of that “real charity,” you need to be attractive, and be lucky enough to get some backing from the news media. Or you need to be really little. Once disabled people are out of the cute baby stage, the private charity tends to drop through the floor. And none of these libertarian/conservative adorability activists can tell the disabled what they would do if Medicaid were dismantled and charity failed.

Disabled babies become disabled adults

Here’s the hard truth: If you want to say you support babies like Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans because you’re concerned about the lives of disabled babies being snuffed out if they are found to be inconvenient, you have to be totally committed to helping all disabled people in all things in all their lives. Not just the cute adorable phase. You have to support integrated schools, accessible public places, Medicaid, pre-existing condition protections, and everything else.

The truth is that babies like Alfie require a lot of help. Let’s say the hand of God touched Alfie and he was withdrawn from death’s door. He is at the point that he would need around the clock care 24/7. He’d need skilled nursing care and all sorts of expensive equipment, wheelchairs, etc. And he’d need this for the rest of his life. One of his parents would likely need to stay home and not work. So they’d need whatever the equivalent of EBT cards in the UK is. And significant taxpayer support would be involved.

If you truly want to save severely disabled babies, you have to stand with them all their lives. You can’t say “We have to save the poor disabled baby!” and then turn around and say “Stop stealing my tax dollars!” when they aren’t in the cute phase.

Standing with the disabled is all or nothing and sometimes, it can be inconvenient. If you aren’t willing to make that commitment and choose only to raise your voice when you see an adorable disabled child, you aren’t a disability activist. You’re an adorability activist.