Many legislators in our state proudly tout their pro-life support. This week, as letters were being read about the lives of disabled community members during a legislative session, some of our legislators walked out without listening, ultimately blocking a bill from being passed that would have resolved budget shortfalls to disability services in this state. Those legislators didn’t seem to be interested in hearing about those lives or hearing impacted disabled community members pleading to maintain necessary disability services so that they can keep some quality of life. A quality of life that is still below what non-disabled community members experience. And if we can’t listen, can’t show we care about the lives of all community members, I wonder as others have: Are we pro-life, or just pro-birth?

If you are pro-life, in my opinion you should care about those lives, should want to see their needs met. Every time a legislator says they want to target the parents as paid therapists program, what I am hearing is that they are OK with my son’s needs not being met. He meets the statutory requirements for those services, yet as I have written extensively here about, most of the time he’s been eligible for habilitation therapy, a provider other than me couldn’t be found.

So when budgets were passed during those years and not exceeded, it’s not that he didn’t have a need for that therapy type, it’s that there weren’t enough therapists. Budgets were being met then because services were being utilized below the actual level of need because there was no avenue for family members to step in and fill the therapist shortages. This isn’t mismanagement, it’s the legislators cutting costs by cutting services to those who qualify but can’t get them provided any other way. To Representatives Michael Carbone and David Livingston, as the mother of an individual with significant disability, I want your legislative caucus to truly vote pro-life, not just pro-birth. I urge you to support the needs that disabled community members like my son will have simply to be alive.

And for parents, perhaps we should consider swapping hab services so we can show them how little mismanagement there is? They cut parents as paid therapists, and maybe we line up schedules and swap? We’re already part of someone’s habilitation staff to provide these services to our children. If we did that, the budget for disabilities spending would still need to be increased, because there is actually legitimate need there. And maybe then our legislators could take off their partisan colored glasses and see those needs for what they really are: pro-life.

To read more about what happened, please see the reporting linked in this sentence by ABC15: Republicans block bill to cover budget shortfall threatening Arizona’s disability services, by Manuelita Beck