Disability and Civil Rights: Ethical Failures During Crisis Standards of Care
Friday, October 13, 2023
9:30 AM – 10:45 AM ET
Location: Laurel CD (Fourth Floor)
Health disparities experienced by persons with disabilities in healthcare in the United States are now well documented. Other groups, including black and brown individuals, sexual and gender diverse persons, also experience systemic healthcare discrimination. The testimony of persons with disabilities who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic makes these disparities vivid. Unjust forms of discrimination occurred in terms of access to healthcare resources such as equipment, hospital admissions and vaccinations.
To address a range of healthcare disparities, I will examine the relationship between healthcare access and civil rights by considering whether civil rights as currently recognized in the United States provide adequate protection for persons with disabilities in healthcare settings. Currently, the American healthcare system recognizes some civil right protections which can apply to healthcare, but this system does not formally recognize a right to healthcare itself. As such, there are two questions that could be asked: are civil rights protections enough to provide adequate access to healthcare for all persons (and if they are, why do civil right violations occur in the case of persons with disabilities)? And if we can resolve these questions, we can examine how civil rights for persons with disabilities were violated during COVID-19 and address whether this is a failure of an application of widely-accepted civil rights protections or whether the current understanding of civil rights in healthcare is itself inadequate.