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Disability is deeply affected by healthcare and legislative decisions due to the fact that many disabilities require medical or physical accommodations. The disability community is a small one (actually, people with disabities are the largest "minority" group in the world), so representation in healthcare is already likely to struggle, and the further marginalization of disability by legislators attempts to push them further to the outskirts of society. It cannot be denied that navigating disability and law is an no easy task. As Rebecca Cokely points out in her chapter about abortion, "It is hard to be a pro-choice disabled person who understands that believing in bodily autonomy means you have to support the idea that other people...may choose to abort a pregnancy because their child could be like you" (161). She goes on to argue that while difficult, it is essential for the disability community to be vocal about these tough topics. If they do not speak out, there will be no one to voice their concerns.
The topic of speaking out brings up the question whether it should be necessary for people with disability to continuously have to educate others about their lives. In her chapter about Indigenous people, Jen Deerinwater writes that she loses a little more of herself every time she has to educate others, fight for her community, and file formal complaints to the medical system. This is a sacrifice she is willing to make in order for her community to be heard, but it poses the question: How much responsibility should a community have in educating others about it? How much responsibility is up to healthcare workers and legislators to do their own research.
It goes both ways. The disabled community (and any other community, for that matter) should speak out about their unethical treatment, and the community in power should respond. The minorities are doing their part, but anecdotes from Disability Visibility make it clear that they are not receiving a response.
The disabled community is just that: a community of real people with real experiences. They have diverse stories and lives, and they have something very real and valuable to contribute to the world. The abled community should listen.

Wong, Alice, et al. Disability Disability: First- Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. New York, Vintage Books, 2020.

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Disability intersects with other global health humanities concerns because both aim to improve care through holistic views of a person. An instance of this is the Texan abortion bill SB 1033, which prohibits abortions for when there is a “severe fetal abnormality” (Cokley, 159). While this bill is an attempt to battle liberal eugenics, it fails to take into account that those with disabilities also need abortions, too. In fact, 90% of women with developmental disorders are survivors of sexual assault — they need all the autonomy they can get (Cokley, 162). Removing options does not improve the medical-industrial complex that the disabled community is dependent on, but rather perpetuates the cycle of poverty and ableism. Likewise, the health humanities focuses on these oppressions through narration in order to improve the patient experience (Lewis, 311). The abortion bill did not take into account the necessity abortion is to the disabled community, but rather acted like a false savior towards them. Without addressing these issues like Cokley does through narration, the healthcare industry cannot effectively evolve for the better.

Lewis, Brad. "Chapter 31. Narrating Our Sadness, With A Little Help From The Humanities".

Health Humanities Reader, edited by Therese Jones, Delese Wear and Lester D. Friedman, Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press, 2014, pp. 311-320. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813562483-034

Wong, Alice, and Rebecca Cokley. “The Antiabortion Bill You Aren't Hearing About.” Disability

Visibility: Twenty-First Century Disabled Voices, Vintage Books, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, New York, 2020, pp. 159–163.

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Alice Sheppard’s piece “So. Not. Broken.” in Disability interacts with other Global Health Humanities concerns by examining how individuals with disabilities can use narrative and artistic expression such as dance to destigmatize people with disabilities. She uses dance to help her define her disability for herself and others. She describes feeling “more successful at going in a straight line with one push if [she] thought about [her] chair as an extension of [her] body instead of an object separate from [her]” (165). Often people forget that wheelchairs and other devices are not merely objects that people with disabilities use, they are an essential part of their ability to move. The author also uses different terminology and analogies to redefine the association to her wheelchair in order to lessen the stigma around it. She started saying that the chair is her “legs” and “my chair is my body” (165). By using this type of language, she is personifying her wheelchair in order to humanize her experience as a person in a wheelchair. Since, stigma is usually based on false assumptions, it leads to people with disabilities being treated differently and often results in them being excluded from full participation in all aspects of society. By using art she is able to break down those barriers and redefine how people view her and others with disabilities.

Wong, Alice, et al. Disability Disability: First- Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. New York, Vintage Books, 2020.

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Disability intersects with the Global Health Humanities concern of socioeconomic divide leading to unequal treatment. Providing care and accommodations for disabilities can be expensive. Buying wheelchairs, hiring aides, and many other factors can be cost-prohibitive. This prevents many people from receiving the tools they need. Similarly, healthcare also comes with a large price tag – doctors' visits, medicine, and surgery aren't cheap. In "The Antiabortion Bill You Aren't Hearing About," Rebecca Cokely states that the new Texas abortion laws "will only serve to perpetuate the cycle of poverty and disability (Cokely, 163)." Those who are rich will be able to bypass the ban by paying doctors off or traveling to a state where abortion is legal. In contrast, people with disabilities – who are twice as likely to live in poverty (Harriet Tubman Collective, 237) – will not have these opportunities and will be greatly impacted by these laws.

Wong, A. (Ed.). (2020). Disability visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Disabilities and global health humanities intersect on a fundamental level. Disabilities are a part of global health, and understanding the humanities portion of this struggle is essential to know where ableism and other issues come from. Disability essentially connects to people who are seeking out representation within healthcare. In Jen Deerinwater’s chapter about racial underrepresentation, she speaks out about the lack of options on medical charts and how people in the medical field generalize and make false assumptions about her race. Deerinwater, much like the people within the disabled community, feels as though her personal identity is being “ignored” (J.D. 48). The issue of reproductive health for women within reservations is an incredibly prevalent issue that begs whether or not these “native” women are correctly cared for and if the healthcare system is ignoring their needs and the constant abuses against them.

Wong, Alice, et al. Disability Disability: First- Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. New York, Vintage Books, 2020.

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Disability and global health humanities concerns intersect because they both desire the fair treatment of people regardless of their color,race,religion,intelligence level or other physical qualities. For instance, I believe disability and eugenics are two concepts that highly intersect.Eugenicists promote sterilization as the best option to reduce the number of “unfit”,which is a label given for the poor,intellectually or physically disabeled people, with the fear that they will produce an “unfit” offspring. Similarly, people with disabilities are raised to think of their bodies as “an almost external commodity by ableist society (162)” and not having full control over their own life.  In  “The antiabortion bill you’re not hearing about” Rebecca Cokley talks about the abortion law of the Texas bill  which takes the rights of women to decide over their own bodies and force the diability commuinity to suffer, just like Cokley's parents had to encounter three losses before she came along. Both the concepts promote a controlling nature of people’s own body by an external human.

Wong, Alice. Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. Vintage Books, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020.

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Disability intersects with the Global Health Humanities due to society’s views of disabled individuals’ worth. The negative stereotypes that society holds against those who identify as disabled degrade their freedom as an individual. Oftentimes, they find themselves being forced into a “neurotypical box”. Feeling the need to blend in with the other members of our communities can be exhausting, and can even make matters worse. In Reyma McCoy McDeid’s passage, “Lost Cause”, she tells her story as an autistic woman simply trying to live in today’s world. Even as a child, she was told that she was a “lost cause” because her autism diagnosis was a burden to others and herself. Throughout her life, she was surrounded by unsupportive people such as coworkers, family members, and her spouse who simply left her as they saw no worth in her presence. Though she worked to make the most out of her true self, “[she’d] try to mow past [her] limited interpersonal skills, [her] strong sensitivities to light/sound, and the incessant pumping of adrenaline in [her] system as a result of the stress of having to play “neurotypical” at all times” (McDeid 199). As explained within her passage, she, herself, was never held back; it was the resistance from the “typical” community that was the source of her challenges. It is within her story that we see how accepting with those with disabilities may be a new accommodation for some, but not a deciding factor between worth and worthlessness. Regardless of the challenges she may have faced, McDeid makes a strong argument that disability puts no value on a person and that all people have, or should have, equal opportunities for respect and success.

Wong, Alice, et al. Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. Vintage Books, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020.

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Disability intersects with other Global Health Humanities and healthcare concerns in many areas. There are many issues in healthcare when it comes to disabilities, such as socioeconomics, politics, and accessibility to resources. One major area of concern though is the impact that race and racism play in healthcare when it comes to disabilities. Race is such a major issue because it impacts just about everything in our world. BIPOC communities are underrepresented in politics, face systematic issues, and are targeted even heavier by socioeconomic difficulties. All these things play an individual role in healthcare especially with disabilities but by adding race on top of it patients are treated and seen as less-than-human, "A white nurse even repeatedly broke the doctor's orders, denied me pain medication, and stated, "That's ridiculous. You don't need this and I'm not giving this to you'"(Deerinwater 48). In this chapter, Deerinwater described the abuse that she personally faced at the hands of doctors and nurses and also the dire effects that the white-washed view of natives in healthcare has had on tribes across the country. Although Deerinwater may not be unique in facing trauma in hospitals those who do not identify as BIPOC can not speak as if they have witnessed their entire culture and ancestor be threatened and die in front of them at the hands of our healthcare systems. Although there are countless issues between the intersection of disabilities and our healthcare system I believe that race is one of the biggest concerns everything else that could possibly negatively impact healthcare for those with disabilities is already negatively impacted by race.

Wong, Alice, et al. Disability Visabillity: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. New York, Vintage Books, 2020.

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Disability intersects with other Global Health Humanity concerns in the way that it limits people and can lead up to distress. If we look back in history, women, people of color, and those from lower social classes/economic standing have all been restricted in their options based on factors they could not control from an early age. It is even possible to agree that our government and state officials make decisions for us, including health-related decisions. This can be seen in Rebecca Cokley's "The Antiabortion Bill You Aren't Hearing About," for one. Cokley emphasizes in this piece of writing the right that has been taken away from women in Texas, which is the right to an abortion. "While being framed as "saving those poor defenseless disabled babies," the reality is that this is just one more assault on people's bodies," writes Cokley on page 159. Cokley uses the word "assault" and based on this comment alone, she is reinforcing the idea that these people are being limited to their choices concerning their reproductive rights which is a human right assault... With that being said, ANY form of assault on a person can build up to psychological challenges/distress that can lead to a person to feel limited to the things they can say or do.

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. United States, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2020.

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Disability intersects with Global Health Humanities as health humanities aims to advocate for those who need support and representation. Advocacy is such a hard subject to navigate as it is subjective to each person's story, and in advocating for any one persons story could effectively also promote a 'single-story' that could positively help out one specific community or demographic, but be extremely detrimental to the others. Alice Wong perfectly captures this concept as she inserts a quote by Harriett McBryde Johnson: "Storytelling itself is an activity, not an object. Stories are the closest we can come to shared experience... Like all stories, they are most fundamentally a chance to ride around inside another head and be reminded that being who we are and where we are, and doing what we're doing, is not the only possibility" (Too Late to Die Young: True Tales from a Life). Absolutely beautiful breakdown of the concept that each situation is unique. Those with 'disabilities' stories' are all too often overlooked, not taken seriously, and dismissed as a contributor to society much too early. As Ricardo T. Thornton Sr. so wonderfully put: "Having an intellectual disability doesn't limit what you can contribute. Being put in institutions limits what people can do and guarantees that people will be dependent for the rest of their lives" (We Can't Go Back). Excellently put but Mr. Thornton. The assumption that disabled folks cannot "do things" in life is void. It is clear now, and slowly being made clear to the world, that humans disabilities never limit what they can do, only simply how they will accomplish it. This ideology must be implemented here in the United States as well as globally.

Wong, Alice. (Ed.). (2020). Disability visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Thornton Sr., Ricardo T. We Can't Go Back,