ABSTRACT
Disability issues in bioethics are highly contested because they bring up powerful emotional issues: questions about the permissability of technological intervention; the vulnerability of disabled people; the widespread non-disabled perception that impairment is a fate worse than death; the historical backdrop of abuse, oppression and murder. These factors are common to debates at both the beginning of life, and the end of life. Fears about eugenics and about euthanasia form the substrate of the disability rights response to bioethical arguments about autonomy and the value of life (Asch, 2001).
