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The Centers for Disease Control and Protection said on Wednesday (Apr. 13) that there is now definitive evidence of a link between the Zika virus and babies born with serious birth defects. The infectious disease, transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, has emerged as this year’s dominant public health emergency. It’s also emerged as an international spectacle–with troubling implications for the way people around the world continue to discriminate against people with disabilities.
Much of the media coverage of the Zika virus has focused on the disabilities and deformities associated with microcephaly, and on the difficulties faced by women who are pregnant with, or have given birth to, babies with the condition. These are all important subjects for discussion. But as a disability-rights scholar, what concerns me is that the language and imagery we use to discuss disability. Too often, the narrative surrounding microcephaly relies on familiar–and disturbing–assumptions about what kind of lives are worth living.
Many of the most widely-circulated photographs of babies with microcephaly follow a familiar pattern. In these images, the baby faces the camera but does not meet its gaze. This position invites viewers to look closely the child’s skull, the light playing upon a baby’s abnormal craters and ridges. The framing encourages viewers to treat the child as a curiosity. The parent is often cropped out of the frame; we see only their hands and lap, cradling the baby, revealing nothing about him or her as a person. All we know is that they have brown skin and their babies—often fairer—are sick.