NPI at Netroots Nation 2022: Talking abortion rights and disability justice with Cori Frazer

Wel­come to the sec­ond install­ment of NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh. NPI staff jour­neyed to Steel City this past week to par­tic­i­pate in the nation’s largest annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sive activists.

As part of our con­fer­ence cov­er­age, we’re bring­ing you a series of con­ver­sa­tions with key move­ment lead­ers and elect­ed officials.

In this install­ment of NPI@NN, we’re hon­ored to be joined by Cori Fraz­er, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor at the Pitts­burgh Cen­ter for Autis­tic Advo­ca­cy. Press play below to lis­ten to the audio, or read the tran­script below.

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Read the transcript

(Note: this tran­script has been edit­ed light­ly for clarity) 

CAYA: Wel­come to NPI at Net­roots Nation ‘22, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series from the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia! I’m your host, Caya Berndt. We are so glad to have you with us again. For this install­ment, we are excit­ed to be joined by Cori Fraz­er from the Pitts­burgh Cen­ter for Autis­tic Advocacy. 

Wel­come to the pod­cast, Cori! 

CORI: Thank you Caya.

CAYA: Would you mind start­ing by telling our lis­ten­ers… tell us about who you are and what you do? 

CORI: I’m Cori Fraz­er; my pro­nouns are they/them. I am a mul­ti­ply dis­abled, non-bina­ry licensed social work­er here in Penn­syl­va­nia. I am the co-founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Pitts­burgh Cen­ter for Autis­tic Advocacy. 

I do a lot of work both local­ly, statewide, and nation­al­ly, to address dis­par­i­ties faced by peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly neu­ro­di­ver­gent peo­ple, but we have worked with any dis­abled per­son who needs basi­cal­ly any kind of sup­port. If we can fig­ure out how to do it, we try and make it happen.

I also do con­sult­ing work, jus­tice work, and work with researchers and school dis­tricts. How­ev­er we can use mutu­al aid and crit­i­cal and rad­i­cal social work, and jus­tice frame­works to make the world a more sur­viv­able place for dis­abled folks, we try to do it. 

CAYA: What led you into your own advo­ca­cy jour­ney? How did you get start­ed on this path? 

CORI: I often say the first action that I led was a Day of Silence back in maybe 2007 or 2008 in my rur­al con­ser­v­a­tive high school. I was a queer kid, I came out when I was like six­teen, and in a place where peo­ple weren’t queer, that’s obvi­ous­ly never…

CAYA: That’s nev­er a fun time.

CORI: So, you know. I fig­ured it out because things weren’t right. And I don’t like it when things aren’t okay and peo­ple are being hurt. 

And I kind of… I moved away. I moved to Pitts­burgh for col­lege and got involved with work with Planned Par­ent­hood. My first year of col­lege was also the year that Occu­py hap­pened here in Pitts­burgh. I was very involved with cam­pus wom­en’s orga­ni­za­tion at col­lege. I still iden­ti­fied as a girl. I did a lot of work, sort of around sex­u­al assault on cam­pus­es… and I don’t know, a lot of dif­fer­ent issues that came up in my life around trans rights. 

When the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh was being sued for expelling a trans stu­dent for using the wrong lock­er room, and they had this pol­i­cy where trans folks were sup­posed to present their birth cer­tifi­cate to use the bath­room, like…. I don’t know. My lived expe­ri­ence led me to be involved in a lot of things. 

And then, right after col­lege, I was diag­nosed with autism. 

I real­ly was­n’t in a posi­tion to work in the main­stream work­force. It was­n’t some­thing, with my dis­abil­i­ty, that I was real­ly able to handle.

And com­ing at that from the same kind of per­spec­tive, think­ing about pow­er and oppres­sion, I start­ed work­ing with the autis­tic self-advo­ca­cy net­work to do work here, and as they moved away from a chap­ter mod­el, I moved into lead­ing my own orga­ni­za­tion. Well, I say mine, but it’s ours. Our com­mu­ni­ty’s orga­ni­za­tion to real­ly give autis­tic peo­ple self-deter­mi­na­tion and a voice here in Pittsburgh. 

CAYA: You were part of a pan­el here at Net­roots — it was called “Dobbs and Roe: Queer, Gen­der-Expan­sive Visions for Abor­tion Care.” And in it, you talked about some of the ways that the repro­duc­tive rights move­ment and abor­tion rights have left dis­abled peo­ple behind. Can you tell us a lit­tle bit more about how that has shown up in your work? 

CORI: So, La’Tasha Mayes was also part of the pan­el, and La’Tasha brought up the Hyde Amend­ment, as well as some of the leg­is­la­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia where Repub­li­cans in the gen­er­al assem­bly have tried to cod­i­fy that same kind of Hyde Amend­ment, [where] Med­ic­aid dol­lars can’t pay for abor­tion care. 

While I think it’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that most dis­abled peo­ple get Med­ic­aid, a large piece of that pro­gram is there specif­i­cal­ly because cor­po­rate insur­ance gen­er­al­ly does­n’t care or cov­er a lot of those things, in terms of like, atten­dant care, the kinds of ser­vices like…community and reha­bil­i­ta­tion, and those sorts of things, which means that right out of the gate, abor­tion care is not acces­si­ble because Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits that dis­abled peo­ple hope­ful­ly get, and not every­body gets because it is a real­ly sort of unjust and dif­fi­cult sys­tem to nav­i­gate. Like it’s only, I think, around $800 a month? 

So just like, finan­cial­ly, abor­tion becomes out of reach.

CAYA: That’s not very much to live on at all.

CORI: It’s not! There is no place in the state that you can get an apart­ment for that, let alone live. So, finan­cial­ly abor­tion becomes out of reach. 

But then there’s also… we’ve seen specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed attacks on abor­tion from the per­spec­tive of dis­abil­i­ty where the Repub­li­cans in the Leg­is­la­ture intro­duced bills to make abor­tion ille­gal in the case where a fetus is pre­na­tal­ly diag­nosed with Down Syn­drome. So the ter­mi­na­tion of fetal Down syn­drome is an issue, right? We see there are few­er peo­ple with Down syn­drome being born than there ever have. In some coun­tries, there are zero.

And this is a jus­tice issue, because peo­ple with Down Syn­drome are peo­ple, and the con­ver­sa­tion about the worth of these peo­ple’s lives and their right to live in the com­mu­ni­ty and have full lives is real­ly…. how­ev­er peo­ple with Down syn­drome are also peo­ple with rights, and most peo­ple with Down syn­drome, if they choose to par­ent, their baby will have Down syndrome.

And if they don’t choose to par­ent and become preg­nant, they should also have the right to abor­tion. So we can’t use dis­abil­i­ty and devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties, like Down syn­drome, and kind of this con­cern trolling, to lim­it that. 

It’s an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion where many peo­ple who get the pre­na­tal diag­no­sis, the doc­tor might nev­er even offer them any infor­ma­tion about what it means to raise a per­son with Down syn­drome, what it means for that poten­tial child’s life, and they just go straight to termination. 

That’s a prob­lem. Lim­it­ing the auton­o­my of the peo­ple car­ry­ing the preg­nan­cies does­n’t solve our soci­ety’s abil­i­ty to actu­al­ly val­ue the lives of dis­abled peo­ple. Espe­cial­ly, and we did­n’t talk about this, but in Penn­syl­va­nia, our ser­vices for peo­ple with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties to live ful­ly in the com­mu­ni­ty, we have a wait­ing list of over 12,000 people. 

Many of those peo­ple will not get ser­vices in the com­mu­ni­ty in their life­times. We have seen law­suits because peo­ple who have been com­plete­ly acquit­ted of charges, and who have devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties, have been held in jail for months because there are not ser­vices or place­ments for them in the community. 

And the answer to this can­not be remov­ing repro­duc­tive rights. It has to be valu­ing the lives of liv­ing peo­ple with disabilities.

CAYA: So it almost seems like they’re tak­ing this issue and using it to advance their agen­da, when that real­ly isn’t the issue at all, it’s that they’re not valu­ing these lives in the first place and not invest­ing in them right now. 

CORI: Cor­rect. We are not tools for rhetor­i­cal argu­ments. We’re humans.

CAYA: That’s real­ly pow­er­ful. And I think one of the things that came up for me dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, we touched on this as well, is that deny­ing the bod­i­ly auton­o­my of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties is real­ly, real­ly dan­ger­ous because those are peo­ple who are real­ly, real­ly vul­ner­a­ble to things like sex­u­al assault. 

I think that you had said that there was a pret­ty big per­cent­age of dis­abled peo­ple who were at risk for that sort of thing, right?

CORI: Yeah. The Arc did a study a few years ago now, and the results were that… and they only looked at bina­ry gen­ders here, but they said that 80% of women with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties would be sex­u­al­ly abused five or more times by the time they turned eigh­teen, and 60% of men with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties. First of all, we have to address this. We have to address why are vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties being put in these situations. 

And part of that is sex­u­al edu­ca­tion, and the refusal to acknowl­edge peo­ple’s com­pe­tence as human beings and giv­ing peo­ple the abil­i­ty to be sexual. 

Because peo­ple with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties, and I say this as an autis­tic per­son, have the same range of sex­u­al­i­ty and asex­u­al­i­ty as every­one else. 

If you don’t have access to safe sex­u­al­i­ty, you are at much high­er risk of being sex­u­al­ly vic­tim­ized. Like­wise with sex edu­ca­tion, we know that sex edu­ca­tion is a pro­tec­tive fac­tor in sex­u­al abuse, but we exclude peo­ple in life skills class­rooms, peo­ple in seg­re­gat­ed edu­ca­tion, peo­ple with sig­nif­i­cant dis­abil­i­ties from sex edu­ca­tion, and we’re just putting peo­ple at more risk.

We put peo­ple at more risk and we are also, at the same time, lim­it­ing peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to make an informed choice about a result­ing preg­nan­cy, if that were to hap­pen. If we lim­it peo­ple’s access to abor­tion… there have been cas­es… there have been sev­er­al in Cana­da, but I’ve seen one even here in Pitts­burgh, where a young woman, with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty bad­ly want­ed to par­ent her son, but she need­ed sup­port right now. 

I don’t believe there is any state in the Unit­ed States that con­sid­ers par­ent­ing an “activ­i­ty of dai­ly liv­ing” or an “instru­men­tal activ­i­ty of dai­ly living.”

That means that Med­ic­aid waivers don’t cov­er the sup­port to do that. Which means when peo­ple with sig­nif­i­cant dis­abil­i­ties who need that lev­el of sup­port have chil­dren, they are either put in kin­ship care with a fam­i­ly mem­ber or they’re removed and put in fos­ter care. When they have lov­ing par­ents who just need the sup­port to care for them, like at the same, it’s very frus­trat­ing that we have this twofold thing here where dis­abled peo­ple are nei­ther allowed to end an unwant­ed preg­nan­cy or keep a want­ed child. 

CAYA: It’s almost like once you have a dis­abil­i­ty, phys­i­cal or men­tal, the default per­cep­tion of you is “inca­pable.”

CORI: Cor­rect. That’s a con­ver­sa­tion I think that we have a lot, about how dis­abled peo­ple are either seen as being so non-dis­abled as to be abled or to be neu­rotyp­i­cal and able-bod­ied, or so dis­abled as to be inca­pable [of] doing any­thing. And the real­i­ty is, dis­abled or non-dis­abled, we all fall some­where dif­fer­ent on that spec­trum every day, and very, very rarely on either end of it. 

CAYA: That’s real­ly, real­ly valu­able because it’s because every­thing’s a spec­trum and by putting peo­ple as able, not able, inca­pable, not capa­ble, it just leaves these huge gaps in care where maybe some peo­ple just need a lit­tle bit of sup­port and that’s it. That’s all they need to live those rich, ful­fill­ing lives. 

CORI: Or a lot of support. 

CAYA: Or a lot of support! 

CORI: Humans, you know, that is part of our lega­cy as these inter­est­ing ani­mals, is that there is evi­dence, going back tens of thou­sands of years, of us car­ing for each oth­er, and mak­ing room for bod­ies that work differently. 

But we’re not doing that because it costs money. 

CAYA: We are approach­ing time here, so a cou­ple of final ques­tions for you. What more could advo­cates and activists, and espe­cial­ly peo­ple in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty… what more could they be doing to reach out and include dis­abled peo­ple in these conversations?

CORI: So one of the things… this piece varies by state, but here in Penn­syl­va­nia there are two class­es of peo­ple who can’t vote. They are peo­ple cur­rent­ly incar­cer­at­ed for a felony — cur­rent­ly — and peo­ple who, dur­ing guardian­ship pro­ceed­ings, have had their right to vote specif­i­cal­ly removed by a judge. 

This hap­pens very, very rarely. I have not actu­al­ly encoun­tered a case of this. That means the vast major­i­ty, includ­ing peo­ple, under guardian­ship and peo­ple who live in insti­tu­tions can vote. So there’s this whole block of peo­ple that nobody’s talk­ing to because they assume we are inca­pable or assumed to be inca­pable of mak­ing deci­sions, of hav­ing hard con­ver­sa­tions, of being interested.

So I think if we’re talk­ing about Democ­rats, maybe we could engage Demo­c­ra­t­ic, dis­abled peo­ple. We also need to talk about Med­ic­aid waivers and home and com­mu­ni­ty-based ser­vices. And, first of all, mak­ing ade­quate bud­get allo­ca­tions, to these ser­vices; the sec­ond, actu­al­ly mak­ing sure that these social safe­ty nets meet peo­ple’s needs. Like in Penn­syl­va­nia, we don’t have full ser­vice dental.

Den­tal ben­e­fits basi­cal­ly cov­er clean­ings and extrac­tions, which then lim­its peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to get gain­ful employ­ment. It means peo­ple are more reliant on painkillers, which means peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly more dis­abled by pain. 

So we have actu­al­ly think about the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of the aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures that the Democ­rats have bought into, as well as actu­al­ly pro­tect­ing dis­abled peo­ple’s rights. The Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act is old­er than I am, and I’m thir­ty-one. It is still not ful­ly enforced any­where. And it does­n’t have any mean­ing­ful teeth because, like civ­il rights leg­is­la­tion that is enforced by lit­i­ga­tion by mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple… it’s almost point­less, almost.

We need pro­tec­tions for dis­abled peo­ple that have some kind of teeth, some kind of abil­i­ty to pro­tect the right to be ful­ly engaged and access the world. 

CAYA: Thank you very much. That was Cori Fraz­er. I will include the web­site for the Pitts­burgh Cen­ter for Autis­tic Advo­ca­cy in our post on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Stay tuned for more upcom­ing fea­tures on Net­roots Nation 2022!

For NPI, I’m Caya Berndt.