I’m allowed to ask this insensitive question because I’m the son of a blind man and spent a lot of my youth at meetings of blind people and listening to tapes produced by Kenneth Jernigan, head of an advocacy group called the National Federation OF the Blind (not FOR)
Why is it significant to the news media (and probably the Public) that the activist man fleeing from China is a “blind activist” and not an “anti-abortion”, “anti tax”, “anti pollution” or an “anti-Communist” activist that would be more descriptive?
His activism started with him challenging that he was being forced to pay taxes and under Chinese law blind people are exempt from taxation. I wonder if his campaign about opposing forced abortion was a general one or specifically abortions to stop disabled people (like people with genetically transmitted defects or severely mentally retarded) from creating more people with the same defects?
Even though it goes against human nature, one of the objectives of the NAB was to get people to view the blind as equals – while that mostly related to employment, it also meant not attributing stereotypes like that if you’re blind, your hearing is better, that you are a better musician or you’re a more moral person with some special standing with God. I met some pretty slimeball people along the way milking the system and taking advantage of other people’s compassion.
New York University is taking him under their collective wing, which is a bit odd, since they aren’t exactly a center of Pro-Life political activism. My suspicion is the “end game” of this will be a law to allow free immigration of the disabled from all over the world to seek refuge in the United States, expanding the generosity of the compassionate welfare state to all the poor people of the world