there are only two groups of people in
India who can be legally executed the
first one is criminals who have
convicted crimes that are so bad they’re
considered the rarest of the rare
and the second is unborn babies who have
a disability so can I just ask you to
remember that keep that thought in your
mind while I tell you my story I have a
friend who’s 44 years old and she was
expecting a baby she already had three
boys so all of us were hoping that this
new baby would be a girl
one day I found myself thinking wouldn’t
it be nice if this baby had Down
syndrome she’s 44 years old that’s the
age that people normally have a baby
with Down syndrome and I knew the
perfect school that the kid could go to
if it did happen now in a country where
an unborn baby with disability is about
as welcome as an ax-murderer what was I
thinking
or to put it another way do I know
something you don’t know I think I do I
think in fact I’m an expert on the
subject but I know I can’t just say that
I have to prove my credentials so I’m
going to tell you another story to do
that and that story
starts here not far from Dehradun in a
little village in between Missouri and
Denault II and it’s about a little girl
named muy muy muy muy was her mother’s
thirteenth baby
her mother had gotten herself sterilized
after baby number 12 but the operation
didn’t work and muy muy was conceived
anyway so her mom then decided she would
come down to Dehradun and get an
abortion she chose the one doctor in
Dehradun who didn’t do abortions but
that was also the only doctor she
trusted that doctor told her if you want
to have the baby with me I’ll help you
find a home for it so the mom agreed
went back up to her village and a few
months later she was coming down for a
routine prenatal appointment and she
went into labor on the bus muy muy was
born on the side of the road she was 12
weeks premature
she waved just under a kilo
that’s what she looked like two weeks
later there were two young American
doctors volunteering in that hospital
they heard the story about the baby that
needed a home and the woman said my
sister will adopt her and the sister was
me and that’s how muy muy came into our
family and changed our world muy muy has
taught me everything I know about
disability because muy muy has
disabilities
she has quadriplegia she uses a
wheelchair to get around she speaks only
with her eyes she eats through a tube
that’s been surgically inserted into her
tummy and she depends upon us for
everything
we talk about degrees of disability in
the field we talk about mild moderate
severe Momo’s disabilities are so
serious that they’re considered profound
and I think if you look at this picture
of muy muy
which I took just a short while ago
isn’t she beautiful you’ll agree with me
that profound in the most beautiful
sense of the word perfectly descriptive
originating in or penetrating to the
depths of ones being pervasive intense
complete we can take the labels that
people put on our children and we can
make them mean anything that we want
it’s up to us
so what have I learned from Moin Moin
what profound truths has she taught me
why did I think it would be nice for my
friend to have a baby with Down syndrome
Down syndrome by the way is the most
commonly aborted disability there is
it’s easy to detect in pregnancy and
everybody knows about it so after a
certain age most women will go in for
the test in a study that was done in the
UK of a hundred women who were told that
the baby they were carrying had Down
syndrome ninety three of them chose to
have an abortion so I’m curious about
the other seven seven is a mystical
number we’ve got the seven days of
creation we’ve got the seven wonders of
the world we’ve got the seven Harry
Potter volumes
they’re the ones that got rid of the
boxes we love to put people in boxes
right we like to classify them and we
particularly like to do that in school
so you’ve got the naughty kid you’ve got
the smart kid you’ve got the lazy kid
you’ve got the dumb kid you’ve got all
kinds of kids and teachers have them all
carefully categorized kids with special
needs come into the mainstream
classrooms and the teachers don’t know
what to make of them and so they have to
give up their boxes and begin to think
about the child and what that child
needs and how that child learns because
of children with disability we now
understand more about varying learning
styles than we ever would have if those
kids hadn’t been part of the classroom
we understand that some children were
learn best through hearing some kids
learn best through vision some kids
learn best through activity and when a
teacher understands that she makes her
classroom a much more exciting and
productive place for learning
the second thing is that they changed
the story wherever people with
disability are meaningfully included
you’re going to have different
architecture you’re going to have
different signage you’re going to have a
different mindset this room for example
I know Naveen ghoulia is coming later
and he’s in a wheelchair I don’t know
how he’s going to manage I’ve got a plan
because I bring muy muy here for this
meeting too every time that we have it
and we have to carry her down and she
sits over there when we think about
people with disability when we’re
planning our buildings when we are
organizing transport when we’re dealing
with traffic we make it work better for
everyone if there were a ramp in here it
would be easier for anybody who was
carrying a wheeled suitcase if there
were a parent coming in with a stroller
and a kid sitting in it it’s not just
about the wheelchair but people with
disabilities push us to do better for
all of us
they are the ones who invented you guard
if you are born without arms and you
have something to write what are you
gonna do look at this woman she’s
amazing she’s riding with her foot
people with disabilities because of
their disability are by definition more
resourceful more creative more
innovative they come up with solutions
for their own problems and they bring
that into the world so that we can also
benefit from it
it’s because of people with disability
that the Montessori system of Education
exists I don’t know if you’re aware of
that but it was for children with mental
handicaps that Maria Montessori came up
with the activity-based system of
learning and we all know as
educationists that that is the best way
for anybody to learn it was invented for
kids with disabilities however so we’re
always learning when people with
disability are part of us they slow us
down they demand our time and then they
get they make us see how much of it we
actually have we are so important we’re
so busy we don’t think we have that much
time but actually when you work with
children with disabilities you are
forced to slow down and stop taking
yourself so seriously they need us to
help them take a hard job like buttoning
a shirt or tying a shoe and make it into
small steps so that they can understand
it and then we learn to do that with the
hard jobs in our own lives
kids with disabilities are actually the
ones who helped us understand what is
essential in bringing up a child this is
a sad story but there was a group of
children who were left in an orphanage
in Romania they were taken care of
physically but they got no social
interaction nobody coddled them nobody
played with them nobody responded to
them and those children grew up with
terrible terrible handicaps their brains
were dead there were huge black holes in
their brains and you can see that on
brain scans and those children are the
ones who actually taught child
development experts doctors teachers
what is essential for a child’s
well-being and the most important thing
is not the nutrition it’s the love it’s
the responsive parent and now that we
know that we can make sure that we
intervene early if a child is in an
orphanage we need to interact with them
we need to hold them even just one hour
of physically holding a child can make a
difference to that child’s brain and
that’s important for parents to
understand
I had a little fight with my husband the
other day and I was really mad and we
both went to bed angry we didn’t speak
to each other in the morning I got it
don’t do that you know it’s not a good
idea to go to bed angry but I got up in
the morning and I was determined I was
not gonna make the first move because he
was wrong and I was right and I was not
gonna
relent and then I went into my study to
get ready for this talk and I was
working on photographs and I pulled this
one out of Shiva and Shiva has cerebral
palsy and you can see the arch of his
neck how difficult life is for him and I
was looking at this photograph and I was
thinking about how much I admire him and
how much I’ve learned from him his
determination his his courage and I
thought oh God so you’re such an idiot
well you were getting so obsessed about
who was right and who was wrong and
who’s gonna speak first cut the crap
and finally seven they remind us who we
are we are better than we know we are
more capable we have bigger hearts than
we give ourselves credit for and these
children because of their
vulnerabilities because they need us
they bring that out in us they evoke our
best selves disability is hard I’m not
trying to pretend that it’s all easy but
these kids help us to be better as human
beings
and finally after seven comes eight
another mystical number just like
eternity it just keeps going back on
itself and that’s what we don’t know
what would the world be like without
disability we think we’d like to know
and many experiments have been tried to
get rid of disability Adolf Hitler had a
very famous one
remember the old proverb how does it go
beware what you wish for because you’ll
get it and if you really want a world
without disability you better think very
carefully about what that world would
look like we can learn a lot from a
parallel struggle what would the world
be like without little girls millions of
women in Asia based with a crisis that
they were pregnant and they were
expecting a girl when it was a boy that
they wanted or that their families
wanted made individual decisions to
abort their baby daughter’s sex
selective abortion female feticide
they thought they were acting alone they
thought they were acting as individuals
they had no idea that the collective
result of all of those individual women
was going to do something unbelievable
change the sex ratio the sex ratio is
supposed to be an immutable law of
nature like the law of gravity you can’t
mess with that and yet they did and the
cataclysmic social changes that we’re
seeing as a result we’re still not fully
aware of society is different when
there’s an imbalance when there are more
men than women and we’re still trying to
figure that out research is going on all
over the world to comprehend what this
is like why this is happening
the individual women who made those
choices were not actually making choices
they were responding to a world that
didn’t value little girls like this and
the feminist prescription isn’t just a
ban sex selective abortion although I
think we all agree that that’s very
important it’s to change the world it’s
to make it so that these girls are just
as welcome as any boy every girl is as
important as every boy
now the leap from sex selective abortion
to ability selective abortion might seem
tenuous to you but it’s not it’s black
and white and it’s the same thing
ninety-three women chose to abort their
babies their little down syndrome babies
because the world doesn’t value people
with disability it treats it like a
capital crime seven women said uh-uh not
my baby it’s the world that has to
change those seven women realized that
it was not just about that baby
it was much bigger than that look at
this baby that kid is so cute and light
as a feather if we can’t take care of
this baby because she’s got a disability
do we really think that we’re going to
be able to take care of our elderly
parents who both weigh a hundred and
fifty pounds and have very strong
opinions about everything do we really
think that we’re going to be able to
handle the wounded war vet who comes
back with no legs and a heart full of
rage do we think that we’re prepared to
handle it ourselves if we step off the
curb with our lives all ahead of us get
hit by a car and all our dreams come
crashing down it’s like thinking that
you’re ready to run a marathon when
you’re not really in shape enough to
walk down to the store and get your own
milk it’s not happening it doesn’t just
magically appear you build up to it
you’ve asked us to think about thinking
take a moment to think I’m asking you to
take a moment to think about disability
and what it means in your world
it’s not an easy job it’s not easy to
have a disability yourself or to have a
child with a disability I’ve been taking
care of muy muy now for 28 years I know
it’s a hard job and it’s hard for her
and it’s hard for us but without her in
our lives I can assure you we would not
be the people that we are disability
comes with gifts and it comes with
struggle and when you accept that when
you just say okay this is part of life
and I’m gonna have fun while doing it
you would be amazed at how your world
would be transformed
and inclusive India means everybody it
means there is nobody who isn’t
important there is nobody who isn’t
precious and valuable I can’t tell you
the number of people who have come to
volunteer with us at the electical round
ation thinking that they were going to
be doing a great favor to our children
and leaving realizing that the gift was
to them they are the ones who went away
feeling happier more fulfilled luckier
they had a wonderful time and I would
like to encourage each one of you to
reach out to people in your
neighborhoods who may have a disability
there’s a kid who’s just moved in across
the street from me and I can hear him
crying all day long he’s got a
disability I’m gonna go over there when
I get back from I’m going to Bombay
today when I get back I’m gonna go over
there and ask can I take this kid out
for a walk he might enjoy that I’m sure
you will find people in your
neighborhoods who have problems and you
can reach out you can be part of the
solution make them a part of your lives
India who can be legally executed the
first one is criminals who have
convicted crimes that are so bad they’re
considered the rarest of the rare
and the second is unborn babies who have
a disability so can I just ask you to
remember that keep that thought in your
mind while I tell you my story I have a
friend who’s 44 years old and she was
expecting a baby she already had three
boys so all of us were hoping that this
new baby would be a girl
one day I found myself thinking wouldn’t
it be nice if this baby had Down
syndrome she’s 44 years old that’s the
age that people normally have a baby
with Down syndrome and I knew the
perfect school that the kid could go to
if it did happen now in a country where
an unborn baby with disability is about
as welcome as an ax-murderer what was I
thinking
or to put it another way do I know
something you don’t know I think I do I
think in fact I’m an expert on the
subject but I know I can’t just say that
I have to prove my credentials so I’m
going to tell you another story to do
that and that story
starts here not far from Dehradun in a
little village in between Missouri and
Denault II and it’s about a little girl
named muy muy muy muy was her mother’s
thirteenth baby
her mother had gotten herself sterilized
after baby number 12 but the operation
didn’t work and muy muy was conceived
anyway so her mom then decided she would
come down to Dehradun and get an
abortion she chose the one doctor in
Dehradun who didn’t do abortions but
that was also the only doctor she
trusted that doctor told her if you want
to have the baby with me I’ll help you
find a home for it so the mom agreed
went back up to her village and a few
months later she was coming down for a
routine prenatal appointment and she
went into labor on the bus muy muy was
born on the side of the road she was 12
weeks premature
she waved just under a kilo
that’s what she looked like two weeks
later there were two young American
doctors volunteering in that hospital
they heard the story about the baby that
needed a home and the woman said my
sister will adopt her and the sister was
me and that’s how muy muy came into our
family and changed our world muy muy has
taught me everything I know about
disability because muy muy has
disabilities
she has quadriplegia she uses a
wheelchair to get around she speaks only
with her eyes she eats through a tube
that’s been surgically inserted into her
tummy and she depends upon us for
everything
we talk about degrees of disability in
the field we talk about mild moderate
severe Momo’s disabilities are so
serious that they’re considered profound
and I think if you look at this picture
of muy muy
which I took just a short while ago
isn’t she beautiful you’ll agree with me
that profound in the most beautiful
sense of the word perfectly descriptive
originating in or penetrating to the
depths of ones being pervasive intense
complete we can take the labels that
people put on our children and we can
make them mean anything that we want
it’s up to us
so what have I learned from Moin Moin
what profound truths has she taught me
why did I think it would be nice for my
friend to have a baby with Down syndrome
Down syndrome by the way is the most
commonly aborted disability there is
it’s easy to detect in pregnancy and
everybody knows about it so after a
certain age most women will go in for
the test in a study that was done in the
UK of a hundred women who were told that
the baby they were carrying had Down
syndrome ninety three of them chose to
have an abortion so I’m curious about
the other seven seven is a mystical
number we’ve got the seven days of
creation we’ve got the seven wonders of
the world we’ve got the seven Harry
Potter volumes
they’re the ones that got rid of the
boxes we love to put people in boxes
right we like to classify them and we
particularly like to do that in school
so you’ve got the naughty kid you’ve got
the smart kid you’ve got the lazy kid
you’ve got the dumb kid you’ve got all
kinds of kids and teachers have them all
carefully categorized kids with special
needs come into the mainstream
classrooms and the teachers don’t know
what to make of them and so they have to
give up their boxes and begin to think
about the child and what that child
needs and how that child learns because
of children with disability we now
understand more about varying learning
styles than we ever would have if those
kids hadn’t been part of the classroom
we understand that some children were
learn best through hearing some kids
learn best through vision some kids
learn best through activity and when a
teacher understands that she makes her
classroom a much more exciting and
productive place for learning
the second thing is that they changed
the story wherever people with
disability are meaningfully included
you’re going to have different
architecture you’re going to have
different signage you’re going to have a
different mindset this room for example
I know Naveen ghoulia is coming later
and he’s in a wheelchair I don’t know
how he’s going to manage I’ve got a plan
because I bring muy muy here for this
meeting too every time that we have it
and we have to carry her down and she
sits over there when we think about
people with disability when we’re
planning our buildings when we are
organizing transport when we’re dealing
with traffic we make it work better for
everyone if there were a ramp in here it
would be easier for anybody who was
carrying a wheeled suitcase if there
were a parent coming in with a stroller
and a kid sitting in it it’s not just
about the wheelchair but people with
disabilities push us to do better for
all of us
they are the ones who invented you guard
if you are born without arms and you
have something to write what are you
gonna do look at this woman she’s
amazing she’s riding with her foot
people with disabilities because of
their disability are by definition more
resourceful more creative more
innovative they come up with solutions
for their own problems and they bring
that into the world so that we can also
benefit from it
it’s because of people with disability
that the Montessori system of Education
exists I don’t know if you’re aware of
that but it was for children with mental
handicaps that Maria Montessori came up
with the activity-based system of
learning and we all know as
educationists that that is the best way
for anybody to learn it was invented for
kids with disabilities however so we’re
always learning when people with
disability are part of us they slow us
down they demand our time and then they
get they make us see how much of it we
actually have we are so important we’re
so busy we don’t think we have that much
time but actually when you work with
children with disabilities you are
forced to slow down and stop taking
yourself so seriously they need us to
help them take a hard job like buttoning
a shirt or tying a shoe and make it into
small steps so that they can understand
it and then we learn to do that with the
hard jobs in our own lives
kids with disabilities are actually the
ones who helped us understand what is
essential in bringing up a child this is
a sad story but there was a group of
children who were left in an orphanage
in Romania they were taken care of
physically but they got no social
interaction nobody coddled them nobody
played with them nobody responded to
them and those children grew up with
terrible terrible handicaps their brains
were dead there were huge black holes in
their brains and you can see that on
brain scans and those children are the
ones who actually taught child
development experts doctors teachers
what is essential for a child’s
well-being and the most important thing
is not the nutrition it’s the love it’s
the responsive parent and now that we
know that we can make sure that we
intervene early if a child is in an
orphanage we need to interact with them
we need to hold them even just one hour
of physically holding a child can make a
difference to that child’s brain and
that’s important for parents to
understand
I had a little fight with my husband the
other day and I was really mad and we
both went to bed angry we didn’t speak
to each other in the morning I got it
don’t do that you know it’s not a good
idea to go to bed angry but I got up in
the morning and I was determined I was
not gonna make the first move because he
was wrong and I was right and I was not
gonna
relent and then I went into my study to
get ready for this talk and I was
working on photographs and I pulled this
one out of Shiva and Shiva has cerebral
palsy and you can see the arch of his
neck how difficult life is for him and I
was looking at this photograph and I was
thinking about how much I admire him and
how much I’ve learned from him his
determination his his courage and I
thought oh God so you’re such an idiot
well you were getting so obsessed about
who was right and who was wrong and
who’s gonna speak first cut the crap
and finally seven they remind us who we
are we are better than we know we are
more capable we have bigger hearts than
we give ourselves credit for and these
children because of their
vulnerabilities because they need us
they bring that out in us they evoke our
best selves disability is hard I’m not
trying to pretend that it’s all easy but
these kids help us to be better as human
beings
and finally after seven comes eight
another mystical number just like
eternity it just keeps going back on
itself and that’s what we don’t know
what would the world be like without
disability we think we’d like to know
and many experiments have been tried to
get rid of disability Adolf Hitler had a
very famous one
remember the old proverb how does it go
beware what you wish for because you’ll
get it and if you really want a world
without disability you better think very
carefully about what that world would
look like we can learn a lot from a
parallel struggle what would the world
be like without little girls millions of
women in Asia based with a crisis that
they were pregnant and they were
expecting a girl when it was a boy that
they wanted or that their families
wanted made individual decisions to
abort their baby daughter’s sex
selective abortion female feticide
they thought they were acting alone they
thought they were acting as individuals
they had no idea that the collective
result of all of those individual women
was going to do something unbelievable
change the sex ratio the sex ratio is
supposed to be an immutable law of
nature like the law of gravity you can’t
mess with that and yet they did and the
cataclysmic social changes that we’re
seeing as a result we’re still not fully
aware of society is different when
there’s an imbalance when there are more
men than women and we’re still trying to
figure that out research is going on all
over the world to comprehend what this
is like why this is happening
the individual women who made those
choices were not actually making choices
they were responding to a world that
didn’t value little girls like this and
the feminist prescription isn’t just a
ban sex selective abortion although I
think we all agree that that’s very
important it’s to change the world it’s
to make it so that these girls are just
as welcome as any boy every girl is as
important as every boy
now the leap from sex selective abortion
to ability selective abortion might seem
tenuous to you but it’s not it’s black
and white and it’s the same thing
ninety-three women chose to abort their
babies their little down syndrome babies
because the world doesn’t value people
with disability it treats it like a
capital crime seven women said uh-uh not
my baby it’s the world that has to
change those seven women realized that
it was not just about that baby
it was much bigger than that look at
this baby that kid is so cute and light
as a feather if we can’t take care of
this baby because she’s got a disability
do we really think that we’re going to
be able to take care of our elderly
parents who both weigh a hundred and
fifty pounds and have very strong
opinions about everything do we really
think that we’re going to be able to
handle the wounded war vet who comes
back with no legs and a heart full of
rage do we think that we’re prepared to
handle it ourselves if we step off the
curb with our lives all ahead of us get
hit by a car and all our dreams come
crashing down it’s like thinking that
you’re ready to run a marathon when
you’re not really in shape enough to
walk down to the store and get your own
milk it’s not happening it doesn’t just
magically appear you build up to it
you’ve asked us to think about thinking
take a moment to think I’m asking you to
take a moment to think about disability
and what it means in your world
it’s not an easy job it’s not easy to
have a disability yourself or to have a
child with a disability I’ve been taking
care of muy muy now for 28 years I know
it’s a hard job and it’s hard for her
and it’s hard for us but without her in
our lives I can assure you we would not
be the people that we are disability
comes with gifts and it comes with
struggle and when you accept that when
you just say okay this is part of life
and I’m gonna have fun while doing it
you would be amazed at how your world
would be transformed
and inclusive India means everybody it
means there is nobody who isn’t
important there is nobody who isn’t
precious and valuable I can’t tell you
the number of people who have come to
volunteer with us at the electical round
ation thinking that they were going to
be doing a great favor to our children
and leaving realizing that the gift was
to them they are the ones who went away
feeling happier more fulfilled luckier
they had a wonderful time and I would
like to encourage each one of you to
reach out to people in your
neighborhoods who may have a disability
there’s a kid who’s just moved in across
the street from me and I can hear him
crying all day long he’s got a
disability I’m gonna go over there when
I get back from I’m going to Bombay
today when I get back I’m gonna go over
there and ask can I take this kid out
for a walk he might enjoy that I’m sure
you will find people in your
neighborhoods who have problems and you
can reach out you can be part of the
solution make them a part of your lives
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