Reproductive Freedom, Family Planning and Right to Parent
While sex, family planning and parenting information and education programs exist for the general community, it is rare to find information and programs that are accessible or targeted to people with disability. Information reported at consultations provides evidence that negative and false presumptions that people with disability are asexual or oversexed, are not capable of parenting or should not be parents because they may ‘pass on’ their impairment to their children is still strong in Australia.
Women with disability face a lack of access to information and programs on reproductive health, preconception, reproduction and pregnancy and limited access to birth control, adoption, abortion and assistive reproductive technology. They also face a health system that lacks policy and procedures about the reproductive health, pregnancy, birthing and post-natal needs of women with disability.435
Despite the NDS acknowledging that women with disability face discrimination and prejudicial assumptions about their right to experience parenthood, there are no actions identified to address this.436
