Published in Legal Clinic Bar Ilan on 3/30/2020. Read original article here.
When Efrat Vaknin became disabled, she did not imagine that she would experience the most difficult treatment from doctors, until she decided that she wanted to get pregnant. “The real difficulty in our disability is human beings who fail to see the amazing ability of the human to creative solutions, adapt to new situations and flourish out of the most difficult places.”
When I was injured in a car accident at the age of 17 it never occurred to me that I would have to deal with anything other than the disability I received as a gift. I had a family and a supportive environment. Now it remains to deal solely with physical rehabilitation. I raised my head and knew there was so much work ahead.
But in retrospect I can say that physical rehabilitation is the easy part of the process. You recover to a certain extent, take care to strengthen yourself and keep fit – the really difficult challenge is to deal with the attitude of society.
When you are a woman, this relationship is especially difficult. In a world that worships the integrity of the body – especially the feminine – the treatment of women with disabilities almost negates our ability to be women. Is a woman who is not ” made ” according to the prevailing female model still considered a woman in the eyes of society.
I was afraid my cycle would never come back, so I kept asking over and over again: doctors, therapists, staff and volunteers. What will? Could it be that he will not return? What happened to my body? How come I have no more menstruation? And no one had an answer and no one explained, clarified except ” Do not worry, in the end he will come back. Everything will be fine and focus on rehabilitation .”
But the treatment of a sexually disabled woman does not end with the lack of reference to your sexuality medically. Even in your immediate environment you are not treated as a sexual creature, as a creature that is really capable of creating a feeling of attraction in another person, as an ” equal ” woman .
In retrospect I could see that in the first place I was not destined for a relationship, for meaningful, satisfying and enjoyable sex and of course, for mothers.
The same lack of vocation, does not have to be expressed blatantly verbally, but it is much harder that it is expressed in small gestures: never try to match you someone (who is not a disabled person), no matter how beautiful, cute, smart and successful you will be, never touch On this subject as part of a friendship discourse, neither in this, nor in burning feminine issues, you will be detached from the whole discourse, it is actually part of the unconscious dictation of a life of loneliness.
The doctor told me “I do not have time for this”
This compartmentalization brought you to the point that only at a relatively older age, just before my 40th birthday, did I realize that if I wanted to be a mom, I had to start acting. Even without being disabled it is not easy to get pregnant at the age of 40. This is how I found myself in the process of fertility treatments.
But even there I encountered inaccessibility and discriminatory treatment. Accessible beds usually did not exist in the community (especially in the HMOs) and each test included climbing the Everest Mountains of beds for gynecological examinations.
One of the first times I got to the HMO I really had a hard time overcoming the height of the bed. It was not possible to lower the bed in any way and the test was important to determine regarding continued treatment. I tried to be creative and try to climb first on the armrests of the chair and then on the bed but this attempt really did not work.
I looked at the doctor who was demonstrably losing his patience. I knew I had no choice but to ask for his help even though it was not his job and that he was not qualified for it and it’s a little embarrassing. The doctor was not happy with my request, but neither did he resist and I tried my best to erase from my head the whole embarrassing situation and try to be more practical and goal-oriented.
The unpleasant experience led me to avoid such tests but for the step of wanting to get pregnant, I was left with no choice but to go for certain tests in the community. On one of the occasions I went to do a Pap test at one of the community health funds I had to deal with a doctor’s blatant intolerance.
From the beginning he hurried me, closed the curtain behind me and demanded emphatically: “Okay, call me to get on the bed and be ready.” I did not know what to do, how am I supposed to get on the bed? I tried to dispel all fears of taking a deep breath and overcoming the embarrassment again.
In a thin, shy voice I asked for his help, “I really can not get on the bed” I explained, even a single nurse was not available and the doctor finally helped, even though he did not really want to. He really longed to finish the long test and move on to the next turn.
I was really tense and that doctor was really nervous because ” I was not slack “. He completely rejected the obvious fear of every woman, while inserting a cold metal object into the most intimate organ of her body, in a position that is not the most comfortable position, especially not for a disabled woman.
“I do not have time for that” he exclaimed, “No, I do not have another minute and I can not do the test for you like that.” The determination in the shrill voice broke me to pieces, what can I do, how do I proceed?
I wanted to respond, to resist, to express my position: ” Wait a minute, I’m sure I can , do not reject me outright, give me a chance, I will be a good girl, promise I will be loose” But I disappeared silent, I could not speak. He shouted and uttered other kinds of piles of words that caused tension in my body only to increase and contract.
After a few minutes he kicked me out of his room and called the next ” customer ” . I left his room crying, I gathered more and more.
The trauma from this horrible visit led to my reluctance to have that necessary test, I automatically cringed whenever I thought of that test, but I knew I had to do the test and soon after infinite delays, I performed the test at the hospital under general anesthesia. A test that is so simple and short has become for me a nightmare that required a surgical procedure.
Go prove you are capable of being a mother even though you are disabled
The next trauma was not long in coming – a doctor I visited prior to starting fertility treatment asked me to provide him with a social worker certificate that I was able to be a mother and care for the baby. ” What? Sir Doctor, I’m not being treated by such a factor , how exactly will I get the … what do you want me to do …?”
No matter how many arguments I have made that I am not treated by a social worker , that I have nothing to go to a social worker who does not know me, that my skills for motherhood should be tested according to standards by which every potential mother is examined , he understood everything, but stuck to his position: ” OK Maos ” that there is no impediment to being a mother. “
For the first time I realized that this is completely beyond my comprehension, that it is not exactly behavior that can be understood in an intelligent or logical way: no matter how independent, financially organized, well-groomed I am, it does not matter how many degrees I have, or how much I earn. It does not matter if I come up with arguments, examples and arguments – the bottom line for them is I am a woman in a wheelchair.
The real difficulty in our disability is the human beings who fail to see the amazing ability of the human to creative solutions, adapt to new situations and flourish out of the most difficult places
According to a new report by the Clinic for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at Bar-Ilan University, the Ruderman Family Foundation and the organization for rights in collaboration with the Kahn Foundation, Matan and Peres Bereishit – women with disabilities have more difficulty integrating into society than men with disabilities.
Among the prominent areas that women noted as more difficult than men: tailored health services (31% vs. 18%), military recruitment (11% vs. 6%), academic studies (23% vs. 16%), bureaucracy (49% vs. 45%), Housing (25% vs. 23%), discrimination (30% vs. 28%) and stigmas and prejudices (53% vs. 52%). Men, on the other hand, are more troubled by the difficulties that accompany them in the labor market (54% vs. 50%), in accessibility (49% vs. 43%), in relationships and parenting (15% vs. 11%). Gender equality is recorded with difficulty in issuing a driver’s license (16%).
51% of women rated the difficulties in health and medical services as most significant for them. In second place with 50%, women rated the difficulties in the areas of sexuality, body image and relationships. 48% indicated dealing with vulnerabilities due to disabilities (violence, harassment, insults, etc.) and in the fourth and last place were rated the difficulties in the areas of parenting and relationships.
Alongside the survey, in-depth interviews were conducted with 32 women with disabilities who were asked to describe the main difficulties they experienced in each of the areas of life presented to them. In the field of health services, problems were described in the physical and geographical accessibility of gynecology, ignorance and lack of knowledge among the medical staff about the disabilities and their impact on health; And a phenomenon of medical staffs refraining from performing tests resulting from a misconception of disability. In the field of sexuality and body image , it was found that the sexuality of women with disabilities is not discussed in society and in various educational frameworks, and as a result, girls with disabilities grow up to a reality where sexuality is not an integral part of their lives. In the area of vulnerability , women indicated higher rates of violence and sexual harassment compared to women without disabilities. In the field of parentingBarriers have been discovered already during pregnancy and childbirth, such as difficulty getting pregnant and having a pregnancy, stigma that adversely affects fertility processes, lack of consideration for disabilities during tests during pregnancy, and the birth itself.