Black and white photo of Andrea looking up at the camera.

Yes, I am scared about what the loss of the Affordable Care Act will mean for people with disabilities, particularly the 100 million Americans with chronic pain, myself included, who often spend thousands of dollars yearly on specialists, prescription medications, blood tests, surgery, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. Yes, I am scared about what the loss of federal funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood will mean for people with disabilities, who often rely on these health providers for routine cancer screening and lower-cost birth control. Yes, I am scared about what the loss of safety nets like Social Security will mean for people with disabilities, who often must rely on social services to meet their basic needs. Yes, I scared about the Supreme Court and how new judges might decide cases involving people with disabilities. Yes, yes, yes, I am scared on so many fronts.

But most importantly, maybe, I am scared about how our culture will react to a president who thinks it is perfectly okay to openly mock a journalist with a disability. I am scared about the message this behavior sends to the rest of the country: that people with disabilities are fair game for ridicule, for public humiliation, for outright dismissal. That people with disabilities are less-than-human. That a disability is a reason to reject a person’s worth.

People with disabilities have had to fight long and hard for access to jobs, public spaces, housing, even to be able to make our own reproductive decisions. There is so much we stand to lose with a president who fundamentally dismisses our lives.

I am joining the Disability March as a first step of resistance: to be seen, to be heard, to let our president and our culture know that we count. And that we aren’t going away.

Bio: Andrea Scarpino is the author of the poetry collections Once Upon Wing Lake (Four Chambers Press, 2017), What the Willow Said as it Fell (Red Hen Press, 2016) and Once, Then (Red Hen Press, 2014). She received a PhD in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, and an MFA from The Ohio State University. She has published in numerous journals including The Cincinnati Review, Los Angeles Review, and Prairie Schooner, and she served as Poet Laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula 2015-2017.