Greg Abbott

Texas governor Greg Abbott recently threatened to pull funding from the Texas Children’s Hospital because of a viral video. In the video cardiologist Tony Pastor tells people that they are not required to answer when the hospital asks them if they are a citizen. Hospitals in Texas are required to ask this as a result of an executive order from governor Abbott.
Make no mistake, Gregg Abbott is an evil man. The list of all of the evil things that he has done is miles long. But something that I am seeing a lot of in response to this is ableism. For context, Gregg Abbott is paralyzed below the waist as a result of a tree falling on him in 1984. This ableism is not okay, ableism is never ok. It is beyond frustrating to see people, many of whom probably consider themselves to be allies of the disabled community, resorting to ableism.
Ableism impacts all disabled people regardless of who it is directed at. It sends the message to us that the moment we don’t live up to whatever arbitrary standard that you have set for us we should be subject to prejudice because of our disability. It also exposes people to be only conditional allies to us, and a conditional ally is not an ally at all.
Ableism is also intellectually lazy. It is picking the low hanging proverbial fruit. In the case of Greg Abbott as I said before the list of evil things he has done is miles long and easily accessible. We should be going after him for what he has actually done. In one Tiktok video a comedian suggested moving abortion clinics to the second floor so that he cannot get to them, but let us analyze this conceit. In this scenario it is being suggested that because he is in a wheelchair he would not be able to get to an abortion clinic on the second floor of the building. If we accept this as true then moving the abortion clinic to the second floor would also render it inaccessible to pregnant people who use wheelchairs and are in need of the services of that clinic. So, for the purposes of creating a joke the comedian created a scenario where the clinics are moved to stick it to Greg Abbot, but in doing so also makes them inaccessible to many of their disabled patients.
I will conclude this with a reminder that if you think that ableism can be okay in any circumstance you are not an ally to disabled people.