Part 2 of 2
Taken together, these policies reflect a narrow vision of citizenship tied to productivity. While SSDI is one central example, the ethical concerns discussed here apply more broadly across disability policy structures, where similar moral assumptions shape eligibility, access, and social worth. But alternative ethical frameworks exist. To counter this dominant framework, disability justice proponents offer an alternative rooted in care, reciprocity, and shared responsibility. Disability justice principles understand that humans are inherently relational and interdependent 1. It frames care as reciprocal rather than one-directional and rejects the binary of independence versus dependence. As Kittay (2015) 2 writes, “justice provides the fair terms of social life given our mutual and inevitable dependency and our inextricable interdependency” (p. 287). Disabled people are often hyper-aware of interdependence because policy overtly conditions our lives on it. In reality, non-disabled people are just as interdependent, but their dependence is socially hidden and normalized (Boni-Saenz, 2024, pp. 19-21 3; Kittay, 2015, p. 287). To be clear, interdependence does not look like paternalism (Savage & Bowers, 2022, p. 265 4), where one is responsible for another, but rather a recognition of the mutual aid that shows up naturally in our social fabric. While “the cry for ‘Independence!’ can be valuable,” it must not replace the reality of interdependence (Kittay, 2015, p. 287). Kittay goes on to argue that calls for independence are actually for independence “from certain oppressive conditions, and a dependence on other conditions that are hopefully more respectful of our desire to be efficacious agents” (p. 287).
Building on this foundation, philosophers like Kittay expand the argument by framing interdependence as a moral covenant that strengthens, rather than weakens, society. On an ethical level, interdependence respects human dignity without requiring productivity and recognizes care as a social good in its own right (Maker, 2022, p. 90 5). As Kittay (2015) argues in her reference to social covenants, “[i]ndividuals forging relationships of obligation to one another understand that they have obligations and responsibilities to others affected by their agreements” (p. 288). Accepting the social covenant of interdependency also ensures that responsibility is distributed across society rather than placed solely on individuals, leading to burnout, resentment, and poorer care outcomes. As it is, caregiving is devalued financially and socially, often requiring workers to labor beyond hours covered by insurance, being paid a low wage, or to work completely without pay or acknowledgement. In addition, calls for independence have “too frequently been taken up by public officials when it has been tied to savings for ‘the public purse,’ [and] can have the effect of disadvantaging those least able to fend for themselves, shifting the cost and care to struggling families. Furthermore, it can backfire when that independence requires overall increased, not reduced costs” (Kittay, 2015, p. 290).
However, interdependence is not without its complexities. Maker (2022) raises an important critique regarding how universal care ethics account for diverse and unequal needs. Maker argues that “theorizing care as a universal need means little guidance is offered in terms of how to measure or account for different (and sometimes considerable) needs” (p. 86). This is a valid concern to consider when discussing the practical matters of policy and legal creation. In Maker’s argument, it is also imperative to add a human rights perspective to an ethics of care because it is “crucial to establishing all people’s common humanity as well as establishing that additional resources are sometimes required to provide equitable access to all” (p. 88). Maker brings up several criticisms of focusing primarily on an ethics of care, though she also summarizes Kittay’s counterargument that “people who receive care are only devalued and characterized as needy because dependency is presumed to be an undesirable state when set against the ideal of autonomy” (p. 93). Maker herself argues that “[t]hese criticisms can in a sense be understood as a difference in the ordering of priorities rather than the result of insurmountable ideological inconsistencies” (p. 94).
Despite these tensions, the call for interdependence is not an idealistic abstraction. It is an ethical foundation for more equitable approaches to disability policy. Rather than relying on narrow ideas like independence, self-sufficiency, or economic productivity, policy must be shaped by core values such as human dignity, mutual care, equity, and the rejection of structural discrimination. Systems that treat support as conditional, limit autonomy, or measure worth through narrow criteria, such as work history, fail to reflect how people actually live. Ethical frameworks grounded in care, interdependence, and human rights offer a more realistic and inclusive foundation. They recognize that all people depend on one another and that support should be based on need, not proof of prior contribution or assumed self-reliance. By replacing harmful ideas about deservingness with collective moral responsibility, policy can better reflect the lived realities of disabled people and uphold their full inclusion and worth in society.
- Sins Invalid. (n.d.). 10 Principles of Disability Justice. Sins Invalid. ↩︎
- Kittay, E. F. (2015). Centering Justice on Dependency and Recovering Freedom. Hypatia, 30(1), 285–291. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12131 ↩︎
- Boni-Saenz, A. (2024). The right to fail. Oklahoma Law Review, 77(1), 11–30. ↩︎
- Savage, T. A., & Bowers, A. (2022). Dignity of Risk, Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities, and Living in the Community. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 65(2), 262–273. https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2022.0022 ↩︎
- Maker, Y. (2022). A Disability Rights-Informed Ethics of Care: Interdependence and Common Humanity. In Care and Support Rights After Neoliberalism: Balancing Competing Claims Through Policy and Law (1st ed., pp. 80–94). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108750479 ↩︎
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