Mothers with Disabilities

Everyone – including individuals with disabilities – has the right to start a family, to have children. Governments, moreover, are obliged to lend their support – at least according to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While this principle may seem self-evident, it is still far from fully accepted by officials or medical personnel in Germany.  

We plan to accompany women whose physical disabilities involve significant challenges when it comes to becoming mothers. In the film, we present two different cases, the first a pregnant woman, the second a mother with a small child. How do these women deal with the perception that they may be in some way incapable of becoming mothers, of caring for a child? What hurdles must they overcome in order to fulfill their desire to have children? What fears and doubts must they confront? Who will offer these women support, both during and after pregnancy? In recent years, the number of women with disabilities who are fulfilling their desire to become mothers has risen considerably. Yet no other demographic seems to have been so overlooked. Why is this the case? Should a woman with a disability – including one that may be heritable – be able to have children? Views on this issue are strongly divergent. But why is this so? For women facing physical challenges, motherhood is a form of normality, something that brings them closer to women without disabilities. It allows them to become better integrated into society. And yet such images – of a mother in a wheelchair, of a woman of short stature with a child – remain unfamiliar. We will be filming two women, speaking with their caregivers, in the process conveying enthralling personal stories.

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