February 4, 2018 - 14:22
"Who's Able-Bodied Anyway?"
NYT 2/4/18, Emily Badger and Margot Sanger-Katz
"These so-called able-bodied are defined in many ways by what they are not: not disabled, not elderly, not children, not pregnant, not blind. They are effectively everyone left, and they have become the focus of resurgent conservative proposals to overhaul government aid, such as one announced last month by the Trump administration that would allow states to test work requirements for Medicaid.
Able-bodied is not truly a demographic label, though: There is no standard for physical or mental ability that makes a person able. Rather, the term has long been a political one. Across centuries of use, it has consistently implied another negative: The able-bodied could work, but are not working (or working hard enough). And, as such, they don’t deserve our aid.
'Within that term is this entire history of debates about the poor who can work but refuse to, because they’re lazy,' said Susannah Ottaway, a historian of social welfare at Carleton College in Minnesota. 'To a historian, to see this term is to understand its very close association with debates that center around the need to morally reform the poor.'”