Heather Watkins
Bio:
Heather Watkins is a disability advocate, author, blogger, mother, and graduate of Emerson College with a B.S. in Mass Communications. Born with muscular dystrophy, she loves reading, daydreaming, and chocolate. She serves on a few disability-related boards and is a former chair of the Boston Disability Commission Advisory Board. She is a co-founder of “Divas with Disabilities Project,” a supportive sisterhood network representing women of color with disabilities. Heather is also a member of Harriet Tubman Collective, composed of Black Deaf & Disabled activists and organizers. Her publishing experience includes articles in MDA’s Quest magazine and Mass Rehab Commission’s Consumer Voice newsletter, and she has blogged for OurAbility.com, Artoflivingguide.org, Disabledparenting.com, Grubstreet.org, and Thankgodi.com. Heather’s short story, “Thank God I Have Muscular Dystrophy,” was published in 2013 as part of a compilation in the Thank God I…Am an Empowered Woman ® book series. Her blog, Slow Walkers See More, includes reflections and insight from her life with disability.
People who are marginalized on the basis of race, gender, gender identity, disability, socioeconomic status, and other factors need policies to support our ability to make decisions about our own reproductive lives.
The first year of the Trump administration has been marked by attacks, direct and indirect, on the rights of people with disabilities, including the latest — a bill to weaken the Americans with Disabilities Act.
As disability rights advocates are fighting back against Republican attempts to dismantle Medicaid and other support services, women, especially women of color, bring to their activism "unique, comprehensive, lived experience," reports writer Heather Watkins.















