Increasingly, choice is used by some individuals and groups as a justification for the continued institutionalization of some people with developmental disabilities. What is usually meant by this is that parents and family members should have the option of deciding where and how their sons and daughters with disabilities should live. Although family members can play an important role in supporting people with developmental disabilities, they are not entitled to substitute their own interests and wishes for those of people with disabilities. The condemnation of institutions by organized self-advocacy groups testifies to the fact that people with developmental disabilities do not wish to be put away. In the community, there is unlimited variety and opportunities to pursue life styles based on individual needs and preferences.
Any adult has the right to decide with whom to associate.
Some groups have chosen to segregate themselves from the wider society based on religious, ethnic, and other grounds. Some parents choose to send their nondisabled children to boarding schools where they can be with students of similar ethnic, religious, or economic backgrounds. In a democratic society people have the right to choose segregation to associate with only those persons presumed to be exactly like themselves. But society has no responsibility to subsidize segregation. Public policy toward people with disabilities should support opportunities to make the same choices other people make nothing more and nothing less.