Short and sweet;
I understand some people's dislike of ABS, so I leave that to you.
I used to be involved in car crash testing and structural integrity.
In an accident with another car or object, there are two collisions, the "primary" collision and the "secondary" collision.
In the primary collision, there is usually no damage to the occupants of the car (there are exceptions of course like legs being crushed, etc.). But in most accidents, it is the secondary collision which causes most personal damage or death.
Secondary collision is when the occupants of the vehicle continue moving forward at the same speed the car was traveling before the car was slowed down or stopped by the collision and smash into the part of the car in front of them inside the car. The dashboard, the windshield, even the seat belts.
Seat belts help, but if you imagine being held in the air suspended by your seat belts with you facing downwards, imagine how your body would start to feel and sustain damage when your weight is multiplied by 10 to over 40 times. At a deceleration at 10G's (10 times your weight), a 175 pound person feels like they have almost 1600 pounds crushing them into the seat belts. At a higher speed collision producing 40G's, the force is almost 7000 pounds against the belts. Not a healthy situation.
One of the men in our company was in an accident which was later computed to have produced almost 50G's. He had his seat belts on and sustained, among other things, 2 completely crushed and broken hips from the seat belts.
Air bags work because they provide a barrier between the car interior and your body and they spread the impact forces over a larger area of your body, rather than just the contacts points of a seatbelt.
If you total your car because of the air bag costs, then at least they probably saved you or a passenger from being seriously harmed or even "totalled".
Before disconnecting the air bags, consider that you may have passenger(s) or have loaned the car to another person when an accident might occur. You are making a choice about their safety as well as yours.
If you have an accident, you don't have to install new air bags (as far as I know, legally?) and then you can decide what to do with the car. Just please don't sell it to someone else without their knowing that the air bags have been blown.
Just my two cents worth,
The Ole Factory Rep (not Subaru)
P.S. I won't even go into the story of an acquaintance down in the South who said, when seat belts became mandatory, "I'd rather be thrown clear" (of the car in an accident). I think they are still looking for his body.