Trigger warning: Ableism, eugenics, medical abuse.
The autistic community is boycotting the book To Siri With Love, published by HarperCollins and written by Judith Newman. Please stand with us.
#BoycottToSiriedit *this video is now captioned!
“We need a cure for autism!”
Well you will never get it, no matter your stance on the subject. Autism is likely genetic and studies show that by six months of age there are already detectable changes in the brain that predict an autism diagnosis later in life. So even though we don’t know what autism is, it’s definitely something you’re born with and it is impossible to change that after the baby is born. Nothing will ever turn an autistic person who is alive into an allistic person. You can’t rewrite their entire brain anatomy.
So why do Autism Speaks talk of “the cure”? What they mean by cure is prenatal screening that will allow parents to abort fetuses with certain traits or genes. It means stopping autistic people from being born. It means getting rid of us even before a fetus develops a brain. It means that from their point of view not ever being alive (so essentially death) is better than existence as an autistic person.
That’s what you are saying when you’re advocating for a cure. “I wish you were never born”. “I wish your parents would have aborted you before you developed into a person”. “I think your existence is worse than death”. “I think you would be better off dead”. That is your message. That is your opinion.
Think about that next time you talk about a cure for autism.
I think my idea of life and yours are wholly different, because to me aborting a fetus and saying “I wish you were never born” are widely different things. And you’re really guilting parents who want the best for their kids here.
Thing is, if we agree abortion should be legal in its current form, then we must agree on two points
1) a woman can abort for any reason, and so you shouldn’t judge if she chooses to abort a neuroatypical fetus
2) it isn’t a child yet, otherwise I’d be child murder. So you’re in essence advocating for a lump of flesh that might develop into an autistic person. So why is aborting it so bad? If regular abortion (the, I’m just not ready yet variety) is ok, then why is it not ok in this case? Only because it might become an autistic person? People sometimes abort and pre-select embryos based on gender, too.Point is, there’s no reason people can’t start over to give their kid the best chance they got, cause what’s inside the mom at that point is just a lump with some blueprints. If the blueprints aren’t ideal; why no start over? You may think it’s heartless or somehow that it’s an attack against you, but if my fetus had any sort of abnormality, hell yeah I’d abort it and try again. There’s nothing wrong with being autistic, but you also can’t be so within your own experiences to think all forms of autism are good and have no difficult bearing on the child and it’s family.
So I think we shouldn’t guilt women who want a cure after they had an autistic child. Because they love their kid, and they wish they had the best chance they could, and autism can rob that of you. They just want to make sure the next parent can have a healthier child.
Yes of course it is a lump of tissues at that point. Yes of course every woman has a right to abort a fetus if she doesn’t want to carry to term. No objections there. However, there is difference between getting an abortion because you think you won’t be able to give a disabled child all they need and getting an abortion because you just don’t think life with a disability is a good life.
Funny thing about disabilities, they can happen to you at any moment. You can get into a car crash and become paraplegic. You can get an infection and become deaf as a result. You can lose a limb due to an accident. You can get ill all of a sudden and live with chronic pain for the rest of your life. And same can happen to your child.
You can abort a fetus and that’s not a murder yet, absolutely. But if you aren’t ready to have a disabled child for moral reasons… just don’t have a child. Cause if that child will turn out to be disabled later on, you will not be able to start over, you will have to love that child and take care of that child, no matter your ideas about what a good life looks like. I’m not guilting women for wanting abortions. I’m guilting some women, and all kinds of people, for their ableism.
Furthermore, well I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want to never have been born. Yes my life is difficult, but it’s not difficult only because of autism. I’m also bisexual and transgender, and if there were genetic markers for that, would you say it is okay to abort a fetus that will develop into a gay or trans child? I mean, there are many parents who killed their autistic children, as well as their LGBT+ children, so I guess some people find other solutions.
Also thanks for saying my blueprints weren’t ideal. I mean yes they weren’t cause I’ve got a bunch of nasty genes, but that doesn’t mean you are better than me because you are allistic. “All forms of autism” – there are no forms of autism, there’s a mix of traits, situations and comorbid problems. I don’t know why we assume that some autistic traits immediately deem you “low-functioning”, but that is not the case in the real world. There’s only one neurological phenotype – autism.
(And btw, even though I hate hate hate that argument, some autistic people were and are brilliant scientists, artists, musicians and so on; when aborting a fetus with certain genes, you don’t know which mix of traits they got – so you just might be stopping another Einstein, daVinci or Mozart from being born)
And lastly, think about all the money that is going into research for prenatal screening. A ton of money. Money that could go into helping me and people like me live better. Because here’s a thing, the vast majority of our disability comes from lack of accommodations and support. If I had money to fix that, I probably wouldn’t be so dependent on my parents. And thousands of autistic people need accommodations while the money is being spent on preventing us from being born.
Now if you had constantly heard that your life is the worse option, that people think any mother would want another try, that not wanting a child like you is “wanting the best for their kids”, that your neurotype “robbed” your parents of the child they wished their had, and that the money that could help you and people like you live a better life should rather go into preventing them from being born… you’d be pretty angry as well.
The Doctor Is Out 