Aspies For Freedom

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While I appreciate your good intentions, I do not entirely agree with what you have written here:

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Many fear current events could result in the total genocide of autistic people via a prenatal test and the prospect of invasive brain surgery, forced medication, "behavioural therapy" and other methods
designed to forcefully change an autistic person into a non-autistic one.

In my view this fear you describe is merely going to make us out to be paranoid. The prenatal test, while its likely that they will develop it, is unlikely to kill us off, or come close to it. Firstly you would need to test every single baby, a very expensive, and possibly dangerous proceedure. Then you would be need to find the doctors to do the abortions, which is unlikely (I suspect the church would put paid to a few abortion clinics, if needs be). The other methods you describe, yes they have been attempted, in the Judge Rotenberg Center and elsewhere. None of them work, or are ever going to work. They are not a threat, simply because of cost and public outrage.

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The undersigned view this growing situation as akin to the rise of civil rights for black people and homosexuals, or the rise of feminism. We wish to be granted the same legal protections under law as other minority groups without having to take the label of being disabled.

Bad bad move. Thats more likely to be a case of wearing target signs on our person. Asides, the people who have such protection are getting riled for it, and rightly so (look at Muslims and the religious discrimination act). Plus the disability benefits and support we would lose from making such a move would really send people over the edge.

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Many of us are in the situation of being labelled as disabled in order to call into question our mental competence, while at the same time not being disabled enough to get reasonable adjustments to workplaces and services where required. Many autistics are unemployed due to prejudice from employers while being fully qualified to work. Various autistic traits all contribute to the prejudice we face without affecting our ability to work.

This is the real point. Employers are discrimatory in the interview processes (in fact this actually happens in the educational system to begin with, like Oxbridge). Also jobs are more accessed via networks, which is the key issue here. You do discount that some on the spectrum are able to work, choose not to.

I am not writing this as a dig (its good to see someone to try for once), but more to suggest making a new petition (with a wiser expiry date as well) that is more likely to work, rather than something broad and sweeping that the government will dismiss out of hand. Possibly a petition that suggests some real solutions to the problem, that can be legislated towards. Any ideas?

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