Aspies For Freedom

Same here. In fact, my father wouldn't be there, so my six brothers and my sister and I wouldn't exist. Or, if they would have just aborted me, my five kids and my four grandchildren wouldn't be there.

The same is true for my family.  I grew up thinking of autistic people as entirely normal.  What a shock it was to discover how much prejudice exists.

We're looking into the face of the largest genocide in history, and one that, if it were successful, would almost certainly be commemorated as a great public health triumph.  No Autistic Holocaust memorials, no expressions of regret whatsoever.  Sometimes I despair of the future of the human species.

Yeah, I wish...

:lol:

The problem with using Holocaust images or the word "Holocaust" too broadly is that there are many people still living who survived the Nazi death camps, or whose parents were survivors, and they would be offended.  It might result in more opposition to AFF and the autistic civil rights movement.

I'm not saying the comparison shouldn't be made, but the words and images will have to be carefully chosen.  There have been other instances of genocide at various times in history, and it may be more effective to use language that is not specific to the Nazi era.

If conceiving a child isn't intended, the best way of preventing it is birth control or not having sex. To kill the kid because of stupidity on the parents part is murder.

Can we stop arguing about abortion, please?

The last time I looked, we were seriously short on allies.      I don't think we're in a position to turn down help from pro-life people, pro-choice people, or anyone who could offer us help.  We are trying to prevent a genocide, and there's not much time left.  We can't let ourselves be distracted by extraneous political discussions.

Okay, if it is an autistic baby being aborted, in your opinion it is genocide and seriously wrong, if the baby is aborted for other reasons, it doesn't matter and is irrelevant. Interesting.

Anyway, as this is obviously not getting us anywhere, this is my last post in this thread. So, don't bother replying to me, since I will ignore this thread from this moment on.

In my opinion, being against pre-natal testing then abortion is not the same as having an abortion per se. Because when you have an abortion  based on a prenatal (what ever it is) you are say this kind of human being is less valued than another type of human being. Is that the kind of world we want to live in? where the worth of individuals are measured and some deemed not good enough to live?? I think not. But if you simply have an abortion simply because it was unexpected or yopu are not ready to start a family or was raped, that is completely different in motivation.


Now I would prefer for me personally that babies were given up for adoptions than having abortions.

Ditto.

Instead of pointlessly arguing on the forum, we should all be building anti-eugenics webpages that express our personal viewpoints.  Those who want to use images of fetuses can do that, while others who do not feel comfortable with that approach can do something else.  The important thing is to get more pages posted and to make the public aware of the issue.  Identical content is not necessary.

I do feel that AFF in its official capacity should refrain from using potentially divisive images such as fetuses and Nazi concentration camps, but that's not necessarily the case for individual websites.  Provocative images can be very effective for getting attention (although they need to be used carefully so as not to give offense).

I put up a new page about a month ago, Autism Research and Prenatal Testing, which contains an image of a fetus.  It went straight to #1 in Google searches for autism prenatal testing and stayed there.  And although I'm sure there are some people who see the image and think "Oh, yuk, another pro-life page," and move on, the page is getting a lot of links and attention, which was the goal.

I am aware that some scientists believe it may happen sooner, but because MSNBC.com is a major news source with which most people are familiar, I decided that a link to its article would be most effective in showing that this is a real issue (as opposed to a hypothetical or academic debate).

Anyway, even if the first crude screening tests are used in 5 years, there's so much inertia in the medical profession that they would not immediately become widespread and routine, which should give us more time to work on turning public opinion against them.

Here's a web page that makes the holocaust analogy without using the word or being extreme about it (Amy, I know you've already seen this site, but I am posting the link for the benefit of others who may be thinking about creating similar pages).

The Autism Prenatal Testing Eugenics Programme

I've thought about writing an imaginary "letter of resignation" in which an autism researcher discovers that he is himself autistic and quits his job for ethical reasons.  It'll never happen in real life, but it certainly could make a provocative essay.  (I'm picturing it as a realistic-looking letter where we state at the top that the names of the researcher and his employer have been deleted at his request. The disclaimer that it's a fictional article is placed at the bottom, so the reader starts out with the impression that it's real.)

Let me know if you want to have a section for articles, Amy, and I'll send it to you when I get around to writing it.

It's a matter of personal choice in our society, and I'm glad of it. Some kids who start life fatherless go on to have tragic lives. Often the new partner of the mother of such a child feels no obligation whatsoever to be like a father to someone else's child. Some do not even refer to themselves as that child's father, and this can be the case with a child who never sees their biological father. Sadly, sometimes no one steps in to fill that gap in the child's life.

Back on the subject of Nobel Prize winner James (Jim) Watson. Wasn't I clever when I suggested that Watson, who has been reported as advocating genetic testing to eradicate autism at a recent genetics conference, might have some autism genes himself?

Last night I watched the final episode of the science documentary series "DNA" on ABC TV (Australia). The whole episode centred around Jim Watsonand his controversial statements about eugenics/genetic selection. Watson expressed the opinion that parents should be allowed to opt for genetic screening, rather than governments making such decisions. He said it is sad when parents can't have aspirations for their children because their children are disabled (I think that's what he meant). I'd like to know where he gets this idea that a parent can't have aspirations or ambitions for their child just because they are disabled.

He visited and spoke with parents of a family which includes a young man with Down's syndrome who are against genetic screening. Watson revealed that he has a disabled son too. He described his son as being intelligent but unable to care for himself, was a late speaker, and dislikes touching other people. The narration of the documentary said that this is a matter that Watson rarely discusses, and also said Watson's son has a "mental illness" that is most likely genetic. The words autism or PDD or Aspergers were never mentioned by anyone in this documentary, but I think it's clear that Watson's son must be autistic. There was a lot of discussion of mental institutions and mental illness in the documentary.

So now we all know why Watson has opinions on autism genes, and has people working to identify them at his genetics lab. I can't think of a more classic example of the stereotype of the well-meaning but horribly misguided and ill-informed parent of an autistic person, who has aspie traits themself, as is Mr Watson.

I couldn't help noticing that Mr Watson has annoying and idiosyncratic facial expressions. I got the impression that he is contantly reminding himself to smile as he talks with people. I was thinking "It's OK Mr Watson, you don't have to do that smile, it's quite OK with me if you don't smile!"

In New Scienstist of May 28, 2005, on Page 7, it was reported that James Watson plans to have his own genome sequenced within the year by some company in the US. That should be interesting.

Here's a link to the documentary that I have discussed.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/guide/netw/2005...203000.htm

It's highly unlikely that he will make the results public, especially if the test confirms that he has autism genes.  We'll never know about it.

I guess what could happen is that if he has some autism genes, he could then become convinced that there must be more to autism than genes, and then blame some mysterious prenatal influence or mercury or a virus or something like that. But from what I've read, the scientists seem to be having very little luck in tracking down any environmental factors associated with autism.