Aspies For Freedom

This is the log of a conversation on eugenics with a person waiting to be diagnosed with AS. "njk" is not the person's real name or usual nick name. Some off-topic comments have been removed for clarity.

njk> Amy, did you know the chances of autistic parents having an autistic childs is quite high?
njk> and the child autism may very well be more severe than their own?
Amy> i have never seen such stats njk
njk> well I've seen them...  just google
njk> I can't find the link right now
Amy> its could be phoney stats
njk> Do you guys think autism is genetic, then obviously there is more chance the child will inherit autism genes
Amy> it is genetic
Amy> i think 2 autistic parents would likely have an autistic kid
Amy> BUT
njk> well then there is greater chance the child will inherit those genes
Amy> but i think AS parents wouldnt have an very low functioning kid
njk> chances are higher though
njk> shouldn't that put you off
njk> eugenics isn't a bad idea
Amy> so do you think that people with autism shouldnt have kids njk?
njk> I think it is possible now to prenatally diagnose Down's syndrome, without risk to thae developing foetus
njk> if there was a way to diagnose autism in the developing foetus, would you go through with it?
Gareth wouldn't allow it if it was his child
Gareth> no eugenics here
Amy> for autism it is being developed
Amy> and we are totally opposed to it
Amy> 90% of downs babies are aborted
Amy> after been tested for in the womb
Amy> though some women who have one autsitic child
Amy> abort a boy
Amy> next time in case its autistic
Gareth> we need people to see that autism isn't just LFA
Gareth> and direct research at helping people with LFA develop
njk> are you two planning to have a child?
njk> parents want the best for their children
Amy> i already have kids njk
njk> I'm just asking
Amy> my son is HFA
Amy> my son is the best thing that ever existed
Gareth> any parent who has the attitude that autism (even HFA) is something to be wiped out i would say is a bit unhealthy for any autistic children they have
Amy> which proves that abortion etc is shite
Gareth> a good test i once heard about:
Gareth> ask an NT pro-cure parent if they would settle for HFA
Gareth> if they say they would still want an NT child - they aren't fit to be a parent
Gareth> someone who wants to cure their autistic child completely is no better then someone who would try to "cure" a girl of their femaleness
njk> If it were possible to diagnose the foetus for HFA, and you did... would you have continured with the pregnancy if the results confirmed HFA ?
Amy> yes
Amy> no doubt
njk> knowing very well your child will be treated like an invalid all his life, more chance of being bullied at school, more chance of learning disabilites etc...
Amy> hes not an invalid
Amy> hes very clever
Amy> he was LFA and developed to HFA
njk> but they are the minority
Amy> most do go on to become HFA
Amy> 7 out of 10
Amy> that is the stats
njk> I can't believe you still would have gone through with it ..
Amy> i was bullied but i'm glad i wasnt aborted
njk> shocking
Amy> should ppl kill their kids cos of bullies?
Amy> or should we change attitudes to stop bullying?
Amy> not abort kids
Amy> cos of it
Gareth> saying that autism is the cause of bullying is like saying blackness is the cause of racism
Gareth> or that females are the cause of sexism
Gareth> or that juadism is the cause of anti-semitism
njk> I said more chance of being bullied
Gareth> whose fault was it the jews died in WW2? hitler's or the jews?
Amy> njk: if you have AS all your kids could have AS
Amy> will you have no kids?
Gareth> if you're black you have more chance of suffering from racist attacks
Gareth> does that mean black people shouldn't reproduce?
Gareth> eliminating autistics to eliminate LFA is like eliminating black people to eliminate sickle cell
njk> I wouldn't want my children to born weak. I couldn't live with myself. I want a healthy child, I would want the best for a child
Gareth> autism doesn't equal weakness
Amy> if any kids would be AS would you have none njk?
Gareth> there are a lot of strengths autistics have that NTs don't
njk> that's just it Amy, inequality sucks...  weakness is relative. Like i said, I would want my child to be strong/healthy
Amy> my son is strong and healthy
Amy> he doesnt have asthma
Amy> allergies
njk> why are you deluding yourself?
Amy> you are deluding yourself
Amy> i have AS, i'm strong and healthy
Gareth> would you have aborted einstein given the chance?
njk> I guess you need these delusions
Amy> physically autism is not a problem
Amy> its in the brain
Amy> i dont have delusions
Amy> i have experience
Amy> that you dont
Amy> you are guessing
Amy> and surmising
Amy> without knowledge
njk> you don't want to accept the truth
Amy> njk are you worried that you will have trouble finding a mate cos of the AS?
Amy> i know the truth
Gareth> here's the truth:
Gareth> i love my life, and i consider myself lucky to be here
Gareth> i love my future wife (Amy)
Gareth> we both have AS
Gareth> we have no problems with each other
Gareth> where's the weakness?
Amy> njk: if you read some websites they portray a very bad image of autism, they upset a lot of newly diagnosed aspies with their negative bullshit
njk> If my AS is confirm, then I think I won't have a child
njk> I might adopt
Gareth> where is the weakness?
Gareth> can you point out a specific weakness
Gareth> ?
njk> I still can't believe you'd not have aborted. How can you knowingly bring a autistic child into the world?
Gareth> njk - weakness?
Amy> njk: you come across as angry with us
njk> How can you be so cruel?
Amy> but we are on the same team
Amy> thousands of women abort healthy kids cos of money
Amy> problems etc
Gareth> njk - i don't think my parents were cruel to bring me into this world
Gareth> i think the people who bullied me in school were cruel
Amy> are you angry with your own parents njk?
Amy> if they could have should they have aborted you?
Amy> seriously now?
njk> I don't want to refute your delusions, because that's pathetic. the serious issue is that you seem to have these stupid convictions, and I find it vulgar and depressive that you'd make these choices
Gareth wonders - would you have told a black person in racist america in the 50s that to bring a black child into the world is cruel?
Gareth> if i have delusions - point them out to me and explain why i am deluded
njk> do you know why people are cruel?
njk> because they are selfish
njk> and hungry for power
Gareth> can you answer my question please?
Gareth> would you have told a black person in america in the 50s that to bring a black child into the world is cruel?
Gareth> you seem to be saying that bringing an autistic child into the world is cruel because they have a higher chance of bullying
njk>  :/
njk> I don't know
Gareth> so, i ask you again - how am i deluded?
njk> Why should I even care what you believe?
Amy> we arent saying you have to
njk> you're screwing your own lives, not mine
Amy> but you are accusing us of being deluded
Gareth> i'm just asking how i'm deluded
Gareth> if i am suffering from delusions i'd like to sort them out
Amy> but it shouldnt have to lead to abortion
Amy> cos of pressures
njk> are you christians?
Amy> no
Amy> are you christain njk?
njk> no
Amy> ok
Gareth is pro-choice when it comes to abortion but doesn't believe in eugenics
Amy> when you are diagnosed you may have time to think and see things differntly njk
Amy> otherwise you might be told you arent AS
Amy> in which case you would be NT and it wouldnt concern you
njk> no, i see why you have these views
njk> but I don't think you yourselves believe in them
Amy> so you know how we thionk more than we do?
njk> If you really did have the choice, you would have aborted. I know
Amy> thats a very NT perspective
Amy> you dont know me at all
Amy> i didnt have the test for downs
Amy> i would have had a kid with downs
Amy> so why not with autism?
Gareth> if i was a woman and was pregnant, i wouldn't abort because it might be autistic
Gareth> i'd be happy about it
Amy> i refused all pre natal testing with both kids
Amy> for any conditions
Amy> its against human nature to kill your own kid
Amy> i dont see the logic in it
Gareth is pro-choice so supports the right to abortion, but with eugenics the point is not to avoid a childbirth but to engineer a "perfect" child
Gareth> but the problem is that people are often too biased
njk> Ok, I have to go
njk> nice chatting
njk> I just hope you don't encourage your views on furture parents
njk> I don't want to see more disabled people in the world

F***in idiot!
(not very constructive but I had to say that)

What you say to these people is something along the lines of 'are you saying I dont deserve to live?' then you get tore into them about it.  See how quickly they can defend their NT views then!

The issue of addressing these attitudes is alot bigger than autism / AS.  At the same time the general pro-life argument is also weak because it is too ambiguous (people arguing right to life without having a focus on the issues at hand).

I think we should start talking to other communities - downs for example (70% or so of whom are autistic anyway).  There are a whole range of conditions for which perfectly able and intelligent people might never see the light of day - all because of stupid ignorant NT attitudes.  It could even be something as simple as a few missing digits!

Eugenics was supposedly outlawed - but I think we can see that it is so much in practice that its a basic fact of life that people dont even think about - "oh we dont like the look of that one - kill it and we'll see if the next one turns out better".

We have human rights legislation.  These people need a voice.

I have contacted pro-life groups, but have had a poor response.
We should try others, there has been an outcry over babies with cleft palates being aborted. At the moment the pre-natal test for autism is hypothetical but I certainly dont want to wait until its a reality and being used before I want to  highlight it to others.

What the hell? I am pro-life but I am also pro-eugenics, and this muthaf-ka gives us supporters of positive eugenics a BAD NAME. I hate dumbasses like that! Real Eugenics as practiced in my native Asia is all about smarter, prettier people having more children and criminals having fewer- NOT about abortion. Why didn't you guys say up front that y'all were Autistic (I'm very open with being autistic and proud) and that his views were offensive and discriminatory? If it was me I would've DISSED that muthaf-ka out.

njk doesn't much sound like an Aspie to me (except perhaps by the DSVM diagnosis) and if she/he doesn't know, how could it be such a problem?

Sounds more like a troll from the land of CAN or NAAR. Given what we are doing here, I think it would be wise to assume that there will be a lot more of these 'attacks' from outsiders who are more interested in making money from their children than dealing with their own issues.

Please post any future 'discussions' you have like this with people in chat rooms because I would like to know how to deal with the situation better should one arise and you handled it well, hope I can do the same

Thanks Brightman.

Tali, this person who we chatted with knew that we both had AS, thats why he brought up the subject of us having kids. We try to put our views across and educate people, even though its tempting to tell them how offensive they are.
If you can put an argument across successfully you might have a chance of changing someone's view.

I have thought long and hard about having children.  Although I'm still undecided about whether to have children for a number of reasons (that don't have a thing to do with the child and everything to do with whether I would be able to do certain things for the child and avoid doing others), I came to the following conclusion really fast:

If I decide to have a child, then I am deciding to have any child.  The only way that I'd consider abortion was if my life was in danger and there was no other way, and in such a situation I'd want to carry the baby as long as safely possible in the hopes that it could just be born very premature and given whatever care is normally given to babies who are that premature.

That means if I decide to have a child, I don't get to choose what kind of child it is.  If I have a baby with anencephaly or another condition causing an early death, I will do everything I can to make sure that it has a good life for however short that life may be.  That's part of my commitment to having a child in the first place, is to create life, not to destroy it.  There's a chance (it's been told to me the only way I'd know for sure is if I did have a child with a more fully-expressed form of it) that I have a genetic condition that really would be likely to cause me to have a baby with severe and life-threatening physical problems, so this isn't all that hypothetical to me.  These are things I would consider before any child.

The idea that some kinds of people are intrinsically less valuable than others is repulsive to me both ethically and in terms of looking as close as I can to reality.  I know that if someone looked at my life right now and tallied it up by the standard measurements of what makes life "worth living" in most people's eyes in my society, they wouldn't rate me very high.  But I know that judging worth or happiness by ability in certain areas is wrong, and that I really am happy and find myself and others like me to be of value, and would find myself just as valuable if I did not, say, have a communication system like the one I have now.

I don't think people should be able to pick and choose what kind of child they get, and I find the idea that it's just a given that a person would abort if they found a certain kind of autistic person would exist, just indescribably YUCK.  A lot of people would say I shouldn't exist, and I happen to like existing.

It's all about how you see life. Can you compare life with a game? Gameover-retry? If you have a probability of an Autistic child in your tummy, would you abort it and retry?

Who said in the first place that it was 'game-over' when you have a big chance of getting an autistic child? Well, that njk explained good enough, namely that people (Nt's assumably) strive to get more power. Well especially in he USA with the winner, sport, army, war, hero, nationalistic, american dream mentality. If you can get the best, you should get it. All or nothing, everything is better than to get 'watched' down and have a malfunctioned kid?

Harsh aint i?

What if there is no healthcare or extra support for taking care of the child. ANd on top of that, you can barely sustain your own living with minimum pay etc. Should there even be doctors to say that it's better to abort, or  should the law be changed to force them to abort or get a fine? (well there are people thinking about this.... (not me..))

I think njk made a point there, (not the insults like delution and disabled people things)

Are children (especially the short lived) so "expensive"? Well if parents decide they must have the "best" of everything; but which child ever decided that for themselves?

Hi Jess, you said "If I were to be pregnant, and my fetus were autistic, I would not abort the child for that reason alone. I DO have qualms (no offense) to raising a SEVERELY mentally retarded child (either Downs or anything else). I don't know if I'd abort the child, but I would put him or her up for adoption because I don't know how I'd raise the child. I don't think that's a cause for abortion, but I don't know if I could do it. I DO have a lot of patience though with those who are mentally challenged; I worked with them for some time, and I connected with them just as I would any other person. I have respect for most people; PLEASE don't find me bigoted. I just think that I would find myself frustrated raising the child, and being angry at their incapacity to learn. I wouldn't care if the kid had cleft palate or a missing body part or something like that. Aesthetics has nothing to do with the child I want. I would try to help my child compensate as much as possible."

The thing with autism is that you would not know that the child was autistic until it was 2 for example.
By that time you would be emotionally attached and it would be unusual to give a that child up for adoption. I'm not saying iot never happens at all, but its not the norm.
When you are young, it's hard to picture how you would cope with a child, but as you get older, you gain more experience and strengths, and instinct can come into play during pregnancy, and that helps a lot.

I don't like the assumption from people like NJK that people on the spectrum would not be able to care for their kids. We have as much right as anyone else to have kids. If people feel it individually for themselves, that is one thing, but people in authority should not have the right to dictate to us.

Maybe I'm off, but it looks like this "njk" was just trying to bait you. It seems like his statements were made purely in an effort to encourage a negative emotional response. Chances are that he already knew your stance on the issue and took a position he knew would draw a negative reaction.

Well I do know the person I was chatting with, and they were saying how they genuinely felt, and they are an aspie too, believe it or not.

Jess, if you had a Down's baby, you wouldn't know whether the baby was going to be severely retarded.  Most Down's children are only mildly retarded (some are in the normal range on IQ tests) and can talk, walk, go to school, and learn to read and write.

And yet, doctors continue to recommend amniocentesis and abortion.  They have categorically decided that this entire group of people doesn't deserve to live.

I know you were talking about adoption, rather than advocating abortion, but either way, predicting a child's abilities at birth is usually not accurate.

No, what I meant is that the doctors are giving parents a false impression of the child's condition that causes many parents to choose abortion, even though the doctors ought to know better.

When amniocentesis testing for Down's first began, about 30 years ago, parents were told that these children were almost always severely retarded and probably would not live past early childhood because of physical defects, such as heart problems, etc. (which can now be corrected surgically with modern technology).  As a result, many parents chose abortion because they felt it was "justified" for the reasons you stated above.

Although it has now been shown that the previous beliefs about Down's children are not true, the amniocentesis testing is still done routinely, which causes many people to assume that these children must have no hope of a meaningful life.

It's very similar to the statements often made about the supposedly hopeless future of autistic children, and that is why the issue of prenatal testing for autism is such a serious concern.  If a falsehood is repeated often enough by those in positions of authority, most people will believe it.