Aspies For Freedom

The woman being incompetent to make her own decision (severely ***, comatose, or whatever)?

Yes, that idea horrifies me. That is why I was very specific - the mother should be dead or as near to as makes no odds to the child before a decision is made for her.

Well, the psychologist I have spoken with on this subject basically feels that an upward adjustment of 5-20 points is best to reflect an Aspie's score on an adult IQ test. Very few Aspies would score low enough that such an adjustment would be necessary to make them seem not ***, in my opinion. By severely ***, I mean unable to care for oneself, leave alone a child.

Ah, but it's got to be at least 140 with respect to food knowledge and probably several other areas of life. :smile:

In order:

An unborn child's choice is not important, at least compared to that of the mother that has to carry them. But this is like comparing apples with Redskins, so to speak. We could go in circles all night.

Another thing that psychologist told me is that the adjustment she makes is because IQ tests are very normie-centric. They expect certain answers in response to certain questions, regardless of how normal or otherwise the answer might be. As an example, if you are asked what apples and oranges have in common, you better answer that they are both fruit or you are less intelligent, simple as that. Using this psychologist's adjustment formula, my IQ could be anywhere from 132 to 167. To posit that Aspies will be judged mentally unfit to assert their reproductive rights is a narrow view of the picture.

To put it in real terms, anyone who wants to tell us we are not fit to have the things that normies take for granted is going to find some excuse, garanteed. I put up with so many excuses to keep me from exploring my social problems and needs during my adolescence that I began to externalise this as sheer hatred towards the psychiatrists or social workers in question. "Excuse me, but I am fifteen years old, I am supposed to be going to theatres and fondling some fifteen year old girl in the back row" just didn't compute like violence did.

New IQ tests are emerging that separate intelligence into areas like social, practical, science, trivia, et cetera. Aspies all have one thing in common on these tests, apparently. High overall scores, but low results in several areas and a massive spike in a smaller group of others.

From some of the Downs' Syndrome children I have seen, I would be wanting to have been aborted even more if I had that.

Maybe the lack of a concept of personal space that I felt coming from them put me off.

Con, she sounds like a great person. How old is she now?

Ah, my bad. Thanks for the correction. Aren't there cases though where there's a complete replication? 'Cause I know it'd had often been refered to as Trisomy 21.

I'm assuming those with partial replication aren't as severely affected?

Despite that I didn't post it here since I'm discussing this topic/article over in another forum as well and so I posted my revelation there, I have realized my mistake in assuming too fast. (Heat of the moment, emotional override, brain fart, call it what you like.) You couldn't have known that since you're not a part of that forum, but I assure you, I have recanted my conclusion and admitted my mistake despite that I forgot to repost it here.

Hmmm... lemme see. It's been about two years (I'm 25 so I haven't had as much time to peruse/study/read). I've mostly focused on the neurology, biology, neuroscience, psychiatry, and psychology journals available at my university, another larger medical school's university library, a journal's library made available to the public in the basement level of the state psychiatric hospital here in St. Louis, as well as any articles which are available either in full text or abstract online.

I am very familiar with peer-reviewed work and the larger journals in the fields I'm interested in. So I'll stick with my conclusion because even with the clearest of data, scientists still somehow seem to be able to often find what they're looking for despite that I've seen a good deal of confounding variables which could potentially cause their conclusions to be null and void.

I'm not saying all scientists. But scientists, after all, are human and prone to the same wants and desires no matter how fool-proof we'd like to think the scientific method is. Data derived from the scientific method still has to pass through the emotional minefield of interpretation, even the most quantitative.

When I decided to have a child I was prepared to take whatever was given, I wouldn't have aborted a child that wasn't "perfect" because that's just based on individual opinion. I don't believe that anyone has the right to judge the worth of someone elses life; for me this is what the abortion of an imperfect child (in the view of the doctors /parents) is all about.
I find it hard to understand those that would abort a child with a disability and wonder what their reaction would be to a child who became ill or had an accident later in life. For me personally it's wrong.
A few years back I was pregnant but the baby died before birth, a doctor that I saw at that time said "oh well it was probably disabled anyway and you wouldn't want a disabled child". Those words still make me sad now.

In many ways it's an odd world we live in.  On one hand, people are aborting fetuses that they believe might be born flawed; on the other hand, once the baby is born, no matter how hopeless the situation (for example, a baby born here in the states without any brain at all), extraordinary measures are taken to preserve it's life.

I had a brother - well, no one actually knows if it was a boy or girl, but never having had a brother, we choose to believe it was a boy - that died within hours after birth.  My mother has always accepted that as having been meant to be; that so many very different things were wrong with the baby, it was never meant to live outside the shelter it had enjoyed in her womb.  After reading an article about the fight over the baby in the states born without a brain, my mom wondered if her deceased child might have been made to live in today's world.  She found the idea upsetting; not because the baby was "disabled," but because for him to live seemed so unnatural.  She can't imagine what kind of life he would have led; he could never have done the simpliest things such as breath on his own.

Choosing to end a pregnancy because the baby isn't exactly what you dreamed of is also unnatural.  If you are given a child that is capable of life, it is meant to live, and it should live.  Who are we to choose which life is worth living?

We try so hard in modern society to manipulate life to our liking, but life keeps striking back, trying to show us how we aren't supposed to be in control of it.  Defeat disease; a new one crops up.  And so on.  We haven't accomplished much through all our efforts other than poisoning of the environment meant to sustain us.  It's as if life (or God, and I do believe in God) knows we'll miss out on something important if we don't let a few things we see as negative in.  It's all part of the tapestry, and we ruin the tapestry if we pull select threads out.

That may sound like a negative view, but it isn't to me.  I am sure the tapestry is beautiful, should we allow ourselves to really see it.  Just, not, well, what seems ideal to us.

Anyway, I guess this is a ramble more than a point.  For the most part, everyone here is pretty much on the same page:  none of us believe that aborting a child who might have a genetic condition the parent finds undesirable is the right thing to do.