As someone who has been frighteningly ill before, I can say that medical decisions are often made for reasons that go beyond “medicine,” such as quality of life or convenience or for mental health reasons. To suggest that parents cannot weigh those factors when their child is pregnant, but can in every other circumstance, is ridiculous. This “logic” will lead you down the road to perdition. One can imagine a court ordering a parent to send her brilliant child to private school, because the adequate public school would not be a good situation. Parents are not the slaves of the government, nor of “feminists.”

Consent is needed for medical procedures, absent emergency. In our society, minors cannot give medical consent, so the parents do it for them. Abortion is a medical procedure and is treated exactly like every other medical procedure. I’m sure that blows your minds, because most “feminists” get their panties in a bunch when they see non-discrimination.

The picture, folks? I think it will help if you don’t get fancy and see the insects as any particular species or class of insects, but just as “bugs.” OK? Now substitute in your mind for the fancy word “copulation,” which I think we all agree these bugs are doing, a cruder word that starts with an “f.”

Bug-f__k. See?

Women should get to decide if they are having a baby, period. They should have access to all the information they can get (that they want) on the status and prognoses of their pregnancies. And they get to determine whether they intend to make this a human being, or not.

Once they have decided to have the baby, then it becomes not just their but all of society’s obligation to make that new human being’s life as meaninful as possible. Thus, if women choose to have disabled children–either making that choice in full advance knowledge that is what is developing in their womb, or being taken later by surprise as disability generally does, on some time scale or other–society can and should help them bear any unusual burdens.

As the close associate of the Chair of the Area IV Board on Developmental Disabilities (that’s Sonoma, Napa, and Solano counties, California) I heard plenty testimony of families raising kids with severe disabilities. Natasha and I became associates and friends of several such families. And I had the examples of Natasha’s upbringing, and even the milder case of my own, to consider. The way Natasha remembered it, her own diagnosis of Friedreich’s Ataxia at age 10 or so pretty much broke her family. As for me–I didn’t realize, growing up, what a blow it must have been to my father to realize that his eldest son was going to be borderline deaf his entire life. (Oh, yeah, two daughters with the same problem. My dad’s kinda patriarchial…) But there it is. Kids with disabilities represent an objective burden.

At the same time, they are also often people of great value to the community as a whole. In any event–once their mothers have chosen to birth them, they are human beings, and thus entitled to support.

So–pro-life? I’ll believe it when I see these bozos out there lobbying for enhanced disability services, for relieving the families random chance visits with these burdens of their exceptional load, and generally enabling access for disabled people to a full range of life options.

Funny thing though. When I’ve been on the front lines of disability politics, I sometimes hear words and platititudes from these unctious Republican “pro-life” types, but in action, I just about always have seen them wielding a red pen to strike out what parsimonous services the relatively “progressive” State of California had once committed to in fits of decency.

Not that the Democrats are automatic sugar daddies either. In fact, disability politics is full of hard-fought struggles, which often do result in odd coalitions of Republican and Democrat on both sides of the issue–pennypinchers and medical control freaks versus the right of people born with disabilities to live some life better than convicted felons.

Jesus. No, autism is a neurological disorder, and many people with autism also have immune disease, seizures, gastrointestinal disorders and a decreased life expectancy.

I have two children with autism, though both were born apparently neurologically-typical but with a genetic propensity to develop the disorder if they met up with one of the various environmental “triggers”. Both did. We made the decision to have a fourth child with the understanding that we were selecting for gender, as males are four times more likely to have autism than girls (actually, it’s even higher, as there are genetically detectable conditions in females where autism is a factor.) We tried to conceive a girl, and did. But we were prepared to consider options if that wasn’t the case.

I love my autistic children, but I don’t believe their autism makes them, or us, “better” for it. If I could cure them in a heartbeat, I would. It wreaks havoc on all our lives, though we try and do the best we can. Even our children’s disabilities put our family at risk with social services and law enforcement. Our younger son has “elopism” issues (he lives to run, and keep on running) and while we can prevent this from happening 99% of the time, that 1% fucks us over every time. We just had social workers and police invade our campsite yesterday, as our son eloped a month ago (we found him within an hour, and would have earlier if people who saw a six year old running down the nearly deserted beach alone had stopped him.) But while parents of NT kids get a pass, we PoAs get hassled (”keep a better eye on your kid”) or worse, a report of neglect and/or abuse. (NB, in yesterday’s situation, the social workers ended up closing the case immediately and apologising, but it fucking should have never happened in the first place, if people in power had a clue about elopism in autism.)

The point of all this is that until society, in particular the anti-safety-net conservative base, deals humanely with the disabled, FFL should keep their %(*& traps shut on how we pro-choicers are “devaluing” them by making the right choices for our families and bodies.

he’s broken in a way that undermines his very humanity. Just because there’s a body there doesn’t mean there’s a human being residing in it. And the drastic censure that moral busybodies direct at people who come to realize this and are open about it is what shatters lives and families. Better to avert that life before you’re attached.

Does it bother you in the slightest that you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about? This doesn’t sound callous so much as insane. Jesus, as much as Frist shouldn’t have made some bs long distance diagnosis, at least he went to medical school and has some basic knowledge, however limited.

Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. She didn’t have a mind, correct. That’s not true of the developmentally disabled, no matter how much you think they look just like her and give you the same ooky feeling inside. Their brains function, maybe not well enough for anyone who sits around wishing the damn families wouldn’t get so attached so we could do something meaningful to get rid of the Non Humans already, but more than well enough to be entitled to the same human rights and human dignity as, well, any other human.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if we did start dividing humans from nonhumans, and our main criteria turned out to be inhumanity of character? I’ll be happy to introduce whoever’s interested to my mother’s friend’s husband, who calls his autistic son “The Little Retard” and encourages his other son to attack him too. And no, it’s not Matthew’s fault for being born and therefore abusing and attacking his father by his very existance.It’s his father’s fault for being an abusive asshole and preying on someone who’s completely vulnerable.

Nymphalidae, yes Steven Hawking obviously has a brain. The developmentally disabled quite obviously do too. As far as contributing to society, you sure you could pass that standard? Not that I’m not in favor of only breeding supermen who will contribute the the greatness of the race, but I doubt I would and I’m not sure how many of my acquaintances would, either. Yeah, Chet is supposedly only characterizing the mentally disabled as useless and Non Human right now, but his distinction seems sort of vague and arbitrary when his criteria for not being human aren’t actually met by the developmentally disabled and many of the things he objects to also characterize the physically disabled.

this is exactly my point! i may be an assbert for not wanting the disabled to have to be in crappy care facilities or end up severely impoverished. and for any disabled person that’s caring for themselves or is receiving great care from family/friends/care facilities I THINK THAT’S FANTASTIC!! but the ugly truth that i see and hear about (b/c my family doesn’t have money and the students in the public school system where my best friend teaches a ’special needs’ class that includes about 12 severely autistic and violent children) is that the current support system for the disabled SUCKS BIG DONKEY DONG. i wish i had enough money to be able to afford to pay more taxes to support better care or didn’t work 12 hour days 6 days/week so i could do some volunteer work myself. but the fact is that i’m barely making it myself. i love my cousin who’s severely mentally retarded and has to have a stint in her head replaced every few years. but her parents don’t have the money to pay for it. they have to get money from the government to pay for it. so that means that you are paying for it, i am paying for it, and everyone else is paying for it.

“No dice, babe. Continued pregnancy does not require medical intervention. The actual “rightâ€? is the right to consent to your child’s surgical procedures”

You’re so smart. Let’s just take the million to one shot where the pregnancy does require medical intervention. Okay, it could never happen, let’s pretend we saw it on an episode of World’s Most Amazing Medical Mysteries. A pregnant minor is legally empowered to make her own medical decisions without consulting her parents. Medical, surgical, hospital. Yes, a non pregnant 13 year old needs her parents’ permission to take an aspirin, but a pregnant minor doesn’t need her parents’ permission to get a c-section. Just to get an abortion, which is on balance, safer. So to review, with regards to pregnancy no “right to consent to your child’s surgical procedures” exists. It’s not absolute in other areas, either, courts have placed limits on parents’ ability to restrict their children’s medical treatment based on the parents’ religious convictions.

I guess you are talking yourself in circles. If the issue is “burden”, then you can’t argue for defects that affect the brain vs. those that don’t. A mildly affected person with Downs Syndrome is probably far less of a burden than a person with a brilliant mind who requires 24/7 physical care just to survive. As Lupe says, it may make you feel better to dismiss people less brain-enable than you as Not Human, but it’s useless for any kind of social policy.

i assume that all you folks who want there to be more disabled ppl in the world are prepared to pony up some time/money/a room in your house to help care for the disabled ppl?

I assume that you must be a complete fucking assberet if you assume that “us folks” are not ourselves disabled, have cared for or are currently caring for disabled people.

Oh, and Scarlet? Autism is not “mental illness”.

When I was pregnant, tests showed that my son might have Down’s Syndrome. While I had a Level II ultrasound to look for markers (and the ultrasound suggested a heart abnormality, which either disappeared or was never there), ultrasound only picks up markers about 50% of the time. So I decided to have an amnio so that we could make the best decision for our family. In the two weeks before the ultrasound and the few days after the amnio we did tons of research on Down’s Syndrome and realized that the level of severity is extremely variable and impossible to predict (other than certain physical disabilities) and that services, while existent, are not as easy to access. On top of that, with no health insurance and only my husband’s variable income as a self-employed consultant, the financial strain would have impoverished us.

Hurtful were comments made by people who had no knowledge of our situation when they compared this to eugenics, which is a popular meme even among supposedly liberal folk. We were lucky that we never had to make the decision to abort, but it was on the table. Unless you have been in that position (and it is devastating to think that your child might not be healthy, so yes, maybe that makes me a bigot to some) you are really in no position to judge. Even those who have disabled relatives are not really in a position to judge because often they did not have a choice because the technology was not there to begin with. You cannot say with any reliability what you would have done at that time, even if you are one of those people for whom having a relative with a disability is considered a blessing. I don’t imagine that many women go into that decision igonorant of what they’re facing.

Which brings up another issue- at what point does this become a discussion about class and even race? Despite having no insurance, we were able to cash pay for all the necessary prenatals and tests to be able to have the option of selective abortion. Since many poor women, among them women of race are over-represented, do not have access to prenatal care that would mean that the poor are being disproportionately saddled with the burden of having, raising, and caring for the disabled. Are we comfortable with creating an underclass of disabled dependents? What are the ramifications of this and where does the pro-choice movement come in on this?

And just to clarify- I do not subscribe to the belief that the severely disabled are a waste of oxygen or are abusing their families. People with disabilities can and do enrich our world. I just cannot force women to bear unwanted children for any reason.

(climbing down off my soapbox)