anti-vaccine thinking led to murder of 3 yr old by mother

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I don't care why she did it. That is utterly insane! All children are precious.

When I first saw this story on CNN, it made me sick to my stomach.
the thing that I think is awful unsettling about this is that this woman somehow thought that suffocating her child would somehow "fix" the little girl's autism.

The problem is, that murder of autistic people usually is a political matter, in terms of a matter of power over a certain group of people.

It's not some kind of insensitivity that makes people say these things have to do with power. It's the fact that we don't want it happening again. And that it does happen again and again if the power issues are not pointed out and dealt with.

There were a bunch of women murdered at some point recently. People were not investigating or trying to do anything to the perp. This was because the women were usually very poor and often prostitutes. That is a political matter, in that it's a matter of classism and sexism.

Murders of disabled people are quite often a product of ableism.

I personally can't ignore the fact that -- and this has happened to people other than me -- my parents, if they were nasty evil people, could walk into my apartment and shoot me, and if they spun a horrible enough story about me they could get away with it. They could do this even though I don't live with them. They could do this even though people other than them are my primary caregivers right now.

They won't. My parents are good people and they would never do this. (My mother even felt the need, after all these murders and people talking about murder, to write to me and let me know she never considered murdering me even when our lives were hell. What does that tell you about how ubiquitous the idea is that it's normal to think of murdering your autistic child?)

But the problem is that they could get away with it. Other people have gotten away with that exact same thing.

People have said it's okay to murder their autistic children because their children listened to the same music over and over. I used to do that. While I understand that everyone around me found the fact that when I wasn't playing "Don't Pay the Ferryman" over and over, I was humming, whistling, or singing it... really annoying... they still didn't murder me or even think about it.

Some people did try to kill me once. They will never face charges for what they did. There was only one witness and she is not someone who could be tracked down.

These things are political.

Yes, our murders are disgusting. Yes, the fact that they are underprosecuted is disgusting. Yes, the fact that people use really awful reasons for killing us is disgusting. Really, really, awful and disgusting. And horrifying. So much so I often can't write about them because I just start crying and screaming. And it's too close to home because often the reasons they give, are things I used to do, or situations I've been in before, or things that are much less severe than the things I used to do (as in Katie's case), or even the things that were said to my face by the people trying to kill me. Sometimes I just can't deal with that or handle it so I don't even though I probably should. It's just too horrible.

But it has to be talked about, somehow.

Look at this page on murder of autistic people. And look at the sentences. And you'll see why it has to be talked about. I don't really believe in the "justice" system the way it is right now, I think it's pretty horrible to people. But the "justice" systems in many countries are identical on this issue. Parents of autistic children get lighter sentences.

Other parents of autistic children, when parents are sentenced for awful murders done for awful reasons, they lobby sometimes. One woman whose kid didn't even live with her, planned for years to kill her, and then did kill her when her kid was home on break (very much like what happened to Katie). She said she'd been planning this for years. She tried to force her kid to walk off a bridge. The kid wouldn't do it (and not wanting to die was described as a sign she was low functioning!?!?). The mother then took her into a car and strangled her. She took a long time to die and the mother asked her "Why won't you just die?" I'm serious.

And in that case the mother was sentenced for only manslaughter even though it was premeditated murder, premeditated for years when the mother was not even living with her daughter and had no stress at all from her daughter's care. And then parents started doing the "Wasn't having her daughter live for 16 years sentence enough?" thing. And she only served five months of her sentence.

I'm sorry but that's political. It's horrible, but it is. Political meaning, again, having to do with power relationships. It's political the same way that, in many places, a husband can rape his wife and it's not against the law, that is political too. It's about a horrible act, to be sure. Not one that should just be "used" lightly for anything any more than murder should. But when disabled people can be murdered by non-disabled people and it's treated as "better" than other murders, and when men can rape certain women and get away with it, those situations are political, meaning they have to do with power, and attitudes towards a particular group of people that put us as lesser in some way on a very large scale.

So it's not people mentioning it that's "making them political," the issues are already political. (If, again, you understand political as meaning, "about power relationships in society". Not electoral politics or something.) Disabled people, including autistic people, are subject to standards that take us as lower beings than non-disabled non-autistic people. And that's what leads to our devaluation to the point where our murders are taken as only natural by a lot of people. The Illinois autism society already rallied around this mother. That's certainly political, and far more against the wishes of the rest of Katie's family, than bringing up the devaluation of autistic people is. (They are absolutely fine with bringing up our devaluation and the forms that devaluation takes, because they know that is what makes some people think killing her was justifiable in some way.)

And, yes, Katie's mother is the person who brought up vaccinations in relation to this, not someone on this board.

So I can agree that the fact these political situations -- our power relationships with non-disabled people -- exist, is disgusting. But bringing it up isn't disgusting, and acting like it's disgusting is sort of shooting the messenger.

Beau, what is the name of this thread?
I think that's about everything I need to say on the matter of swaying public opinions.

Anbuend, apologies, but that case you speak of is not a good example. People didn't know to investigate, and it's hard to track missing people. If the police knew that it was murder, not simply missing people, they'd have acted sooner, and to find these people as well as preventing further death. But they didn't know, and when they managed to discover it, theyt acted swiftly. As well, they can only act when they know about something, and suffice to say, the killer was secretive. It wasn't a political matter, it was a matter of murder. He chose to kill them. Now that he has been found, he is being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It almost makes me wish we had a conditional death penalty in Canada.

We're a handful of deaths, when compared to all the other people who're being murdered. All those cases there, they've added how many over how many years? Autistics are a mere handful, compared to so many others who've been murdered.

Not every country is the same with this kind of thing. In Canada, those who do this kind of thing have gotten some of the most punitive sentences available, and those decisions have held.

There's a difference between the politics that are at play here.
The politics of power relations between the disabled and nondisabled are not what I am taking issue with. I am taking issue with Diva turning this little girl's death into an excuse to attack a group of people. She says that it was tthe line of thinking of theese people that led to her murder, that it's their fault. She even brings up someone autistic who was killed who is of no relation to what happened, just to further "prove" that these people are nothing but a bunch of monsters who can reason out killing autistics. It's a blame game, nothing more. And I for one don't think that anyone should be able to take hold of this little girl and use her death as in insult, in spite, to attack people who's only crime was association with this mother. Ddi they kill her? Did they give her the bag? Did they tell her to do it? NO.

Autism Diva is laying responsibilty for these murders not on the killers, but on a group of people. She spent her entire post ranting about the anti-vaccine group and how crazy they are, and that it was them who are responsible for this little girl's death.

This is nothing but propaganda.