Would you abort your baby if...

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Not sure. If I discovered it was Aspergian I would probably abort it though purely because I wish every day that this had happened to me. At least neuerotypicals and designed for this world, even if they can be frustrating.
Sorry if this offends anyone.

I wouldn't abort it NT or not, as it being an NT isn't necessarily a negative thing.

However, being NT isn't a guarantee that your life will be a roaring success either. My brothers are quite NT and they are struggling with overdue rent, bad marriages and no steady jobs. But I, even as a person with AS, have bills paid, no debt and no overdue rent (or mortgage.) I live on my own and I have a steady job.

I am considered a success, and my NT brothers are the ones that aren't doing so hot. So it mostly depends on the person to do well, and not what they are born with.

This doesn't offend me. What you said is the reason why I would abort a non-NT child. I don't understand why some people want to bring a disabled child into this screwy world. But, I suppose everybody's different, some like to bring up a handicapped child, others just like to bring up a typical child.

I know NTs have problems too, and could turn out unconfident or weird or whatever, but, like you said, this world is built for NTs, and everybody who has children seem to take it for graunted that their child will be average, and so that is why I just want an NT child. Disabled children can show you up in public when they get older, and if you don't know any other parents with disabled children, you can feel very lonely at times - especially if all your siblings or cousins have children around your child's age and their children are all in mainstream school and being invited to birthday parties and playing out with friends, well, it's not very nice, surely. I just want my kid to be generally happy and to be able to fit in at school and go through all the things what typical families go through. Now, is that too much to ask?

Having AS doesn't make me "disabled." Those who would have denied me a chance at life are some of the lowest human scum. Anyone who I offended just now deserves it; I will not apologize.

and this is why prenatal testing is wrong...

Ohhh, ''disabled'' is just a quicker way of saying ''somebody born with neurological difference'' or something. Don't take the word ''disabled'' personally.

My mother says I am not disabled because I can work and do things everyone else can and people who are disabled can't. But then by her logic that would mean some people in wheelchairs aren't disabled because some of them drive, have jobs, so therefore they wouldn't be disabled. That would go for deaf people too, that would also mean Temple Grandin isn't disabled.

I do consider myself learning disabled. If you need accommodations or extra help in life, you are disabled. I wonder if my mom was being PC or sugar coating.

I'm not so much offended over that as I am that you think its acceptable to deny someone a chance at life just because the "disability" might make their childhood not so great. Even worse, it sounds like you're thinking more about how it would affect you; it sounds like you'd feel like an outcast around people who have normal kids, or would be disappointed that you couldn't vicariously replace your own childhood with theirs. These are all terrible reasons to pre-emptively kill an autistic. I didn't have many friends, didn't go to birthday parties, didn't fit in at school, etc. But that is a very brief and temporary part of one's life. I'm glad I was given a chance.

I would prefer to have an NT child to any other child since it means they will have a higher statistical chance at living a happy fufilled life. The ideology of aspies being fully capable of living full lives pales in comparison to how unhappy most aspies seem to be living in an NT world. I want to give my kid the best chance possible - that means hoping she's NT, hoping she'd be anything else would be egotistical.

So, an NT child is the last sort I'd abort.

Why would they be discussing aborting for AS at the grocery store? Where you, a person with AS just happened to walk by and hear that exact snippet of the conversation?

There isn't a prenatal test for AS, AFAIK. There isn't a prenatal test for any kind of Autism AFAIK.

I could imagine them discussing that about Down's, because there is a prenatal test for that but it's not 100% accurate.

I would probably choose to have my baby, no matter what risks of any problems, unless it was anacephaly. Then I would abort. Anacephaly is where there is only a brain stem and they only live a few hours to a few days. There is no cure, no nothing for it.

The situation in the original post seems rather odd.

I had a hystorectomy last year because my periods were making me anemic, I never wanted to have children anyway. But if I somehow got pregnant via rape or something like that, I would never abort my child regardless of if it was autistic or NT but I wouldn't keep it once it was born. I would arrange for it to be adopted before it was born. I don't know if anyone would want a child from an autistic mother but you never know. My adoptive parents still wanted me even after they found out my biological mother was autistic. But I could never cope with being a mother or having a child around.

NM

Last edited by mv on 03 Jan 2012, 12:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I can't answer this question. My son was diagnosed with classic autism more than 1 year ago and I'm suspection being AS myself. I'm reading as much as I can about autistic spectrum and I know that unfortunately autism often occurs along with other disablities that are worse than autism. If it was autism alone, I wouldn't abort the child.

I know lots of people with lots of different disabilities and they don't seem to be any less happy with their lives than the non-disabled people I know. And that includes disabilities which shorten the lifespan, cause chronic pain, or require daily assistance. Note that I don't say they are happy; just that they are as happy as typical people. Life itself has lots of unhappiness in it, whether you are disabled or not. It's just that the unhappiness doesn't seem to be any worse for people with disabilities than without them; nor the happiness any more rare.

Considering that these people have lives that are as fulfilling as the lives of non-disabled people, I don't see why I would want to abort any disabled child. I'm pro-life to begin with; but many pro-life people have less objection to the abortion of a disabled fetus than a non-disabled one. I don't; I see both actions as equally repugnant. Even a child who will only live a short time deserves to have the time that is available; and the mom deserves to have that time to spend with her child.

The idea of "quality of life" seems to be bound up in "how independent you are" and "how close you are to normal", but that's taking for granted that being independent and normal makes your life better. Who says it does? I don't. Most disabled people don't. When non-disabled people judge a disabled person's quality of life, from the outside in, sometimes without even asking, they make horrible mistakes that result in people thinking it would be better to die than live that kind of life. But it isn't--no more than it's better to die than live a life as a neurotypical, non-disabled person.

Yeah, there are problems that you have when you're disabled, that you don't have if you're not. But why do people think the solution is to remove the disabled person, instead of addressing the problems? Do they truly think that disability-related problems are so unsolvable that it's not worth trying to do so?

I thought about that when I read this topic but I couldn't remember the name for it.

I found a site where someone had a baby with that and they lived for 3 months and didn't seem quite as bad off as you would expect them to. Usually they die pretty fast or are born dead.

http://babyfaithhope.blogspot.com/

I also saw another site with a story about a baby with no brain but after a shunt drained a lot of fluid it turned out they had a smaller brain that was very compressed by all the fluid. They were mentally challenged but not as bad off as they could have been with nothing.

I also saw stories of adults getting brain scans and finding out that their head was mostly filled with fluid and not much brain.

Yeah. I've read that blog, too. It's really quite amazing, how much she managed to do with only a brainstem. Even that little bit let her respond to her mother at a basic level--respond to touch, suck on a bottle, calm when held. I don't think she was conscious; but it seems clear to me that she was human, and that's enough.

If I were pregnant and the child had anencephaly, I think I'd do the same this mom did--carry the baby to term, spend as much time with the child as I could, even if it was only minutes or hours. It seems cruel to deprive a child with such a severe disability of the short lifetime that the child could have had. It feels like taking a man's last loaf of bread because he'll just starve anyway after he eats it. I mean, yeah, it's true; the child is going to die; without a brain nobody can live long. But we're all going to die. Just because an anencephalic infant dies much sooner than everybody else doesn't mean that there's no value in the life that's possible. If my child were going to die, I would want him to be warm and safe and loved for however long he had. Abortion would mean throwing away some of that precious time; and I just couldn't do that. When life is so fragile and short, my impulse is to protect it--to make every moment count.