HAVING AN AUTISTIC CHILD WRECKS YOUR LIFE!! by Carol Sarler

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@Jelibean: Preach on, preacher. You've got quite a great message to spread.

@NocturnalQuilter: While part of me hates your statement, you've got a great point. For some, I wouldn't say few experiences. I'd say many experiences of the same genres.

@thewildeman2: Amen.

Even if there were pre-birth screening, who's to say they'd have aborted? They could've said "nah, we can cope, it's our baby and we will do right by him/her", and then proceeded to have this baby. There are too many ppl asking "what if" in the world. Just stick by your decisions, as they must have felt right at the time of making them.

How about this. We allow pre-natal birth screenings and abortion for autism and other disorders on the condition that the couples who choose the abortion on those grounds for any other reason than financial or other demonstrable inability to care for the child agree to be sterilized immediately afterward. That way they never have to be disappointed at the prospect of having an "imperfect" child again.

I'm not quite serious about the above, mind you, as this would probably force many an autistic or otherwise different/disabled child into a home that wasn't loving so the parents could avoid the consequences. I fully support the ability of people to choose not to have a child that they don't feel like they could take care of. I also happen to believe, however, that if one has decided to have a kid, one should be prepared for and accepting of anything - try to prevent the preventable, of course, but realize that it can and might happen. That doesn't mean at all that you should be ecstatic if your kid is autistic or has a rare skin condition or needs 20 operations before they're three, but that you allow for the possibility when you decide to start and continue a pregnancy rather than ASSUME that your kid's going to walk normal, talk normal, play sports, get married and have 2.5 kids, a dog and a white picket fence just like you, and then punish the kid for not living up to that expectation.

Anyways...

The article itself was what I expected, horrible as it was. The OTHER article by the same person, however, was absolutely sickening, how she all but bragged about driving a man to suicide. The autistic boy she so harshly villainizes is at least a better human being than her in that he acts without knowing the consequences and without malice (or so can be assumed from her description), whereas she knows exactly what the implications of her words and actions are and says them, does them anyways. Perhaps a follow-up article could be entitled "Yellow Journalists Can Wreck Your Life!", and use her as an example, and see if she takes that "opinion" lying down like she expects others to, apparently.