Governor signs two autism bills
Quote:
On Friday, the governor signed a bill authorizing the state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities to create a standardized identification card, and another mandating that early screening for autism be a recommended part of routine early-childhood pediatric exams.
Both bills were sponsored by Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, D-Rotterdam, who has a 16-year-old son with autism.
The autism ID card law will give families the option of having a state-issued card for presentation to law enforcement, firefighters or emergency medical personnel that would explain that a person with autism might have limited communication skills or difficulty making eye contact or following commands. They may also engage in unusual or repetitive behavior that can draw the attention of law enforcement.
The ID card law is intended to compliment autism training for first responder legislation that passed earlier this year as part of the state budget. That budget includes $250,000 for the training.
The early screening law provides that New York's health commissioner will add autism screening to routine child health exams for children between the ages of 18 and 24 months, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
There's a crisis that needs our immediate attention, and with the passage of these critical bills, we are taking steps to address the challenges that thousands of families affected by autism are facing each day," Santabarbara said.
IMHO the early screening movement is designed to get earlier and earlier Applied Behavoiral Analysis therapies adopted. In my view this is potentially a way to cure autism without using the controversial word cure or the use of eugenics. If the current view that Autistic people are genetically inclined to be that way is true, by intercepting or deflecting the natural “wiring” process in the earliest stages of life when it is most prolific you could arguably prevent the person from becoming autistic. I am convinced this is the unspoken agenda of ABA.
The ID law at first glance is less threatining, it is voluntary and could be helpful in easing the very real problem of police mistaking autistic behavoirs with threating or terrorist behaviors. But the potential for abuse of government tracking devices should be obvoius. The potential also exists for familes to force thier offspring to be tracked into adulthood and when they do not need to ie the overuse of better be safe then sorry.
The legislator whose bills was signed described us as a “crises”. This language is right out of the Autism Speaks pre 2016 and anti vaxx playbooks. If something is a percieved as a crises the strong natural temptation is to be reckless by seeking shortcuts, to discard morality as something in the way of the need to solve the crisis NOW, and to fall into the “slippery slope”.
There has been on and off discussions here at WP about whether the political right or left is more threating to autistic people. It should be noted that both the legislator that proposed the bills and the governor who signed it are democrats. The governor is facing a celebrity challenger from the left and has Presidential ambitions. New York is a very “blue” state.
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
28 Aug 2018, 1:45 am
