Another Autism Fillicide

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A Woman Brought Her Blind Son With Autism to a Field to Die, Police Say

Well, she is right about one thing: she is a terrible mother.

Very wrong and unnecessary according to the ethics of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and probably about two dozen other religions.

And for those of us who are atheist or agnostic, probably very wrong according to both utilitarian and Kantian / human rights grounds.

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Alright, we need to take this a step further. We need to be all about the business of better alternatives and preventing this.

For example, wasn't there this previous idea that a parent in crisis could take their child to a "safe space" in a hospital, police station, fire station, and leave the child there without a whole bunch of questions?

Not sure why the Safe Haven Law doesn't also apply to older kids.

In the olden days, this used to be the rumor of or occasional cartoon or movie scene of someone leaving a baby on a doorstep. And perhaps watching from afar to make sure another person did find the child.

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A lot of people don't know about Safe Haven Laws. For those of us who live in America, we can be low-key leaders simply because we know about this and can bring it up on online chats and discussions when it feels promising. Using our developing feel-and-texture ad lib skills. And often just being direct and matter-of-fact. In many ways, leadership is easier than followship!

For those of us living in other countries, your country might have something similar or better.

And down the line we might potentially help autistic kids, as well as a broader range of kids.

According to the mother...
She said “she and God brought her baby into this world and that she had to help God take him out,”

She actually equates what she was doing with the will of god...

A lot of terrible people bring the Almighty into the situation in order to justify their actions.

In some cases, moms who do bring god into it are truly crazy like that one mother in Texas who killed her two sons with rocks and the youngest survived. She was found not guilty. The Deanna Laney murders.

I think there should be safe haven laws for the disabled and for the elderly too and for the mentally ill. I don't know if this killing was more of a drug issue than an autism issue.

Maybe she was just sick of caring for her autistic child, and thought she'd make him suffer for what she thought he put her through .

Easy to cast stones, eh?

I wouldn't be able to take care of a blind, mentally disabled kid. Can you imagine the demands? The mother couldn't cope so she acted inappropriately; but this is a societal failure - there should be government assistance to care for the disabled so things like this don't happen.

That's absolutely true, there should be far better social services to help parents to care for their severely disabled children. Regardless of that, allowing one's own child to die like this woman did is completely indefensible.

Why must people assume the worst? Isn't that being a bit paranoid?

She sounds like a poster child for Autism Speaks.

Being that she let her child die of dehydration and lack of medication, all the while exposed to the elements, I don't think my conclusion is at all paranoid.

The best case here is the mother had an underlying or acquired mental illness triggered by long term stress and she could not recognise that her decision to murder was abnormal. Giving her the benefit of the doubt is to assume that in this state she may not recognise that she needed to give up her son in order to protect him from her. At worst she made a calculated decision (with intent) to murder her son in a slow and cruel way so that she could be rid of him.

I have read a number of comments from a significant proportion of social media users over the years who sympathise with parents who commit filicide. It stems from a insidious view that some lives are "not worth living". We know that most parents when face with knowledge they have a disabled fetus will choose to abort. Any wonder that people are sympathetic to the mother.

Not all life experience is of equal value and some lives are not worth living. I don't understand why this is a hard concept to grasp. It's fairly obvious that some people function successfully and others don't and they need help. I think it is the degree of help that a disabled person needs that is the reason for this action. Disabled people are a burden on their caregivers, especially if that is one parent.

That sounds exactly like the ideology of Satoshi Uematsu when he murdered 19 disabled people to remove the burden of them from their families and society.

You are right about one thing. That is a very hard concept for most people to grasp, if they have even an ounce of compassion for disabled people. Luckily for disabled people everywhere, the vast majority of people are in that group, and don't agree with your position.