@dangerdyke I weakly disagree with the former and strongly with the latter.

The majority of people ignorant about the topic will react negatively to autism in their children, but I'm very unconvinced they would directly want autistic people not to exist (although I see how the former semi-implies the latter as a practical consequence).

But I think that there are other ways than these two, in particular making people understand the neurotypical/neurodivergent distinction better. And I know this is harder and slower than outlawing one of the things you suggest, but this outlawing creates quite a lot of collateral damage I'm really worried about. :/ (obvious for abortion I hope, for prenatal testing it has many more applications than just "helping to decide on an abortion") Not to mention that growing up neurodivergent in a family that isn't supportive also can have quite severe disadvantages.

Sorta related – you might enjoy "Cocoon" by Greg Egan.

@dangerdyke Although I use "enjoy" in the loosest possible sense. <_<"

@timorl if people didn’t want autistic people to exist, they wouldn’t subject their autistic kids to 40+ hours a week of ABA torture “therapy”

I am not exaggerating. there are places in the US where they still literally electrocute autistic children into being “normal.” ABA is also the only “treatment” for autistic people covered by insurance, so many parents, desperate for a nonexistent cure for their child not being normal, just let it happen. if this is already the norm, i don’t see why just aborting every autistic child would be less attractive to neurotypical parents.

yes understanding is a good thing. but the reality is a lot more money is going into developing these prenatal tests so they can do eugenics on autistics, then is going into education on how to accommodate us.

@dangerdyke I don't know what ABA is, and judging by your vague description I probably don't want to know... Eh, I definitely understand your anger, society is clearly very unjust in this respect. :(

At the same time I think the reasons you give make going the education route even more tempting – if it's underfunded then any effort put into this has bigger effect than trying to fight against money being poured into lobbying by the creators of "cures".

But these are political practicalities, my main moral argument is still that the collateral damage of forbidding prenatal testing is too great, so we shouldn't be going for that even if it was politically easier.

@dangerdyke @timorl I was put into an ABA facility full time, for 120 hours a week, from ages 13 to 15 (years 2013-2015), Sunday evening to Friday afternoon. And I got *luckier* than the other kids there because my mom fought *hard* for me to be allowed home every weekend instead of only once every 2-3 weeks.

The city youth office insisted I go there, at the explicit threat of me getting taken away from mom (and put under full control of the ABA loving state officials).

At that place, there were extremely strict rules and the slightest violations got punished hard. There was a room in the basement supposedly for "calming down when upset", in practice it was just a punishment.

For example, there was an instance where I was grumpy after a major rule strictening and was grumpy at the dinner table. I was told that my grumpiness isn't wanted at the dinner table, and I decided "fuck it, if you don't want me being grumpy at the table, I'll just fuck off into my room, so you're not bothered by my mood that you caused". Usually, we were sent into our rooms a lot, 30 minutes between every afternoon activity, 60 minutes after lunch etc. But that time, the staff immediately followed me and dragged me into the basement room, as a punishment for leaving the dinner table. Like WTF. They literally said they don't want my grumpiness on the dinner table, what was I supposed to do? Pull some secret stash of happiness out of my ass?

7 years later, I still get nightmares about this place on a very regular basis. The plot of the nightmare is usually "I have been sent back there temporarily for whatever reason"

Neurotypicals want autistic people to stop being autistic, that's what ABA tries (and royally fails) to do.

Just like cis people want trans people to stop being trans. Cis people around me seem very afraid that I'll regret transitioning, and the cis people who set up the transition healthcare system made it very difficult to navigate. They'd much rather have me give up and try to live a cis life instead of just letting me transition.

I have to navigate private websites to even find doctors who provide the necessary F64.0 diagnoses, and those I contacted were overbooked to the point of not even adding people to the waitlist anymore.

@LunaDragofelis Fuck, that's simply abuse. ._.

I read the Wikipedia article trying to check whether this is in any way popular in Europe and thankfully it doesn't seem to be, but if you know of it being used anywhere here let me know, I'll at least keep an eye out for ways in which I might be able to fight it.

Also damn, it was already clear it was abuse form your post (obviously), but reading between the lines on Wikipedia (not even counting the explicitly spelled out stuff) makes it worse. ._.
@dangerdyke

@dangerdyke @timorl are you kidding? if there was a prenatal test for autism even pro lifers would abort us