Posted on 08/15/2011 4:19:58 PM PDT by wagglebee
I cannot imagine life without my autistic grandson, Max. However, the chilling truth is, there are plenty of people who can.
Autism Spectrum Disorder, which runs the gamut from profoundly disabled to high-functioning individuals capable of living fairly normal lives, affects millions of families: 1 out of every 1,000 births today are autistic kids.
As I have told you over the past two days, the families of these children, like my grandson Max, don’t see these children as burdens but, instead, as blessings. Not because the parents are in “denial,” but because they love their children, and that love has helped them to see what is really important and where human worth really lies.
Unfortunately, there are many others, unlike these parents, who believe that parents and society would be better off if kids like Max were never born.
And these days, pre-natal testing allows doctors, insurance companies, and prospective parents to determine which babies in the womb will be so-called “normal and healthy,” and which will be born with handicaps. Which is why more and more of them identified with handicaps, like Down Syndrome, are being aborted.
The demonic “logic” behind targeting people with Down Syndrome can be applied to anyone with disabilities. A combination of fear, concern over the costs of caring for these kids, desires for a “perfect” child can prove irresistible. Medical technology may never enable us to “cure” things like autism, but it may enable us to identify — and target — autistic people in the womb.
If you’re thinking “this can’t happen here,” it already has. As Dr. Christopher Hook of the Mayo Clinic warns, “Eugenics is back in America.” Eugenics is the belief that we can improve the human race by eliminating undesirable genetic traits, usually, that is, the people who carry those traits. In fact, the modern eugenics movement began here in the United States. Among its proponents were people like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Margaret Sanger.
Eugenics is so dangerous and pernicious because it represents a radical disrespect for every human life, not just the life of the unborn. Adolf Hitler, an open admirer of the American and German eugenics movements, began eliminating the mentally and physically handicapped years before he started killing Jews.
The re-birth of eugenics in this country doesn’t require Nazi brown-shirts or even new laws. In fact, all it requires is for Christians not to pay attention. Then a combination of medical rationing and other economic and cultural forces will enable the forces of death to follow the demonic “logic” to its deadly conclusion.
So, how do we prevent this? We stand up for life, from conception to natural death. We make it clear to both our “leaders” and the chattering classes that respect for life is the great non-negotiable.
And it’s non-negotiable precisely because of people like Max. He will never pay taxes or hold down a job. He’ll never cure the common cold or cure the economy. But he has brought love and joy into the world in ways I never could have imagined. And I’ll talk more about that Monday.
Please, get a copy of Dancing with Max. I can almost guarantee you’ll fall in love with my grandson. And he’ll teach you exactly why we must resist every effort for humans to play God and decide who lives and who dies.
Colson nails it here!
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I have an autistic son. With death panels and the like, I think about this stuff often.
BHO and his minions cannot leave soon enough
I just linked this article on FB. Thank you for posting it.
“BHO and his minions cannot leave soon enough”
I also have an autistic son (severe, can’t even go to the bathroom without “supervision”) and I think about this a lot. I don’t think that it is a single party (i.e., only the Rats) problem though. There have been plenty of post here on FR expressing the same kind of thing for people that don’t “behave” in public. Lets face it, no one wants to deal with someone with mental issues and everyone would “feel more comfortable” if they would just “go away”.
As our economy slides into the toilet there will be less and less money for taking care of these type of people and more and more pressure from the other people suckling on the government tit to keep the milk flowing to them. Sooner or later you’ll hear the “useless eaters” should be eliminated as they have no real quality of life anyway.
The Germans did not off these people in a humane way, they simply starved them to death (why waste the bullet when given enough time it’ll take care of itself?). Our nation, like the rest of the western world, has abandoned Christianity and the morals that went along with it so I have little reason to believe that we won’t go down the same path as Germany. I’m just hoping, in vain most likely, that I won’t see it in my lifetime.
Because we can’t have people with real disabilities like downs syndrome living off the government, because they need able bodied people to be the government leeches because they are easier to manipulate into the voting booths every four years.
The libs who think that having people with Downs and Cerebral Palsy needing government benefits is a huge crime against the state are the same sort of people who excuse able bodied government leeches in the name of “Social justice”.
Note they will cite the people with genuine physical and mental disabilities as being a “burden on the system” yet will gladly and readily excuse the able bodied and lazy who are on those same rolls.
bttt
ONE out of 1000 births???
Why are there so many TV ads claiming that the rate is more like ONE out of 150 births???
There’s a great story on Word Among Us about an autistic boy and the Eucharist. I think I copied it onto yesterday’s daily reasings thread. You might enjoy it.
Our three year old grandson has spina bifida, with severe nerve damage below the waist, and he has recently been diagnosed on the “autism spectrum”. He is absolutely the joy of our and his parents’ lives. He gives much more to us than we can ever give to him. I thank God for him every day. His nurses at birth were disturbed that he slipped by the screening tests.
I have a cousin who is autistic. But I wonder about the definitions.
On some scales, every single engineer I have ever worked with has been autistic.
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