This week it has been all over the news that a Michigan mother of an autistic teen tried to kill herself and her daughter. Apparently the mother was at her wit's end after being rejected by the school system. Details can be found on Mlive.com. The attempt was not successful, but it looks like the daughter may have suffered additional brain damage as a result.
This case, predictably, has caused quite an uproar. Autism advocates are upset that others are rallying to the mother's support; they claim that no matter how desperate the mother felt, murder is no solution. I feel they have every reason to be concerned.
A while back I wrote a devil's-advocate blog arguing for "postnatal choice". The response I got was very interesting. The one person who responded was more interested in arguing the case for abortion and completely missed the point of my blog. And what are the reasons for abortion? Well, in some cases, apparently it is the more humane solution. Think about it. The reason so many people wanted to make abortion legal and to keep abortion legal, is that they are concerned that women will be driven to acts of desperation when confronted with a pregnancy that is just too much to handle. Allowing abortion is an act of compassion, to their way of thinking.
Ah, but what happens AFTER the choice is made to have the child and it turns out then that the child is too much to handle? So far, there is no prenatal diagnosis for autism. So the parents of an autistic child are stuck. There is no way out for them. So they resort to desperate measures. And people write in saying we can't blame the mother of this child, you ought to show compassion for her, she was at the end of her rope, the system let her down, the child was violent and a danger to others, and so on and so forth.
Do you see where I am going with this? We've already established a precedent here. No woman, we are told, should be forced to have a child she doesn't want, especially if it would cause significant hardship. Yet we deny the same option to a woman who is at the end of her rope with a child she cannot handle and for whom there is no help. I just wonder, how many parents of autistic children would support the right to choose euthanasia for their children? I suspect a lot more than a few.
This case, predictably, has caused quite an uproar. Autism advocates are upset that others are rallying to the mother's support; they claim that no matter how desperate the mother felt, murder is no solution. I feel they have every reason to be concerned.
A while back I wrote a devil's-advocate blog arguing for "postnatal choice". The response I got was very interesting. The one person who responded was more interested in arguing the case for abortion and completely missed the point of my blog. And what are the reasons for abortion? Well, in some cases, apparently it is the more humane solution. Think about it. The reason so many people wanted to make abortion legal and to keep abortion legal, is that they are concerned that women will be driven to acts of desperation when confronted with a pregnancy that is just too much to handle. Allowing abortion is an act of compassion, to their way of thinking.
Ah, but what happens AFTER the choice is made to have the child and it turns out then that the child is too much to handle? So far, there is no prenatal diagnosis for autism. So the parents of an autistic child are stuck. There is no way out for them. So they resort to desperate measures. And people write in saying we can't blame the mother of this child, you ought to show compassion for her, she was at the end of her rope, the system let her down, the child was violent and a danger to others, and so on and so forth.
Do you see where I am going with this? We've already established a precedent here. No woman, we are told, should be forced to have a child she doesn't want, especially if it would cause significant hardship. Yet we deny the same option to a woman who is at the end of her rope with a child she cannot handle and for whom there is no help. I just wonder, how many parents of autistic children would support the right to choose euthanasia for their children? I suspect a lot more than a few.
