a judge decided Terri Schiavo had no value

One of the reasons, among many, that I'm so grateful that both my autistics sons are so high functioning is that it's hard enough to get services for them without also proving that they are worth it. My children have enough expressive language skills to speak for themselves should anybody try to deny their humanity. But for any parents who have been denied services on the basis that it's not cost effective since their children are too low functioning, couldn't possibly benefit, are essentially not worth it, well, yes, that's the kind of society we live in. Read here about the world's only known deafblind triplets whose parents have worked tirelessly to raise private funds for their education when government services proved highly inadequate: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/features/4946594.html

There is far too much debate about what constitutes a free, appropriate education. But education is just one aspect of our society through which we are willing to throw away the "lesser" members of our population.

One of my favorite new blogs is written by one of my fellow PA residents, and she wrote a very poignant commentary called Terri Schiavo and Autism, what is the connection. I don't know how to create links yet, but hopefully if you copy and paste you will be able to access the post to read the whole thing if you'd like. Basically, Terri Schiavo had brain damage, and needed help eating and with personal hygiene. She also had lost use of expressive language. She was not in a coma, she was not on life support. Her family of origin wanted to continue to care for her; her husband (who was considered by many to be responsible for her brain injury in the first place) got a court order in order to legally kill her by starving her to death.

http://debstake.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/terri-schiavo-and-autism-what-is-the-connection/

This was my comment:



I meant to say something about this the first time I read it, but was interupted by one of my aspies and forgot about it. But I think you hit the nail right on the head here, it is absolutely terrifying to think that any of us could so easily be disposable if the right circumstances conspire against us. People think this is an isolated incident, but this kind of attitude is used all the time to deny lower functioning autistics any kind of special education services or beneficial therapies. It is viewed as pointless or lacking pay off. Many wonder why so many parents in the autism community are focused on “cure” instead of accepting our children the way they are. WE are the ones who DO accept our children and value them, it’s the rest of the world that is so quick to dismiss our kids.

If we could prove that autism is curable, and enough kids “recover”, as they reach those higher levels of functioning, it is more difficult for the kids to be DISREGARDED. As Terri Schiavo was. What was especially horrifying to me about that specific case was that she had people who loved and cared about her advocating mightily on her behalf, and the government reasoned that it was STILL OK for her to be snuffed. Well if they have no concern about pumping our kids full of poisens that harm them, why should we surprised when they sanction outright murder? With all the reparation programs that we have instituted for slavery, forced sterility victims, and the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, you would think that we had reached a more enlightened age. We admitted we were wrong to deny people their civil rights and consider certain groups of people expendable. Guess not.