Something to consider

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I just finished reading "Schyler's Monster", about a little girl who was born with a brain disorder which made it impossible for her to speak, and it seems to me that the struggles her parents went through to get any kind of meaningful help are pretty much the norm. It's as if the system is stacked against people with problems, we are just shunted aside and written off as children unless we have parents who are educated, motivated and financially able to fight for our needs. It saddens me because I personally know some autistic children who are never going to have a chance due to their family situation, they have to rely on whatever help the school/social services provides and in this county it ain't much.

I don't know if anyone else has stopped to think about this, but in the last few decades in the US, giving birth has pretty much become an "elective procedure", especially if the child is handicapped. There aren't as many Downs babies as there were, and it isn't because they found a cure for Downs. Could it be that part of the reluctance for school systems, social services, and others to provide aid for "special needs" children is due to this idea that these children did not have to be born, it was their parents' choice to have that child, and therefore why should the rest of us pay for that choice? And if so how long will it be (if it hasn't started already) before insurance companies refuse to pay for a child with problems, on the grounds that the parents had the option of termination before birth? I can see it happening given insurance companies' reputation for being difficult to deal with in general--they are not going to want to pay out any more money than they have to, and if they can find a way to deny coverage, they usually don't hesitate to do so.

The ADA notwithstanding, I think parents of children with disabilities are going to have to be ever more vigilant in protecting their right to appropriate treatment, because it is going to be increasing harder to convince the non-disabled sector of society (which pretty much has the money and the power to make the rules) that they should make allowances for a certain segment of the population when it can be prevented from coming into existence in the first place. I do not think it any coincidence at all that talk of legalizing assisted suicide/euthanasia first started surfacing at about the same time that word of the impending Social Security crisis started appearing, and I predict that as the Social Security crises worsens, there will be even more of a push to legalize assisted suicide/euthanasia. But then, as an Aspy, I have very little reason to be optimistic about human behavior.

Yes, there is much to fear from eugenics attempts, as Autism Speaks is hoping to find genetic markers of autism in order to implement prenatal screening and selective abortion to wipe us out.

Perhaps, but the right thing to do for you, would be to try and work for improvment in the behavior of the people in your community, maybe you could join a local political party and work for Asperger rights?

Ableism is and always has been rampant through the history of civilization, from institutionalization to forced sterilizations, and it still is. Ableism, like racism, is a progeny of eugenics. In this way theyr linked, because it's the same attitude which also lead to segregation of blacks and reds here in the US. We're seen as "inferior", "child like", "too dumb to be independent and equal". However, segregation was never acknowledged among the disabled or differently abled peoples. Even former civil rights leaders for racial groups and women, etc, never really stopped to challenge the assumption that disability was a legit reason for social inequality. It's all eugenics conditioning on society.