There is a train of thought that goes if you find anything at all is wrong with a child to be born, you abort it.
Look, it’s not that I don’t understand or even sympathize with the reasoning. All two times I was pregnant I bargained. “I can take deaf, I can take blind. Let his mind be okay.” Because in the present day, minds are essential to be able to actually be an adult and independent. The rest can be cumbersome, but you can deal with. (One of the best students in my degree was, or at least looked like, a Thalidomide baby. No arms. Hands coming out his shoulders, and shortened legs with feet. Never examined, obviously, since he was dressed in school and anyway, not a specimen, but I suspect no thighs, just legs. or very abbreviated thighs. His mom brought him to school, but he had friends, and the rest of the day they took him from class to class, hung out, etc. They removed his socks and shoes so he could take notes with his feet, then put them back on. Again, one of the best students, and I expect he has had a long and productive life as a translator/interpreter.)
If I’d found one of the kids really for sure, for absolute sure would be non functional, I don’t know what I would have done. I’m not judging anyone in that situation. You wonder about things like “who is going to look after him/her after I die?” and “How can I support him/her and still be okay for both of us?” and… I know two families in that situation. Knew a couple others in Portugal. There is no happy ending for those situations.
I understand.
When I refused to abort older child after being guaranteed that he’d be mentally deficient and never able to live on his own, it wasn’t even so much an excess of Catholicism (at the time honestly no.) It was part cussedness because i hated that Obygyn and part the fact we had gone through infertility for six years — six years — and been told a baby would never happen. At that point, I figured if I had to look after the kid his whole life, at least I’d have a kid.
As it turns out, he was fine. Though he’ll say given his choice of career he IS mentally deficient and his wife is proof he’s not able to live on his own. (I didn’t Gibbs slap him enough!)
I haven’t read the Martian Chronicles. It’s been a weird week. I’m better, but last week I was very, very ill and unable to function for days at a time.
But I was thinking about Clifford Simak’s novels and Data republican.
In Clifford Simak’s there is often the person who would normally be discarded in his time at least and some of them in our time would probably be aborted.
Some of them were just the outcast and the weirdo. The man who raised skunks. The oddball journalist without a life. The lonely paleontologist….
BUT a recurring character is the kid who is disabled. Deaf, mute, sometimes “not sure what but doesn’t respond to anyone or anything.”
Most of these are kids in the hills, when families were large, and people tolerated less than normal siblings or kids, fed them, though probably treated them like pets, not quite human.
I grew up in that kind of society, and while deficient people were less likely to be aborted (partly because the womb was more opaque back then) they were more likely to be treated somewhere between a kid and a pet. They’d be fed, and kept clean, and maybe given things to play with, but no extraordinary efforts would be made to school them or help them live a full life.
Now, of course, we’re different. We’re more likely to abort the kid, but also, if we have the resources, we’re more likely to teach the kid. Though any number of parents will still institutionalize a “defective.” Again, not judging. I can only imagine the horrible vise grip people are in, between trying to survive in a society that often demands everyone to work at all times. And looking after someone who will never get better, never be normal, is heart breaking stuff, stuff that demands heroism, and again there is no happy ending.
Simak had a tender touch with those kids. I’m thinking of the girl at the end of Way Station, who turns out to be one of very few sentients who can operate the peace-making gizmo. I now the figure appears under similar guises in a couple of other places.
I always thought that figure was fairly unlikely.
And then we have Data republican. I know some of her challenges, and I give all the props and admiration to her parents for facing those challenges, not institutionalizing her, bringing her up to be functional and make the best of her natural abilities.
When I started following her, I thought she was a Clifford Simak character come to life: a woman born for the moment.
What is the point of this? Well, other than being in awe of Data republican, which is always in style.
We all have challenges. Sometimes our challenges are more than anyone should deal with. I know this is true for a few of you.
But maybe there’s a time up ahead that you were born for. A thing only you can do and that others need.
This might be as big as the girl who could speak to the alien peace-gizmo and saved several worlds. Or it could be saying the right word to the right person at the right time. Making treat for someone who is very down. Say something that turns their lives around. That puts them on a better path.
But there is some situation up ahead, where only you, disabilities, abilities and all, can make a difference.
Stay on this side of the turf. Stay active, alive, alert. Learn everything you can. Stay engaged with people and the world as much as you, personally, can.
And if the occasion presents itself, stand up. Don’t be afraid to shine.
Weirdos though we are, there is a time and place for us.
According To Hoyt 
You never know when a small kindness or the right word at the right time makes a difference in someone’s life. All we can really do is muddle through and try to make our own local world a little better. Most of us can see things we could have done better, but you never know when that opportunity to make a difference might crop up.
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If you don’t know how to do that (I didn’t), shamelessly cheat. Observe those that have a good patter: inconsequential talk. Repeat it. Build a library of common greetings. Ape the manner of folks seen as friendly. Repeat ad nauseum. Eventually you will get something that receives a positive response. Voila! You’ve made someone’s day better.
It works even if you have no natural social instinct and require painstaking research to not appear as uncanny valley weirdo nutjob.
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Scripts are indispensable for most day-to-day social interactions.
And if you get comfortable enough with the scripts, eventually you learn to roll with variations to them.
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Or why most people think I’m normal or even — boggles — extroverted.
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Yep. Those people are weirdos. They say that of me some days. They don’t see the relief that comes when getting away from people. Too much people-ing makes me tired and cranky. And loosens the filter on what can be said in polite society.
There is indeed such a thing as “too much truth.”
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But you ARE normal and an extrovert.
At least in comparison to those of us who don’t speak to anyone for weeks at a time, fail to communicate at all on a regular basis, and wonder why the rest of the world fails to see what to me is obvious.
John in Indy
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I also wonder about that last, really.
BUT on that… I go weeks not talking to anyone but Dan and the people in my head.
Fewer now, because younger DIL MAKES ME INTERACT. And it’s probably good for me.
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I am happy to have friends who call to make me interact and confirm that I am among the living, at least for a couple more weeks. I have a knee replacement surgery set for the 9th.
Great surgeon, good facility, good plans overall, etc, but I still did a new living will / med POA and Will recently.
John in Indy
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Will pray. husband needs this, if we can ever bring his sugar down.
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The Ozempic I am on caused a 35+ point drop in AM sugars. I am eating less, but occasionally forget to eat, making my sleep patterns irregular, rather than losing weight.
Dr is happy with my A1C
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He’s on ozempic and THREE other drugs, one of which is supposed to cause HYPOglycemia. He eats less than he did but he always ate like a teenage girl. His sugar is still way too high.
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But you ARE normal and an extrovert.
At least in comparison to those of us who don’t speak to anyone for weeks at a time, fail to communicate at all on a regular basis, and wonder why the rest of the world fails to see what to me is obvious.
John in Indy
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Yeah, scripts come in handy. When I’m frustrated (like the phantom package that never quite escapes West Fargo for long), it’s helpful to have planned what I want, and how I’m going to relate that want. Especially when the company still uses the dreaded Mumbai help center.
(The company gave up on the shipment and is going to send a replacement, via some form of express. UPS I hope.)
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The one job I had as a grownup that required a lot of phone work came with a semi-detective component (basically, I often had to verify if our contact info for certain organizations were still valid, and if they weren’t it could involve a lot of additional calling around to find out who we needed to list.) I had to write rough scripts for myself initially, and once I got the basics down, took to mentally carrying a few bullet points around in my head. Thankfully, have moved up from there into jobs where people mostly call me than the other way around.
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Until the day when you automatically answer, “I love you,” to someone saying “See you later!” and then the world pauses for a minute while you blink back out of autopilot with a case of crippling embarrassment. Whoops!
But yeah, basic friendly greetings – or even a smile – can make someone’s crappy day much, much better. And listening sincerely for an answer to your social questions, that works great too.
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I’ve done that. “Love you, bye” on a phone call with a co-worker. It wasn’t cripplingly embarrassing, though. We both just laughed.
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Truth be told, I’ve noticed that more often than not, when that accidental slip of “I love you” comes out to someone that you wouldn’t normally greet or farewell that way, they are touched and pleased. Our world always comes down so heavily on love = romance always (although some emphasis on parental love is there, but not nearly so prominent, I feel), that I think we would all do better to remember there are many kinds of love. The world would be a better place if more people heard “I love you” as a form of “I value your presence, I appreciate your existence, and I love you as a fellow human being sharing my path in this particular thing (work/school/whatever).”
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” All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts”
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Dan, may I interject:
You have an uncanny instinct for when to do your cat reports. They seem to hit when I’m sick, tired or depressed. AND THEY ALWAYS CHEER ME UP. Every time.
I figured I should tell you.
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I haven’t been staff* to cats for a long time, and Kat-the-dog doesn’t do feline, but the reports are wonderful.
(dot) There’s a feral Maine Coon cat in the immediate neighborhood who does single-pawed ground battle with the RLF. It’s been a good year for ground squirrels (especially the one who undermined my brand new paver patio, sigh) and the Red Tailed air force is having a hard time keeping up. The Bald eagles prefer river hunting, and the Goldens haunt the forest, 2 miles away and 500 feet higher. So, the hawks can use a little help.
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Cat happens. I am merely the humble scribe that reports on the aftermath.
Most days it’s just normal cat stuff. Neighborcat kills things. Othercat helps. Nastycat does something that requires a bath. Doofus gets- DOOFUS! Drop that right now! He’s carrying around a potato. In his mouth. Again. That he won’t eat, just carry.
He’s not hungry. He’s just being weird. He makes me chase him down and take the potato away, then he’s all snuggly and such. Silly booger.
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Uh. Muse cuddles potatoes. carries potatoes around. Sometimes bites them. …. not like they’re PEACHES which she eats, but….
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Our cats have taken to air burying the dog’s food. They don’t do that with their kibble. They taken turns to carrying around my sandals, I have no clue why. Some mornings we wake up to a shout. Our son reaching into the dark towel closet only to encounter softer than expected towels. Cat, usually the tuxedo one, has opened the doors and decided to sleep on the towels. The hall light isn’t on because then he’d be waking us up at OMG -30 (leaves for work at 5:30, so an hour -ish before then).
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Cats are so gloriously weird.
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lol our resident crimebag (the bigger and bolder of the pair of bottle-babies I rescued last May) has broadened his horizons and tried out stealing a potato. I was taking the dogs out one morning a couple of weeks ago, and…there was a potato, on the landing. So he got it about 3/4 of the way up the stairs, and then gave up. So far it’s the only potato he’s made off with. He prefers marshmallows. He stole half a bag of (rather old and cruncy) ones a month or two ago, and I found them inexplicably dumped outside one of the upstairs bedrooms. Earlier this week, I opened a package of Peeps and ate some, but I prefer them a bit chewy, so I left the remainder of the package to cure, so to speak, on my desk (it’s Wyoming, stuff dries out fast!). Next morning I got up, and stared in bewilderment at the empty box, thought briefly that I must have eaten them after all? (But why would I leave the empty box on my desk?) And then–again taking the dogs out, found the two remaining peeps grubby and critter-fur adorned on the kitchen floor, and I realized what must have happened.
For a cat who is, at nearly all times, the feline embodiment of “bludger” and “gogogogogogo until you pass out, then gogogogogogogo some more” he can be shockingly silent…
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Our klepto dog is bad enough. Her main target is socks. But when the cats get involved … Although I think they think it is funny because too often the dog gets the blame before we are clued in. I mean if they leave whatever where she can’t reach then we know the thief isn’t her. Then there are the items that she can’t reach to steal, so we know to blame the cats.
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A year or two ago at the Walmart checkout line, I had a cartful of assorted items. Behind me was an elderly lady with a few items of groceries. I told her that I would take a while, and that she should go ahead of me. She must have thanked me a half dozen times. Made me feel good all that day.
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“Impossible?! You only say that because it hasn’t been done before.” Or something like that…
“Impossible? Let’s DO IT!”
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Human beings are like stones thrown into a pond, their Life is how all those ripples interact with other stones. One never knows what or how those ripples with affect the other ripples. You never know how your own ripples will affect others. You’ll never know if your smile is the one that stops some person from depression, or if your hateful words causes another’s. No matter how much you want to be you are not the Author, you are just human. Try to choose the light always, free choice and liberty are messy, try not to be too messy.
PS Have a Nice Day, scratch your pet.
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You also cannot possibly conclude those past choices, which you may along the way have regretted, are in fact regrettable, as those specific choices, and no others, put you exactly where you need to be with exactly the skills and strength in hand to do what you need to do.
Regret presumes perfect knowledge, which nobody on this world has. It is a mistake in every instance.
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I must have read a dozen stories in which the protagonist gets from one to multiple “do overs”. It never ends well; the final “do over”, whether the only one or the last of multiple tries, invariably either gets him removed from existence, or at best much worse than he started with no return.
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Back in the before times, my fellow computer repair tech would just say sometimes to each other (maybe we even sang it, can’t remember) the words to “I Thank G-d for Unanswered Prayer.”
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50 years ago, the stereotype concept of an autistic child was someone who was profoundly mentally retarded, with major disabilities preventing normal movement, and zero to little speech, or barely equivalent to chimpanzee-level of communication. And it was fairly rare. Sylvester Stallone’s kid was thought of as highly functioning for an autistic child. Small wonder that faced with such a daunting life-long trial that many people would consider abortion of such a child to be a blessing, or at least the lesser of two evils. Similar attitudes were involved with children with Down’s Syndrome.
Today, those at the top of the spectrum are nearly indistinguishable from the rest of humanity. Those at the bottom are still as bad off as they were 50 years ago. The hard questions are, how can you tell where they’ll be at an early date, and what do you do if they don’t measure up? There’s a big difference between providing a little extra help to a kid who’s a bit slow about some things; and one who requires 100% full care for the rest of your life. Right now, we can’t know before they’re born how they’ll end up. 1000 years ago, if they were not going to be able to be independent, or even of help to the family, they’d be taken out into the forest and left. (Think Hansel and Gretel, only as Democrats.)
I have a son who is autistic. He thinks he’s a woman. He’s as far left as it gets. He required about 20-30% more care to raise than our other, normal son. But he did get a college degree, and works as a school librarian, making enough (barely) to live on. Should I have had him terminated before birth if I knew how he was going to turn out? Absolutely not. He deserved the chance to fail or succeed.
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Well, and there is ALWAYS the chance that he will, at some point in his life, turn around and decide on a different road.
You can’t change if you’re dead!!
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I’m in awe of datarepublican and how her genius, like Musk’s, has come about at the exact right time to save the day. I never thought about how her disabilities might have caused her mother to be counseled to abort. The thought is horrifying — but true to our times.
My last baby was a “geriatric pregnancy” since I was 37, and the docs wanted to test for Down’s syndrome. The procedure involved a needle into my abdomen which might cause spontaneous early labor. Why would I do that? I asked, and the response was that I could get an early third trimester abortion if I was carrying a Down’s syndrome child. I was revolted, but again, that’s true to the times. I refused, and carried a healthy baby to term.
The times, they need to change. I think we’re seeing this right now. I pray we are.
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Even more likely, because I don’t think her disabilities showed in scan back then, she might have been institutionalized and warehoused form birth. Less “trouble” you know?
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They wanted my daughter also to undergo amniocenteses when she was pregnant at the age of 40 – and she refused also. (With my approval.) Nothing that would endanger Wee Jamie, in utero. He has also been slow developing, and all the way along, we have been saying (with gritted teeth, mostly) “No, he is not Downs – all the physical things which hinted at it, he has grown out of, and the slightly almond eyes are a genetic inheritance from a grandparent.” He has been getting physical therapy for several years, and is developing — just slower than his peers. He is bright enough – just lazy and very stubborn.
At the center where he goes for therapy, there are other children his age, receiving care- some with very profound disabilities. My daughter says that she is reassured about Jamie: he will develop normally, given time – but some of those other children will never get better.
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He’ll catch up, suddenly. Then pass the others. I BET YOU.
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We are certain that one of these days, he will just zoom ahead, as if on a rocket. He does progress, but slowly … and never regresses. He is also very social, and friendly to others, so he has that going for him, too.
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That is normal for the highly gifted. It’s called Saltanional development. I’ve heard of them being five before consenting to talk. And suddenly you can shut them up. And they’re reading. And oh, yeah, physics, why don’t you think physics are obvious, mom?
(Okay, he talked to only me but honestly he had speech issues that meant other people might not realize hew as talking. Till … 10 other people might not understand those were words. He’s fine. His wife loves him. Yesterday he was celebrating a big victory at work.)
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Youngest sister. Teachers thought she needed to be in remedial classes. No, she was just quiet. She had two older sisters to talk for her!!!! Plus the next oldest of us inherited mom’s side of the family, um, *projecting voice. None of them have to work at it. Trust me, in the talking department she made up for in spades.
(*) Mom’s voice “booms”, her siblings, my grandparents, etc. are/were the same. There is no “quiet”. It carries. When she yells, it is much louder. (I did not inherit that trait. Heck, when I yell, my voice does not carry. Very soft.)
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My mother–who had my youngest brother at 42–had that same argument with one of her doctors. That particular doctor was just flabbergasted at the idea that she would want to keep a baby that had Down’s syndrome. (iirc–it was a long time ago, lol, I was 17, and he is now, erm, 26? she changed obgyns)
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“Congratulations, you just killed Mozart.” SMH
Mom was told after her 2nd child (me) that if she had any more she would never walk again. Well, an additional 7 babies later she was still running rings around everyone. Those statements just irritate me. It’s mostly just manipulation.
I don’t know what my purpose is. I’m still apparently moving toward it. Still practicing. I guess I’ll keep practicing until they nail shut my coffin and mutter to each other “We’ll make sure she doesn’t come back this time!”
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Manipulation it is. I have a rule: Whenever I hear or read “experts say” or “studies show”, especially if neither the “experts” nor the “studies” are identified or referenced, I assume whatever is being pushed is the opposite of reality. And “cui bono?” is always an appropriate question.
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I believe it was Beethoven whose family history was considered reason enough.
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I think it’s funny (in a very NOT funny way)–who was it, that hutt-in-human-shape Michael Moore?–who was whinging a while back about how absolute DARE illegal aliens be deported because omg one of them might find the cure for cancer!!!
Funny–I’d say it was far more likely that a leftist aborted the child who would have cured cancer than an MS-13 gang member would suddenly get a yearning to become a research scientist but couldn’t do it because, gasp, he’d been deported back to South America…
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I was indecently gratified, ’bout 20 years back, when I entered the search terms ‘fat commie f[bleep]’ into Google and, as I only-half-jokingly expected, that very same fat commie f[bleep]’s name was the top result.
I miss the Before-Time.
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“There is no happy ending for those situations.”
There can be. My wife and I adopted a boy that would otherwise been aborted. His genetic and developmental issues combined to produce a globally unique case – but he will never develop past a newborn stage, and has been regressing from there very slowly over the last seven years.
What has he done? Transformed our family for the better. Our kids (all Aspie types) have learned patience, communication with each other, the joys of service and interaction. My own growth has been to be less of a bastard, mostly. I’m not sure how my wife has grown, as I am sure she is my own personal angel (she married me, after all, and that salvation is not more personal or gracious.)
We have been and are continually amply repaid for our efforts. And even though he is certainly past his half-way point (original life expectancy was 3 years, maybe), we have definitely had a happy ending.
And yes, I read Simak repeatedly in my developmental years. Pastoral SF remains my favorite genre, but I think we was the only writer in it.
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God bless you and your wife. My daughter, in spite of her many medical issues, has made it to forty-five and hopefully will last quite a few more. It would leave a huge hole in my life and heart if she died before me — I pray we will go together.
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Yes, it can change the family and you’re repaid that way. But you’re never going to make the person “normal” is what I meant. So in that sense, your heart breaks.
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If any of my three children were “normal” – I’d be wondering where I failed them.
I know, that’s not what you’re talking about. But if any of them are within one standard deviation of the “normal” curve, they’re still mighty close to the edge.
Not that I think there IS such a thing as a “normal” curve – if all things were considered, I think humanity would more resemble an audio noise sample (of what color, I’m not sure).
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It’s not the only time. Yes, we grieve for what might have been, but it really hard when we have to make a medical choice away from prolonging his life. We are trying to keep him comfortable, but not giving him assistance that would make him a burden upon those that haven’t chosen to carry that? Additional heartache, and additional growth.
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I understand all that.
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Sarah,
I hope you are feeling better soon.
With regard to Mike’s last comment, I came to the conclusion some time back that if you can manage to get to the end of life without spending a lot of time wishing you were there earlier, you’ve had a successful life. Life has a way of sending you up to bat against Mariano Rivera in his prime sometimes, and those situations can surely make anyone think that death would be a welcome relief whether you belief in an afterlife or not.
Those people dealing with autistic or damaged from birth children have my utmost sympathy. They get to face Mariano every day, except he’s throwing aspirin tablets (as if his incredible cutter wasn’t tough enough to begin with). I wouldn’t wish that fate on my worst enemy because it takes a person’s best traits (compassion and caring) and uses them to unbreakably chain that individual to an oar just like the one Jean Valjean suffered on all those years.
May G-d bless with His comfort and mercy all those dealing with such trials, and may He give them the strength to persevere until it is His will for them to come home.
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I don’t really have a great story to tell that adds to the lovely comments already here. I just wanted to stop in and say hi.
I’m working to tell stories and appreciate the “me” I’ve been given, regardless.
And like Jordan B. Peterson has said, people need so little encouragement to just face another day.
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Sarah, today’s post really hit my heart. As you know, I’m Cedar’s mother. And I’m also Juniper’s mother. Juniper is now 45, and severely handicapped, including autism along with other things (spina bifida occulta, lupus, celiac, and more). She functions on about the level of a three-year-old (including, this morning, flooding the kitchen, LOL!). I would never have aborted her even if we’d known about her problems early enough to do that; I hate the murder of innocent babies with a passion. (The last resort of the selfish, IMO. Or even worse, their first resort. Yes, I cut no slack for anyone who murders small people — though Jesus Christ does forgive if there is genuine repentance.)
When Juniper was younger a nurse suggested that she should be institutionalized; again, my answer was NO. She may not understand a lot (though more than we realize, sometimes), and she may not be able to do a lot, but she knows who loves her, and she loves us. No way am I going to put her in the care of people who don’t even know her, let alone love her — people who, however good and kind and capable they may be, are doing their work for a paycheck. Not that I have anything against paychecks, either, and there may be a place for a severely handicapped person to be in an institution if their family can’t (or won’t) take care of them. I just can’t do that to Juniper, and I would be constantly worrying about her, so I don’t want to do it to myself, either.
Maybe twenty years ago, Juniper’s doctor implied that maybe euthanasia would be a good way to go (he didn’t say it in so many words, but this was in Oregon….). That was one of the reasons I finally decided to move us out of that left-wing state — I worried about what might happen to her in a hospital, if she ever had to be admitted for some reason.
Has her life had value? She did attend various schools until she was eighteen, but never learned much that I could notice in any of them. She still needs help with some of her self-care, and with food preparation, though can usually feed herself. She talks, but seldom makes a lot of sense. But…She loves, and is loved. She has a personallity — she’s not just a vegetable. She has influenced a lot of other people; mostly, I hope, for the good — most especially, me, but also many family members and friends. She loves Jesus and believes she is going to Heaven when she dies. So, to the question of whether her life has had value, I have to say a resounding YES.
And even if her life seemingly had no value to anyone here on Earth, it still does have value to God, who allowed her to come into the world this way. And someday, everyone who has ever dealt with any of these voiceless humans, no matter their age (including the unborn), will stand before God (or, more accurately, fall on their faces before Him), and will have to give an accounting of everything they’ve done in their lives, including how they’ve treated those who were helpless before them. At that time, the voiceless ones will have their voices, too, and will be able to testify for themselves. So it behoves us to treat them well, for our own sakes as well as for theirs.
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I’m completely in agreement – I feel that the willingness to abort is the deepest moral failing in our culture currently, which is what drove my willingness to adopt a special needs child. I’m currently 57, ad my wife isn’t far behind me, but we are willing to do it again if we can … and we just had our noses rubbed in the fact that we can’t. It is making us quite sad, but also grateful that we at least had this one opportunity.
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I’m convinced that my sisters youngest (of five) held his family together after my psychopath of a BIL up and died leaving my sister with 5 young children, a delinquent mortgage, and no money. He’s 21 chronologically but he’ll never be more than 3 as his epilepsy keeps setting him back to the beginning. For all of it, he’s a gift from God.
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Do they know about the ketogenic high-fat diet for epilepsy? It almost always works, even when medications don’t work. It had even helped Juniper, though (thankfully) seizures haven’t been one of the things she’s had to deal with. Some doctors either don’t know about the diet, or won’t recommend it, but it DOES work, and it IS safe.
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Oh, yeah, younger is … well, he’s not on the spectrum, but he has the sensory stuff, which can affect learning. Seriously, socially, least on the spectrum person ever. A born people handler and manager. Which is WEIRD because he does have ALL the sensory stuff (runs in my family.)
I found early on that taking carbs away resulted in his functioning WAY better.
Or why I got up at six am most of the time he lived in the house, to make him an omelet so he wouldn’t go for bread or worse.
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Autistic traits are human traits. It’s combination and degree that defines “autism.” And the one absolute for a diagnosis is social deficits.
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Yep. Hence why when they referred younger son for autism we were told “He’s almost anti-autistic” “BUT he does have significant sensory issues, so let’s work on those.”
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Thank you. he tried the diet but didn’t stick to it. There’s not a lot of structure in that house. My sister had seizures herself, which made life …. Interesting. So far as I understand it, he’s got two forms of epilepsy where the treatment for one makes the other worse so they have to continually balance him out. He can go into seizures for hours at a time. Still, it’s not the epilepsy that seems to do the most damage but rather his eating objects. And the running off. Sigh. We had him for two weeks and he nearly broke us, my sister has had him for 21 years. Still, I’m convinced that he was the salvation of his brothers, and maybe ours too.
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Do they know about the use of CBD oil for seizures? Drop me a line, I know an expert in cannabis medicine.
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they tried that, might still do. This kid has his own cabinet at the epilepsy lab.
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and thank you.
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Epilepsy runs in mom’s family on account of their marrying their cousins SO much.
Among the things I’m glad to be spared (me, my brother, the nephews, the kids).
I’m very glad that dad’s family is POWERFULLY exogamic (we joke they marry by “you’re strange”. If aliens ever land, the first guy in line with flowers to court the tentacled monstrosity will be an Almeida cousin.) and mostly I take after them.
Not eugenics, just sanity. If your parents were first cousins, maybe don’t marry a first cousin, perhaps? (In his defense, he didn’t know. Common name and they’d never met due to a family feud.)
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my mothers family tree is more like a stick. Great shortage of last names
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No problem. I always try to disseminate vital info like that to whoever needs it. I’m sure they’ve done their research, but you never know.
The cannabis for epilepsy/seizure business can be touchy, I’m told. You have to get the right strain for each patient, it varies a lot between individuals.
One of the only good things to [accidentally!] come out of the Liberal Party of Canada was legalizing weed and making it possible to do all the research that’s happened the last few years. Now we know a lot more about what it’s good for and what it isn’t.
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My response to abortion has nigh always been: it’s infanticide. Almost always. Some extreme edge cases might- MIGHT- be the only viable option. But most all of them? I call it infanticide.
That’s a child’s life. You don’t get to choose death for the little one. Give that baby to someone that will love them, but perhaps cannot have children of their own. Give that child LIFE.
With life, all things are possible. Yes, even bad things. But I will take that risk.
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Know of only two abortions that could not be avoided. Even then, if it’d been possible, the procedure would have been to save the fetus and properly implant. But that isn’t a procedure available to humans (they do it with horses, it is called flushing the embryo, and transferring to a recept mare). Ectopic pregnancies.
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There are instances in which a pregnancy becomes life threatening and must be terminated before the fetus is viable, ectopic pregnancy being the most common. However — and this may sound like hair splitting but it is important — even if the embryo or fetus will inevitably die upon removal or shortly afterward, AFAIK there is never any reason to go in and kill the fetus before it is removed, which is what an abortion does. The child may live only a few minutes or hours after delivery, but at least that brief life is respected.
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TECHNICALLY if I’d aborted older son, it would be licit. My life was threatened. I don’t require ANYONE to make the choice I made (first time I went into convulsions from pre-eclampsia was 3 months gone. That’s when I was put on bed rest.) It screwed up my health and will probably be to blame for untimely demise. BUT it wasn’t the kid’s fault.
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The third (technically second, as I was first, and youngest brother was last) of the birth children in my family (five adopted, three birth, two of the birth kids living) only lived for 6 hours. But it was still important. Our beliefs (I am LDS) are that for some souls, they just needed the brief touch in mortality (because having had a physical body is vital to eternal development), but that the Author had some other things He needed them to do on the other side, and so calls them home almost immediately.
But it’s kind of hard to do that if the child gets aborted without ever drawing breath (I am sure that He works around it, of course, but…it’s got to be heartbreaking)
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There are circumstances where abortion is the least bad result. That does not in any way make it a good result.
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Tubal pregnancies.
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Amen!
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we refused a lot of the pre natal testing because we had no intention of aborting, so what was the point? Had nothing but trouble with the doctors until we found a doctor on board with our POV.
My cousin did have the testing. They were told their child would be severely handicapped and not live long. They were strongly advised — pressured — to abort. An excess of Catholicism – snort – prevented that. Turns out, they mixed up the test results and my cousin’s child was fine. They have seven now, but you know what they say about we Irish Catholics. Another slane for the bog never goes amiss,
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Same, same. Their main thing with our oldest was I had SUCH severe pre-eclampsia they knew the kid would be severely handicapped.
He — after medical training — says that HE IS. It’s impossible he isn’t.
All I have to say is if an IQ in the top 1% and the capacity for work that matches it plus a flood of creativity is “profoundly handicapped” then HE IS THAT.
And I’m glad I told them that I’d take whatever came out, even if it was a cat. :D
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the wife had pre-eclampsia at the end of number one son’s term. None of our kids was in any hurry to come out. He’s out on the spectrum, but you’d need to know what you were looking for to tell. We’re all somewhere on the spectrum anyway, what with being massively over educated, loving books, math, dead languages, and all the rest.
One thing I’m willing to bet on, and that’s the first person to discover you could make fire by rubbing sticks together was on the sepctrum, and everything else seems to flow from that.
I do wish though, that they’d stop expanding the definition of autism. My son is out there on the spectrum, but he’s able to hold a job, has money I. The bank, has friends, plays ball. So many people have it so much worse and they really deserve a name for it.
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Older son, I had it from the first trimester and was hospitalized in convulsions three times. Despite which they waited past full term AND LABORED ME. I have this theory they were trying to kill us because I refused to abort.
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thhey kept the wife under observation after the birth, it was a C section so she was on the appropriate drugs. At one point, she passed out and I went running out to the nurse who came in, followed by the intern. He couldn’t have been more than 25 or so and was a complete toad. He said to the nurse who had to have 30 years on the ward “what’s the matter, haven’t had a patient pass out on you before.” They did the necessary and I followed them out, got hold of this doctor and told him “if you talk about my wife that way again, I’m going to tear your head off and stick it so far up your a— that it’ll come out the right way.” The toad blustered until the other intern, who went to school with me as it happened, told him that he should take it seriously because I might just do it.
word went out among the nurses and I was king of that hospital until we went home. Even the wife noticed it. I could say what they all wanted to say.
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Good for you. With some types of arrogance the only thing that works is a cluestick. About 2×4, 4 feet long. Liberally applied (the only case where conservatism isn’t the answer).
A katana actually works better as a permanent cure, but will tend to get you talked about…
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But not by the person you use it on.
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Well true. I’d expect that to be, “AAAAHHHHHHGGGGHHHH!” [gurgle] [silence, with dripping sounds].
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Is that like the voting errors that never seem to favor conservatives? Adjusts aluminum hat.
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yep. Another kids results entirely. Don’t know how it worked out in the end for them.
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I never had the tests, either. My second came when I was thirty two and they all but demanded it. I pointed out I wasn’t having an abortion any way. (I’d grown up a bit.)
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I was a late kid, too. And the way my folks tell it, the drunk doctor nearly killed us both. Definitely sterilized my mother, effectively.
I wasn’t supposed to survive the night. Or the week. Or be able to form words. Was supposed to be SEVERELY autistic. Was put in slow kids classes because the teachers already knew from the docs.
I was bored. To. Tears. So unbelievably, stupifyingly bored. The “accelerated” classes were almost as bad, later. It got better once I got access to better libraries.
I still think I’d have been better off raised by wolves, some days, than those teachers. My mother sometimes agrees with me.
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Same, same. On supposed to die, supposed to be, “slow.” Never functional. etc.
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A young lady I once worked with back in the late 90s, she was in her early 20s, learned that her mother had gotten pregnant again at age 50. The mother was strongly advised to abort but refused. She did eventually deliver a healthy girl baby whom she named Faustina after her favorite saint (St. Faustina Kowalska, originator of the Divine Mercy devotion). A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article about a local pro-life march and one of the people they interviewed was a young nun named Faustina who shared this story… yep, it was that baby, all grown up.
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There is a thought that haunts me every once in a while. Consider that since Roe V Wade estimates are that there have been ~64 million abortions. Ignore the moral arguments on the issue for the moment and focus on the people.
That is over ~50 years. It is equivalent to the whole of the change of Europe’s population from 1750 to 1800 which was about 50 million. It would be as if Thanatos like we snapped away every European born in that period. That group includes Mozart, Beethoven, Fourier, Cauchy, Gauss, Jenner (bit of a cheat he’s 1749), affecting us we lose the Marquis de Layfette. Presidents Madison, Jackson , J.Q. Adams and Millard Fillmore (well maybe not so much of a loss there and yes they are NOT in Europe at that time… just saying the Presidents are contemporary).
So who did we miss from 1973 until now? if you look 150 IQ represents 5 standard deviations above the mean, that part of the population is .0000287 of the population which sounds tiny but that is ~1836 folks of 150 IQ assuming normal distributions. Truthfully, IQ doesn’t always equate to success, especially at those levels, but still, if 10% of them did well we’d have 180 or so VERY talented folk. What didn’t we get? Its more like Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder than the MCU’s Thanatos issues. But instead of 1 butterfly we stepped on millions.
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The thing is, a person doesn’t need to have a genius IQ to be of value! Every single human being has potential at birth — some may not realize their potential (most of us probably don’t realize our maximum potential), but almost everyone is loved, and loves, and does something that is of some value somehow. Everyone has the opportunity to choose eternal life by believing in Jesus Christ. I happen to believe that children under the age of accountability do all go to Heaven when they die, but if these children had been allowed to live, imagine how much good they could have done! And it grieves God when we take the lives of children for selfish reasons (which is usually the reason for abortion — the parent doesn’t want to have the responsibility and the extra work of raising a child, even if the child is ‘normal.’).
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absolutely.
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This!
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Freeholder45 said
That is clearly true, more so if you hold to a Christian view that all souls are created in the image of the Creator. But from a historical point of view it is far easier to see Mozart or Cauchy than a mother, aunt, husband friend, benefactor or etc moving along in the flow of history. But every one of them is critical just like that random butterfly in The Sound of Thunder. We are part of a chaotic system and even little perturbations can make huge changes. And the experiment of Roe V Wade over the last 50+ years was not a little perturbation.
I do also wonder what the Author has done in his wisdom with those souls, He is infinitely loving, infinitely merciful and infinitely (and only) good so I must trust that it will be right. I have to be like Shasta/Cor from A Horse and His Boy and hear
And be satisfied.
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The only answer I have, Kipling gave me;
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_sack.htm
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There is an ugly, evil, eugenics flip side to that thought:
“Think of all the criminals, burdens on society, and potential Hitlers that were prevented.”
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The books Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Fredomnomics by John Lott Take opposite points of view on that issue in their discussions of the causes of crime. Today’s eugenicists rarely claim the label as the philosophy has led to some pretty horrific atrocities in the past century, but you still run into policies and arguments that are pretty clearly based on the ideas of eugenics.
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Their argument has mac-truck sized holes. Among which is “unwanted children are more prone to–” I’d like them to put that up their ass and smoke it (I said what I meant.) Both husband and I are PROFOUNDLY unwanted. And yet–
Craigslist is full of expensive, high breed dogs therefore “wanted” who are, two years later, being given away for free because inconvenient or the person just doesn’t want them anymore.
Put.It.Up.Their.Ass.And.Smoke.It.
True reason for reduced crime, as we found out in the last few years, seemed to be…. more stringent enforcement?????
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“Crime is low! Why are there so many people in prison?” :-P
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THIS. Yes, they were trying to make “elective abortion hip and for everyone’s good.” Like all eugenics, it turns out…. not so much.
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More stringent enforcement—but also getting lead out of gasoline.
All studies on the subject have to be on a two-decade delay, but there seems to be a strong correlation between when leaded gasoline was replaced with unleaded and kids growing up less criminal in those areas.
Because low-level lead contamination does increase violence, after all.
(But yes, your point—you reward the behavior you want and punish the behavior you don’t, and behavior adapts!)
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“Think of all the criminals, burdens on society, and potential Hitlers that were prevented.”
Yeah. And then you show them a crime map, where ALL the freaking crime happens in very tightly bounded zones of big cities. “Funny how the genetic misfits congregate like that, eh?”
Works for gun control too. “Funny how murders only seem to happen on these few blocks and not where all the guns are…”
Also, Hitler was a Normie.
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The Notorious RBG once said something along the lines of “We legalized abortion to get rid of the undesirables. I thought there would be fewer of them by now.”
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It’s not how ANY OF THIS WORKS.
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We are the carbon they want to reduce.
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The net effect of the Nazis sending all the schizophrenics in Germany to their death was — no decrease in the rate of schizophrenia.
It may be, however, that the disease sets obstacles to passing on the genes.
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Honestly in the period 1750 to 1800 that I used as source for examples I can come up with two examples of the top of my head of the issue you reference, Mssrs. Napoleon Bonaparte and Maiximilien Robespiere. They are not monsters on the scale of say Stalin, Mao and Hitler, or even Pol Pot and Idi Amin. Certainly Revolutionary France and much of Europe suffered under their depredations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
A Wise Man once said “the Poor you shall always have”. I observe (though do not claim to be wise and generally try to avoid blatant hubris and blasphemy) that we will always have such evil men until that Wise Man returns and our curse is lifted and all things are made new. Here we must have society/government do what little it is good for and constrain the monsters (as well as the common criminals). Until that time, we need to work to keep the damage from such men (and women) to a minimum.
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The wheat and the tares will grow together until harvest.
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Though dang it all there are an awfule lot of tares some days.
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Oh, yes, oh yes.
Sometimes I look at the Wise and Foolish Virgins and think that it said there was an equal number. Which is probably not a sound reading, but it still feels astonishing. (Then, all of them were waiting for the bridegroom.)
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The top end estimate for deaths from The Great War tops out at 22 million people, which all the great minds say scarred the participating European cultures into the decline of empires and after the two decade intermission led to the next round, which was even deadlier.
Gee, what will the future Great Minds say about three times as many deaths?
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I got pregnant at 36, to our surprise (and mild consternation), but I never considered abortion. An acquaintance of ours said to my beloved, “Well, of course she’s getting an abortion,” because everybody knows the chances of having a Downs baby are greater as you get older, and…
He simply told her no, we would have our child. And didn’t tell me about the conversation until after our boy was born. I like to say he did it to protect the life of the Other, since he figured I would do (figurative) violence if I knew about it.
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My mother turned 40 two months after I was born, and I’m… well, a little weird, but fine. Stacked up against my three siblings (all older), I’m about average.
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Definitely a post I needed today. Different problems, but still ones adding up to a great and glorious hill.
Thank you.
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My father would have had a problem with your wording. He would have thought you were falling into the trap of using the abortionist’s dehumanizing language. He taught me that calling the unborn baby, “it”, desexualizes them. And since humans are known to be a sexually dimorphic species that only exists as either male or female, referring to a person as, “it”, also dehumanizes them. He further explained that in the olden days when a baby was in utero and the sex of the child was unknowable, it was accepted good manners to assume the best (that God would bless them with a son) and that it was standard etiquette that the unborn were presumptively referred to using male pronouns, such as, “he” or “him”.
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You are right. I plead, I default to calling everything “it” including occasionally myself when exhausted.
No I don’t have an explanation for this. Neuter doesn’t exist in my first language, so it’s bizarre it stuck with me as the only true pronoun.
My editors have a field day with this. “Sarah, why is your character suddenly ‘it’?”
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We need a pronoun, not a “neuter” one, to denote “he, or she, but definitely one or the other”.
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English used to have one. Unfortunately, it sounded close enough to “he” that it collapsed into it by the time of Chaucer, I think.
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With all respect to your father, I’m fairly sure he’s wrong.
To the best of my knowledge it has always been appropriate to refer to a generic child or a child of unknown sex as “it”.
(And quite frankly, I see nothing wrong with “desexualizing” a child who has not yet reached puberty.)
If one is speaking of a particular child, or a child whose sex is known, then of course it would be inappropriate to refer to the child in the neuter.
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I do not like calling unborn children IT. Just…..no. The phrasing pokes buttons and makes me so very mad for some reason. If sex not known, it’s “the baby”, how are “they” doing. The child. Never IT. Probably has something to do with being picked on so much in school oh so many decades ago.
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Wikipedia says:
The BBC says:
I think that convention is pretty common in a lot of languages. My father was a Mennonite. So, he was probably speaking from their Low-German perspective.
I think it that same convention also is common in more heavily gendered languages.
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Singular “they” are an abomination that should be set on fire with prejudice. And no, there is no historical basis for it. Shakespeare used it once for UNKNOWN gender to make rhyme.
By that principle, “Jamoh” should be part of the English language.
In EVERY indo european language EVER “he” means both he and she. And no, not from the 18th century.
Kindly don’t wind me up. I froth at the mouth.
Again, I didn’t mean “it” to imply non human. “It” is what I default to, including for adults if I’m tired. I have no explanation.
Even less explanation than as to why if I am tired PAST THAT all my nouns are capitalized. German is my…. counts… fourth language, and I never LIKED it. Why adopt that? I don’t know.
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I’ve heard of pregnant women assuming that people using “they/them” pronouns to refer to their unborn child, were implying that they were big enough to be carrying twins or triplets inside.
I once had a woman tell me that she knew I had the gift of prophecy because I had inadvertently referred to her unborn child as “he”, which later proved true. She apparently was completely unaware of that old-time convention.
Hear me now, believe me later! 😉
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It’s seriously weird that I never thought of older son as anything but “he”. It never even occurred to me he might be a girl. I also knew I was pregnant hours after.
He does have a tendency to make himself known and call attention to himself without meaning to. So, maybe that’s that.
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It is interesting that you would have that intuition about your baby. My ex-wife, who has an intimacy disorder, seemingly had no connection to her babies, and probably would have blocked out any such connection if it were to have tried to appear in her head.
One day before we had our first son, she asked me if I thought she might be pregnant, which I had never really thought about, and without thinking I just blurted out my stream of consciousness. I said, “Of course you’re pregnant. Your boobs have changed.” I was even completely surprised by what I had said. But apparently, I had subconsciously noticed that her breasts were slightly firmer and the nipples a slight shade darker. Clearly an exhibition of “men’s intuition”.
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I meant to say “some time before” not “one day, before” we had our first son. I believe she was probably less than two weeks pregnant when I made the determination.
That reminds me of my mother, who used to say, “just the other day” for stuff that might have happened decades earlier.
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It happens as you get older. I keep saying “a few weeks ago” And it’s 3 years.
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One of the reasons not to wind me up on “they” plural or the fact feminists make up stuff about why “he” shouldn’t be default for both and either if unknown, is that I’m just recovering. I sort of can breathe, but not well. If I try to squawk in usual fashion, I’m likely to pass out and that will worry my husband.
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Tolkien used “it” to refer to a child old enough to listen to fairy tales and be frightened by them.
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You know what? Either every kid counts, and everybody matters, or they DON’T.
Christianity holds the former. Communism holds the latter.
My kid was born premature and funny. He fit in the palm of my hand. When we got him home I didn’t think he’d see his first birthday. He was weak and too small. And he got smaller. ‘Failure to thrive’ is the euphemism they used.
I had to give up my expectations of having a kid, and accept the strong possibility of his death. So, that’s what I did. I remember where I was sitting when I did it.
And then I f-ing well got on with it and made sure that didn’t happen. AND IT WAS HARD. And I bear the scars, by God. I had to teach him at home myself because the other feral little b@st@rds wouldn’t let him be. Right up until high school.
He’s still a little funny, but he’s a better man than most I meet, more successful and smarter too. Some girl will be getting a great deal one of these days.
The Communists would have killed him for being ‘defective.’ For that matter they’d have killed -me-, I’m a little funny too.
That’s the whole discussion on euthanizing ‘defective’ kids. Pick a side.
Now, as to Ms. Data-republican, that is just another example of Leftist evil. They’re going after a deaf girl who can’t even sign properly and communicates in text. And her whole family. Because she’s a good and honorable woman helping reveal -corruption- and for no other reason.
That’s evil. I’d think Mr. #OrangeManBad might want to get on that hard, and make an example of the pukes that are going after his girl.
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Phantom, I fit in my dad’s size eleven shoe, at birth.
I was born at home, and the damn socialists wouldn’t take me into the incubators because I was sure to die and would mess up their statistics.
Well, I lived. As I get older — 62 — my health is regressing to what it was until puberty: one week up, two weeks down.
BUT I’M STILL HERE.
I’m not Data republican. But I like to think I’ve contributed something.
Yes, I’m a little — a lot — funny. And weird. But I write a few things, and I have a wonderful husband and great kids.
In most of the EU now, they’d help me die. “Compassionately”.
Tell your kid from another much too small at birth Odkin: Good on you. Keep going.
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“sure to die and would mess up their statistics…”
Yeah, that sounds about right. [muted swearing and stamping]
“I like to think I’ve contributed something…”
Straight up, I’m a writer with 4 books and a short story on Amazon because of you. Okay? So there.
Not to mention your contribution to Humanity that we are pleased to call Sad Puppies and the Sasquan ass-terisks. Larry might have started it, but you’re the one who made them change the rules to keep us out. Flawless victory.
My kid’s biggest concern right now is dating, and that he’s painting the bumpers on his truck. Just painting them wasn’t difficult enough so he’s doing it as cheaply as possible, as a flex. Because he could buy a new truck if he felt like it, but this is more fun. Dad (that would be me) f-ed up his budget by purchasing a new pot-gun from Princess Auto (Harbor Freight clone), that’s his complaint of the moment. Life is hard. ~:D
“In most of the EU now…”
Yes, most of the EU, England and parts of Canada can go f- themselves right about now. I live in one of the sane parts, I’m doing fine. [more muted swearing and kicking]
Take your pills and behave yourself, young lady.
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New York says hold my latte….
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/04/30/new-york-just-took-a-big-step-toward-state-sponsored-suicide-n4939381
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Heh. They even called it MAiD.
Turns out there’s a game for the Switch called “Maid of the Dead.”
[muted swearing again]
I’m going to the store now. New York State, you’re on your own, boys.
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Oregon has had “Death with Dignity” act on the books since 1994. Not implemented until 1997 due to court challenges.
Which is why it pleasantly surprised me when BIL was forced into the hospital when he was having his medical crisis last fall. No NDA on file, not on hospice, not gone through the “DWD” process, must be transported, medically evaluated, and treated. No matter what he was saying at the time. No matter that his wife had medical power of attorney. She was trying to follow his wishes, against hers, so ultimately she was not unhappy with him being forced transport to the ER. He was told he was going, either in an ambulance, or the back of a police car, but he was going. BIL is doing fine now. No more crisis.
SIL is back from Alaska, at least for a while. Her son is home out of his crisis. Haven’t heard how his surgery went or exactly what was wrong. Not having any the benefits coming in yet that SIL got him signed up for that he qualifies for given his condition. If they need to BIL and SIL will fly up to Alaska again. Meanwhile SIL is home because her 95 year old mother fell. SIL can’t catch a break. FWIW, her brothers are worthless (nothing wrong with them, just worthless to take initiative).
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I think that if both sides of this could get their shrieking “all or nothing!” fanatics under some control, we could have a compromise in place that almost everybody could live with. I’m against using abortion as a substitute for birth control (among other things, it’s sloppy) but there are times when it’s necessary. Like that case a while ago, a pre-teen girl who had to go out of state to get an abortion because the shrieking fanatics had banned the procedure in her state.
As for it being “murder”—“murder” is a term of art in the law. It means illegal deliberate killing of a human being. If abortion’s legal, it’s not murder. In any case, I’d be an utter hypocrite to oppose it at all times, since I do favor capital punishment and am by no means a pacifist.
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IIRC, the adults didn’t even attempt to get the child an abortion in-state and that State’s AG made a clear statement that under the “emergency clause” the child could have gotten an abortion.
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That is correct, Drak. They originally went out of State to shield the illegal alien that impregnated her. They would have gotten away with it, too, except that someone along the line actually followed the mandated reporter laws.
Then they tried to make it that the child had to go out of State to avoid the restrictions on abortion in her State – that was in an attempt to shield the criminals (including the abortionist) that did violate mandated reporter.
The abortion industry – and it is an industry – is massively corrupt. I am reminded of a Project Veritas video (when O’Keefe was still in charge) where they posed as a pimp seeking an abortion for one of his underage street walkers. The Planned Parenthood worker was quite helpful in making sure that there would be no questions asked.
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Nod.
They wanted to hide the fact that it was statutory rape and that the rapist was an illegal immigrant.
Oh, as usual in such cases, the rapist was the “boyfriend” of the girl’s mother.
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Yes. It was ALL done for show. And endangered the kid.
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Er… the pre-teen girl case was not real and was a …. um……
She didn’t have to go out of state. They waited till the law was in effect to send her out of state for show. That’s one.
Two they could have aborted her in Ohio because at 10 she definitely was illegible for “endangers life.” but CHOSE to send her out of state for show.
Poking at it, it was found she was illegal her maybe “mother” was illegal, the guy who impregnated her was never charged and the maybe mother was protecting him, and …..
The kid was probably prostituted.
It vanished from the news when this stuff started coming out.
What was needed was to take the kid off that situation and into some kind of sane care.
BUT the left was happily using her. Instead.
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…and now we know what happened to one of the 300,000+ children the Biden* Regime ‘lost’ at the border.
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My guess is those that weren’t worked to death/enslaved in various sweat mills or outright killed because they were used to get something across the border (drugs) and their work was done ARE in this type of situation.
I’d say my heart breaks but it doesn’t. My heart grows fangs and claws and wants to be given an ax to go on a rampage.
I never said I was nice.
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Sounds plenty nice to me, if maybe a bit too calm for the situation.
Not ax; wood chipper. Feet first. And if they passed a law making it legal, I have it on good authority that it wouldn’t be murder.
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“Homicide” is a term of legal art (the killing of another human being). Murder has a common sense definition (the unjustified killing of another human being). Big difference – “homicide” includes necessary self-defense, killing through negligence, etc. There is an obvious overlap – but they are not the same.
As for capital punishment vs. abortion – the massive difference is that the person killed by execution has been adjudged to have committed a deliberate act of evil. (My view is that it is not “punishment,” either – but the prevention of future acts of evil. Which is why I am an advocate of the execution of violent rapists, pedophiles, etc.)
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Correct. All.
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Just remember that the same people advising you to abort that “defective” embryo are the ones that rolled over for lockdowns, ‘social distancing’ and the mad science genetic modification shot being made mandatory.
MAiD is popular in Canada too. Right? MAiD is the leading cause of death after car accidents these days. You think all those old ladies were really/truly end of life and suffering intolerably? Really? That many?
Kind of puts a different perspective on things when you realize how many of our supposedly incorruptible public health officials just go along to get along.
I do admit my attitude on the issue is “RAAAAAARRRRRR!!!!” and then bayonet charge. But they did try to do this to -me- and -my- kid so I think it’s only fair.
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Among the reasons we left Colorado, including yes health but also undisclosed f*ckery, is the fact they passed an euthanasia law that made the heathens at the AMA go “Whoa, that’s too far.”
Given my health throws the most bizarre wobbles and I actually died (I got better) once for no reason anyone can figure out after, I’d rather not live there. It’s too risky.
Like not wanting the government to own slaves, I don’t want to give it a chance to kill me.
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You know Sarah, on the one hand I’d like to tell you you’re probably worrying too much.
But then, on the other hand, I Iook at this country and I have to say it is possible you’re not. If all it takes to cheat the MAiDs is moving house, that’s a small price to pay.
Here in Canaduh I’m waiting for the government to “withdraw care” for people of “diminished capacity.” You can keep Grandma alive at your house, with your own money, no OHIP, no insurance, no hospital trips. Or just sign this convenient form, and Grandma will be “relieved of her suffering” as they say.
Because why stop euthanasia at birth? Go for the gusto.
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Two more reasons to choose life:
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Woah. First time I’ve ever had to wait for moderation on a post here. I’m a VERY bad man sometimes, apparently (or I’m just being too prolixic today for the WPDE filters…)
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WP (DE) moderated a post of mine yesterday, and I hadn’t violated any of the known rules.
Forget it Jake, it’s WordPress.
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Yep, surprised me, too. Zero links, didn’t even use disguised curse words…
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My sister was born in 1959 with Down’s Syndrome … she lived with us everyday until her 40’s when she moved into a group home. I can truthfully say that my families life was made much richer having her in it. I can truthfully say that she was the greatest teacher I ever had. Living with Jamie was like living with the most gentle soul one can imagine and it was always a delight to try and understand just what she was trying to communicate to us so you quickly learned to try and see things from her perspective … My name is Jeff/Jeffrey and she could never pronounce J’s so I am forever Grekkry … my brother Joel is forever known as Goal …
Am not a religious person but my experience with my sister taught me that all life is precious and if there is a heaven she is bringing a smile to the angels …
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Anger at Liberal judges, pray they aren’t raped to death by Hamassholes, Maybe we can tie them, to five hundred pound bombs and let them meet their Hamasshole buddies. Either way if you protect monsters over your own citizens are you any less a monster? May God have mercy on their souls, we should shun them, If I was ever to go in front of one of these Judges I would ask for a different Judge citing that their personal biases would disqualify them. Especially if you are Jewish or have a Jewish sounding name or white.
Damn the Liberal Democrats all to hell.
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Our 2nd daughter had a funny cry when she was born, I thought. 45 minutes later after they’d cleaned her up and gave her to me to nurse, she took a couple of suckles the turned blue and passed out. Her daddy ran and got the nurse who took one look and snatched her away. Long, long minutes turned into a couple of hours and the verdict came back. She had a hole in her diaphragm and her intestinal organs pushed up into her chest cavity collapsing her lungs. She would have to be flown to Denver for surgery. There was, of course, an April blizzard going on. We were told she would have a 75% chance of making it to surgery, a 50% chance of living a week after it and a 20% chance of any kind of normal life. 3 months in neonatal intensive care was to be expected. Unclear how many medical issues she’d have after that.
“What happens if she doesn’t have surgery?” We asked.
“Well because of her intestinal situation we can’t feed her but we will “keep her comfortable ” and she’ll be gone in about a week. It’s really the best thing for her.
We were not about to let them starve our baby to death and we thought she should at least have a chance to live.
She was out of the hospital in 10 days after the surgery. Never looked back.
She fought her way past a severe visual processing delay which made it almost, but not quite, impossible to learn to read. Finally, she figured it out at the end of 5th grade. Salutatorian in high school. Graduated in 4 years cum laude from engineering school and is an industrial engineer and expecting baby #4 in October. Hardest working person I know.
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But wait! There’s more!
We were given genetic counseling and were told this sort of thing doesn’t run in families and we would be more likely to be struck by lightning than to have another child with a diaphragmatic hernia.
3 years later…
Her little brother “Sparky” was born.
While ultrasounds were not common at the time, based on passed history, I was given one. The technician turned the screen so I could not see it and got very, very, quiet. I asked her if something was wrong and she said she was sure everything would be fine but she couldn’t officially give me any results because she was just a tech. I was worried.
A week later the radiologist report came. All was well no problems whatsoever. Perfect baby on the way. I didn’t believe it for one minute. But there was no medical reason to get another ultrasound so…
The day he was born, dark purple and completely limp, my fears were realized. They had apparently missed that he didn’t HAVE a left diaphragm at all. His heart was on the wrong side, all his intestinal organs were in his chest, he had 1 full lung, only the upper lobe of his left lung, and a severely enlarged kidney. (They said the results must have gotten mixed up. I’ve worried about the family that got the wrong results ever after.)
They gave him a 50% chance of living through surgery and a 0% chance to live a week after that. No further prognosis at all.
Once again we thought he should have a chance and against massive opposition, we held out for surgery.
He would have gotten out of neonatal intensive care in 3 weeks but got a serious staff infection in his blood so was there for another month. Went home on oxygen for 3 months. Later developed severe scoliosis and had back surgeries well into high school. His last back surgeries were 3 weeks apart his sophomore year.
He’ll be 30 on Pearl Harbor Day this year and is a producer of comedy shows in a major city. He’s the toughest person I know.
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Congratulations on the kiddos.
I think those of us that everyone says are going to die are somehow hardier.
We live because it spites them. Well, not the only reason but you know what I mean.
NOW if I can stop myself working until I’m better….
The problem is I’m SO ADD.
In case the fact I chose violence on this blog two days in a row, I’m —
Flops on the ground, whines “Moooooooom, I’m boooooooooooooored.”
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The autism diagnosis helped clarify a lot of things in my life. It also made my objections to eugenics much more personal. Trying to be normal wrecked my mental health and I’m still trying to recover. I’d like to find some good I can do in the world.
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BTDT
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Reduce unnecessary suffering. Realize that even now, you are doing good. Be a good friend, spouse, family member if possible. Be nice to pets. Put no burdens on others if you are able. Attempt these things, at the very least, and you will do far more good than many in this world.
But realize right now that you do not need to do anything. Simply be good. The doing will follow.
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An uncle and two cousins.
The uncle was normal until age 3 when he started having severe seizures. Seizures bad enough that eventually grandma had to put him into a group home, and finally into a nursing home, where he died about a month after grandma died. By all official accounts his last few years he was blind, deaf, and non-responsive. Grandma swore that was false. That he did respond to her. She was there to feed him lunch every day she was in town (taking two or three buses to get there). Not in town because she also had new grand and great-grand babies to visit too. When mom & his sister went to tell him grandma had died, he proved grandma was right. His day to day caregivers swore he wouldn’t know or understand what they were telling him. Mom said he absolutely did. Mom took over feeding him lunch until he died.
One cousin aunt was sick with measles while pregnant. Cousin born legally blind and deaf. She went to the Salem school for the blind when she was old enough. Played piano. She has problems, but they are not related to her physical disabilities. She is her paternal grandmother personality to an inch. This is not favorable observation. Lost contact with her when she married someone on the predator registration list (he died, she’s popped back up, no kids).
The other cousin was born with spina bifida. She was not expected to live. Aunt and uncle disagreed with that medical advice. Then she wasn’t suppose to be able to go to school. They fought that too. She is one of the test cases of why disabled children are in everyday classrooms. You should hear aunt on implementation. The act was never suppose to go as wide as it did. It was intended for children, whom except for their physical disabilities, would otherwise have been in a regular classroom and not segregated. A lot of the current treatments and equipment for babies, toddlers, etc., born with spina bifida is likely based on what uncle built for her. Ready to crawl? She had a floor scooter she propelled with her arms playing playing with the dog and following us older cousins around. Braces not available for her condition? Yes, uncle made them. She died at while in 8th grade at age 13 due to the complications.
I too had it recommended that I get invasive prenatal tests when pregnant with our son because of previous miscarriages and my age (32). I said “Not aborting regardless, so no.” That was the end of that. Did have the heartbeat ultra sound, and double check for twins (grandpa was a twin, he had sisters who were twins, cousin had twins). Would have taken twins in a heartbeat. Weren’t lucky there.
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https://i.imgflip.com/9siik0.gif
This is how you fight back.
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The greatest and most talented king of ancient Sparta, who brought it to the peak of its power, was a man called Agesilaos the Lame. His biography in Plutarch is fascinating. The ironic thing is that he was born with a club foot, and had he not been born a prince of one of the two royal houses, he would have been exposed as an infant in accordance with the harsh eugenic laws of Lycurgos. He couldn’t take his place in the battle line, but he was the most brilliant general of Greece’s most militarized polis.
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Boy, do I resemble these remarks. For me, I fell into the human-network analytical side of finding bad guys. When asked-with some incredulity—how I “did it” I would normally reply something like, “I have four older brothers, I was raised understanding terrorists.” But the honest answer was “I. Don’t. Know.” I saw that scene in “A Beautiful Mind” where patterns seemed to glow and I thought, “Mmmm, that’s sort’a it.” I just retired and I’m retraining my brain to other tasks. I spend a little time on the phys.org feed every day looking at ways seemingly unrelated lines of research might complement each other and putting observations in relevant inboxes in a Johnny Appleseed sort of way. Sometimes, I get an “OMG, you’re right!” email and asked how I came up with the idea. I’m always tempted to start with “I have four older brothers…”
David G Terrell
Stephenson, Virginia USA
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I have a handicapped, adult, mainstreamed son. Thanks for posting this. And Data-republican is awesome.
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The film Gattaca had an extra coda scene at the end that was usually edited out. It is relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm5KAQnFgHI
Personally, it broke my heart. In a good way.
I am informed by those better at me at math that statitically, it is essentially impossible for the same genetic code to arise accidentally over the course of the life of the universe.
Even if the math is wrong, the idea is right.
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