No, I'm saying that aborting a foetus to "save them from the suffering" of being autistic seems as disproportionate a response as aborting a foetus to "save them from the suffering" of (especially severe) teenage acne. Analogies, you know? They don't necessarily compare every single aspect of the analogy and the thing…

And: what happens when you have a so-called "normal" child who, for varied reasons, ends up not being a "normal" adult - and there's nothing you could have screened for? The whole idea of "difference as defect" is really distasteful to me.

First, thanks for correcting the other's use of the word retarded. Despicable word with such a spectacularly inhumane history.

If you systematically prevented the birth of say, black kids or gay kids, would that not count as a kind of genocide even if you weren't killing those who were alive? And in case you think that's a false comparison, there were times when "science" deemed black people to be less intelligent and "less human", and it…

I think that some people who have developmental disabilities or who know people with them would argue that their lives still provide value to society at large, and deserve to exist.

And that's a perfectly rational decision. If you couldn't handle raising an autistic kid, I agree that it's better not to bring them into the world. It's just if you'd thought that we suffered so much simply because of being autistic, well, to us it's about as absurd as aborting a child because pre-screening showed…

Because you value cooking and pooping skills over the many voices of severe autistics who say "even like this I have a high quality of life"? I mean, if you couldn't handle raising such a child, that's one thing. But if you're deciding that solely based on thinking that severe autism automatically (or even just…

I'm sorry, but this is one of the most common silencing tactics used against autistics and it is utter bullshit. "You can speak/write/express an opinion, your opinion disagrees with ours, so you're obviously not autistic enough to be part of the discussion". I've read blogs by people with far more severe autism than…

As someone with a pretty serious congenital disorder I wouldn't call bringing us into the world irrational or cruel. I'm fine with the mother having a choice after screening, but arguing that we'd be better off just not living is a little strange to me. For sure it gives the mother and the family the chance to be free…

I'm autistic and it doesn't stop me from living a happy life. In fact, even if it's meant I don't have the instinctive social intelligence non-autistics seem to have (but which can often be learnt by autistics), it's given me scary good intelligence with things like computers, maths, science, pretty much any complex…

As someone with Aspergers autism, and severe ADD, I can see how my disability has impacted my life vs. the lives of people my age without any disability. However, I am happy with my life as it is for the most part.But I do wish I was normal for my Mom's sake. But there is no way to screen for either of my…

do you know in advance if you'll have a "manageable" case? No. So women should decide for themselves without any pressure from interest groups how they want to handle the risk.

Downs-syndrome isn't a bizzaro mutation and people with it can lead rich fulfilling lives.

This is where things get complicated. Missingno's appearance in player's games is a combination of a few different things. The way the original games are programmed, they use variables to refer to specific Pokémon. Variables are stored as powers of two—so, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 and so on. There are 151…

Holey sheet!

He says it was consensual, she says it wasn't

There are millions of cosplay photos on the internet, though. We wanted to make something tangible. This isn't a novel, it's a coffee table book, and as such would lose most of its point as an e-book :(

This guy's a moron but I'm having some trouble stomaching sanctimony from a blog that just ran a "would you hit it" serial killer article.

Or rather, people are tired of being chastised by moral scolds. No one ever likes to be shamed for making a joke - and frankly the politics of offense and faux outrage are wearing thin for a lot of folks. Offensive, edgy costumes are awesome - and we're free to put them on, but god please don't be surprised when…