Sometimes I Just Get So Sick And Tired Of Fighting Just To Survive.

In defense of pre-natal screening

I’ve seen a lot of protests against screening fetuses for things like Down syndrome, autism and so on. Here, I’ll explain why I, an autistic person, disagree fundamentally with those.

(PLEASE NOTE: My reasoning is based on the idea that abortions in and of themselves are morally fine and that a fetus is not a person.)

“In a few years, there won’t be any people with Down Syndrome born anymore, because these days everybody chooses to abort them!” Ridiculously unlikely. There’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t have an abortion. True, there won’t be exactly as many born as there are now, but who’s to say that the current number is inherently better? How, exactly, do you calculate that?

“Well, what if everybody with Down syndrome fetuses gets an abortion, though? Just what if?” I say this with a maximum of respect: While obviously Down syndrome people have the same value as humans that everybody else has, it’s still true that Down syndrome causes a huge risk of poor eyesight, poor hearing Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and an early death. If a condition kills people then we do not need to actively try to preserve it.

“This indicates that people with Down syndrome or autism or whatever are undesirable!” No, it doesn’t. For many reasons.

Simply telling a woman that her fetus has, say, autism is not the same as saying it’s an undesirable fetus.

That a woman aborts an autistic fetus doesn’t mean that she wants everybody to do the same. It just means that she wants to have an abortion. As is her damn right.

All abortions are based on the idea that the potential child is undesirable. That’s why women choose to get abortions instead of having the kid.

The fact that people want to abort Down syndrome fetuses and autistic fetuses and so on might make them seem undesirable, but not whether the abortions are allowed to happen or not.

“If your mom had felt like this, she would have aborted you!” Once again: That’s the case with all abortions, regardless of reason. So unless you find all abortions immoral, this is not a valid argument.

“This is eugenics!” No, it’s not. It’s not a concentrated effort to eradicate black people–or any other people. It’s just letting women make an informed choice about their own bodies that affects nobody else. Lemme use a simile to explain: If a political magazine gets forcibly shut down because it criticizes the government, that’s censorship. If it gets shut down because nobody is interested in buying it, though, then that’s not censorship at all.

“This is offensive to many people!” A woman’s right to choose is her right. Regardless of whether you find it offensive or not.

“It’s discrimination!” If a woman who got raped has an abortion, does that mean she’s discriminating against actual people who were born from rape? No. And this is the same. Actual people cannot be discriminated against by an abortion because we’re not affected the slightest bit.

“Well, what if a woman wanted to abort a black fetus because she hated black people?” Then we still can’t force her to have the child. A fetus doesn’t become a person just because of the reason that a woman aborts it.

“Look, it’s not that I don’t think women should be stopped from making choices about their bodies.” But you do clearly want to stop them from making informed ones. After all, you want to withhold information about a woman’s body from her, so that she won’t make the choice she prefers with, but instead do what you’ve decided she should.

TO FINISH OFF: Since we have info about a woman’s fetus–or at least the ability to easily get it–denying it to her is blatantly anti-woman. It’s saying “We’ve decided you don’t get to know things about your body, because then you’ll do as you want instead of doing what we’ve decided that you should.”

Goblincore really is ADHD culture… Yelling… Being impulsive… Liking shiny… Wanting to run away into the forest and shirk all earthly responsibilities… It’s meant to be…

If you don’t experience the pain that I do every day, you don’t get to judge me.

Not my food habits.

Not my hygiene.

Not my productivity.

Not the clothes I wear.

Not my outlook on life.

Not my goals.

Not my medications.

Not my weight.

Not your body!

You don’t get to decide if I have a moral failing because you think you’re better than me and you could handle it better. Please, try to experience one day of pain like mine. Try to experience one week.

When you’re faced with the choice of not eating and ordering fast food, it’s an easy choice. You choose to eat.

When you’re faced with passing out or wiping yourself down with baby wipes, it’s an easy choice. You choose to be safe.

I am sick of the lectures about what’s good for me, the dangers of seed oils, how medication is propaganda from big pharma, how I’m just lazy and I can take a damn shower.

IT’S NOT YOUR BODY, so get out of my business.

Marvel Preview: Star Wars: Lando – Double Or Nothing #1

Before his days in the Rebellion, before he ran Cloud City, even before he lost the Millenium Falcon, comes this tale.

Star Wars: Lando – Double Or Nothing #1 Written by Rodney Barnes Art by Paolo Villanelli Color by: Andres Mossa Cover by W. Scott Forbes Release Date: May 30, 2018

The rest of the preview is found on the AiPT site.

Different Thought Disorders Common With Those On The Schizophrenia Spectrum / Psychosis Spectrum

Thought disorders are when your thinking process is impaired, often affecting your speech! They’re common in ADHD and autism, but also can appear in those in the schizophrenia spectrum or psychosis spectrum. Let’s talk about them!

Remember, none of these are done on purpose!

Alogia - randomly stop talking in the middle of the sentence, slurred consonants, being unable to grasp the right word, and trailing off into a whisper before ending the sentence

Blocking - suddenly stopping in the middle of the sentence, forgetting what the sentence was about, and then starting a new topic after the blocking

Clang Association - Rhyming or doing alliterations in the middle of the sentence. An example would be “So yesterday when I went to the store door floor more … I mean, yesterday say lay may..”

Echolalia - Repeating what someone says right after they say it or repeating sentences heard earlier. An example would be a mom asking “Do you want icecream” and a child responding “Do you want icecream…. yes!”

Pressure of Speech - speaking rapidly without pausing, loud, and hard to understand

Word Salad - Using a series of words in an odd order making it impossible to understand the sentence, some of the words not having ti do with the sentense at all. An example would be a woman asking “What kind of coffee did you get?” and her friend responding “Several, several berries. Strawberries. Steaming, colours, fruits, red blue pink”

(word salad is often confused for manipulative behaviour, please know that nobody displays word salad on purpose. It is not manipulative. )

Tangentiality - going off topic before answering the question. An example would be, your friend asks “when did you start gardening?” and you reply “My garden has three main vegetables. I love vegetables but my brothers don’t. I haven’t seen my brothers in years, I should call them.”

Stilted Speech - spoken in a formal essay format rather than casual speech, more information than average when explaining, repeating information

(also common in autism spectrum disorder, if you’re on the spectrum you may find yourself doing this more while info-dumping about a special interest)

If I happened to miss any! Feel free to add on!

The whole self love thing is good and all but some people can’t fathom being loved. They can’t imagine there being anything good about them. So they can’t simply just stop doing unhealthy things, there’s a process.

“All the effort in the world won’t matter if you’re not inspired.”

— Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

I went to my med student friend’s house today and I just had to take a look at all the lovely books! (and do the tired “they made a book about the show! joke, of course).

Anatomy books are just the prettiest!