Not to downplay, but is it wrong to assume you're self sufficient in daily life? Work a job and pay your bills?
You list your site and have a seemingly lots of professional experience.
Some of these conditions do make life harder, but there's a big difference between high functioning Autism and disabilities that make someone 100% dependent on others.
It's so odd to me that we haven't come up with a term for high functioning autism to separate from low functioning. It's ridiculous to me that a commenter with this background can superficially claim to be suffering from the same disability as a family member I have who has required a caretaker to not die and would probably be totally uninterested or unable to even give an opinion on a complex subject like this.
I cannot recall why Asperger's as a term was dropped or deemed controversial, but this is the equivalent of stolen valor but for mental illness especially when used to justify an argument.
How is it any different than people with obsessive compulsive tendencies claiming they have OCD? There's a huge difference.
> "It's so odd to me that we haven't come up with a term for high functioning autism to separate from low functioning."
If you are interested to learn, autistic people are typically assigned a level of support needs on a scale of 1 to 3. Most people who would once have received a diagnosis of Aspergers now receive the "level 1" designation. Based on your description, your family member is likely "level 3", possibly with comorbidities? I was assigned "level 2".
> "I cannot recall why Asperger's as a term was dropped or deemed controversial"
It was dropped because a number of labels, now all considered to be ASD, were discovered to be different presentations of the same underlying disorder. The divisions break down under scrutiny and the apparent modal jumps disappear when you control for comorbidities and the ability to mask.
> "How is it any different than people with obsessive compulsive tendencies claiming they have OCD? There's a huge difference."
I'm not the other poster, but I'm a different autistic adult to whom your complaints might apply. To answer this question, the difference is that I call myself an autist because I have been diagnosed as autistic, due to meeting the diagnostic criteria of autism.
> "this is the equivalent of stolen valor"
Please go to the equivalent of hell.
Disabled people are allowed to call ourselves by the correct labels without apologising that our suffering is less severe or less obvious than someone else sharing the same label.
> Disabled people are allowed to call ourselves by the correct labels without apologising that our suffering is less severe or less obvious than someone else sharing the same label.
I think you guys are perhaps talking past each other.
The fact you acknowledge and recognise 'less severe' (a significant understatement when comparing ASD to Downs) suggests that you do understand parent's point.
Parent, I also note, was not seeking or implying an apology was sought from people with less severe genetic conditions. Rather, that the implications on QoL, lifespan, social / familial imposition etc of Downs, is nothing at all like so called high-functioning ASD.
The parent comment was specifically and exclusively talking about autism, not Down's syndrome. I'm addressing their claim that it is "ridiculous" for an autistic person to "claim" to be autistic when other autistic people have worse outcomes.
I'm not interested in litigating the fairly obvious point that Down's syndrome is a much worse prognosis than ASD, and the comment to which I responded says nothing about it either.
Dr. Asperger may or may not have been sorting autistic children into high- and low-functioning groups so that the higher group (with “Asperger’s”) could go on to become good Nazis and the lower group could be euthanized.
Perhaps including milder forms of autism under the term was a useful way to reduce funding for the intensive care and therapy required by those with more severe forms (e.g. the nonverbal), since we can now frame these things as “changing who they are” etc. and not, in fact, necessary.
Many children who primarily have intellectual disabilities will be categorized under the "Autism Spectrum" because funding has been applied for "Autism", and not "vague learning disability". If the doctor checks the Autism box, it opens a huge swath of support networks in certain states.
I don't blame anyone for lumping their kid in. I think it's more of a massive failure for social funding that hyper-categorizes due to means-testing.
But the moral conundrum here is that they can't choose untill well after they're born, meaning the parents are the ones that need to make the decision.
This is one of those situations where the child will likely never get the choice, for the same reasons we don’t require informed consent for being born or getting your diaper changed.
I would to add onto what others have said by mentioning that omission is still a decision. Even if the parents didn't explicitly choose, the inaction comes with dire consequences towards the child, whose parents are responsible (and held accountable) for taking care of.