Suffer the little children

Well, I’ve boxed myself into a right corner here. In the days before Christmas, I wrote posts based on the seven O Antiphons which gave a nice structure, and the days after Christmas are mostly Saints’ Days so I’m bouncing off them, but today’s a tricky one. The 28 December is the feast of The Holy Innocents; this is the little boys of Bethlehem who were killed by King Herod in his attempts to kill Jesus as a baby. There are a number of autism-related subjects I could dip into here and they all come with a trigger warning because there aren’t very many positive places one can go from mass toddler murder, even if it was 2000 years ago. And there are some nasty things in the world today. I’m going to do this as carefully and briefly as possible but even so some may prefer to skip.

If you would like to quit while you’re ahead: here is a nice recording of Kenneth Leighton’s version of the Coventry Carol from Kings in 2019 – a musical response to the Holy Innocents – and here is the traditional version sung by The Sixteen.

TRIGGER WARNING: abortion, child mistreatment, suicide

The first autism-related thought that sprang to my mind as a result of the massacre of the innocents was to do with genetics and eugenics. I’m a great fan of scientific research – my absolute favourite person in the world is a geneticist – and I’m not making any sweeping statements about it here. It would be very interesting to know the (presumably genetic) cause of autism – I imagine there’s something in my DNA that has caused my brain to be wired as it is. Autism seems to run in families, which backs up the idea that it’s genetic – something passed on from parent to child. Of course not every autistic parent will have an autistic child, or vice versa – there is variation in how the DNA recombines itself as the parts from mother and father come together. That, in fact, is how evolution is possible; you can’t have natural selection without variation. If you would like to know more, find a tame geneticist and set aside quite a while for them to explain.

However, finding the genetic cause of disability can lead into some dark places. If you can test a foetus’ DNA for the presence of a particular trait, you can choose selectively to abort foetuses carrying that trait. People from disabled communities can be wary of a genetic test for their condition in case it led to such selective abortion. In recent years, there have been campaigns by autistic people opposed to genetic research for fear that if it came to fruition, no more people like us would be born. With my strictly logical hard-headed autistic hat on I can’t even claim to know whether that would be a good thing or not, philosophically and ethically. (With my remembering-to-be-human hat on, I’d like to emphasise that the birth of every child, autistic or not, is a blessing, and that all human beings are equally worthy of life.) I just think it’s useful for more people to know the wariness in some disabled communities of pre-birth testing for disability.

My second holy innocents-related thought was about the suffering caused to autistic children by wrong-headed attempts to “cure” or “fix” them. Some parents are (understandably) desperate for their child not to be autistic because autism is something they fear. Unfortunately, that can lead to “treatments” for autism which are effectively aversion therapy to eradicate expressions of autism. If I had been punished every time I stimmed as a child, I would probably have stopped doing it (at least in public) but I wouldn’t have stopped wanting to. I would just have learned that something that is part of me was wrong and must be hidden. I might also have been “trained” to make eye contact, something which is uncomfortable or painful for me. I would have done it – because I wanted to be a “good girl“. But that wouldn’t have taken the suffering away – it would just have taught me that my suffering didn’t matter and that I had to put up with such things. There are autistic kids who every day experience punishment for expressing who and what they are – they learn to “fake normal” but inside learn that their true self is something shameful that must be hidden. As you can imagine, that is a recipe for very poor mental health in later life. There is a case for helping people like me compromise enough to interact with neurotypical society but the suffering caused by trying to “train children out of autism” needs to stop.

My final holy innocents thought is the darkest and I will keep it brief. Autistic life expectancy is shorter than neurotypical life expectancy. How much shorter depends on which research you read, and I suspect that the difference has been exaggerated by the fact that many older autistic people are not (yet) diagnosed and therefore won’t appear in the figures. Autism itself doesn’t affect your life expectancy so far as I know, but being autistic in a society not made for autistics does appear to. We struggle to communicate with medical professionals, and experience greater stress and rejection in day to day life. Both of those things can worsen health outcomes. Also, very sadly, we have higher suicide rates. Which is not very surprising in a world that can be very difficult for us to live in. Any one autistic person need not die young – for example Temple Grandin is already in her 70s – but many do.

If by any chance you are feeling bad about life, please seek help. The Samaritans are available 24/7 – if you are in the UK you can call them on 116 123; and the NHS offers a page bringing together all the suicide-prevention services in one place here. If you are not in the UK, there are very likely to be resources in your country: the International Association for Suicide Prevention may be able to help you find them.

My apologies for a dark post. Sometimes these dark truths need to be faced, because in facing them we have a chance to change them. We may find the genetic markers for autism, but we don’t need to use them to abort autistic foetuses. We may want autistic children to be able to function in neurotypical society, but we don’t have to do it by punishing them for being autistic. And by working out what brings down autistic life expectancy, we can help autistic people live as long and full a life as our neurotypical peers. We must work to change the world so today’s children have a better future.

This post was brought to you by the Collect for The Holy Innocents (a collect is a special name for a prayer for the day):

Heavenly Father, whose children suffered at the hands of Herod, though they had done no wrong: by the suffering of your Son and by the innocence of our lives frustrate all evil designs and establish your reign of justice and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen