From its beginning, the pro-life movement has been identifying the reemergence of eugenics, in medicine, law, and society. Indeed, despite the horrors of the Third Reich, the evil ideology never really went away. From Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s crusade to get rid of the “dark-skinned” and the “feeble-minded,” to today’s genetic testing of fetuses for disabilities and the abortion and infanticide of disabled babies, to assisted suicide and euthanasia pushed for the sick, elderly, and mentally ill, eugenics is alive and well.

So where is our outcry now? On April 16, in his first press conference, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this:

Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this .… These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.

Reactions were swift and angry from the autistic community, of which I am a member. (My son James is 30 years old and on the spectrum.) Here was my social media post:

What’s awful about RFKJr’s comments on autism is that they sound eugenic. “Destroying families,” “destroying children” and focusing on causes only rather than the help families need seems like the first step in declaring autism something that should be extinguished. Which means lives are not worth living?

… autism is a spectrum, many autistic people are brilliant at their jobs, pay taxes (!That’s a pretty cold calculation of worth Bobby) … and live independently … Others need full-time care and can be terrifically difficult … and yes, some families do go through hell. But they do it because they love and cherish their family members. Not wish them away. Today many are rightly angry. And scared.

The answer is never to dehumanize a class of human beings.

While a small contingent of those whose family members have severe autism welcomed the attention, it was because they are desperate for help; there is a dire lack of programs for them. But Kennedy’s plans at the National Institutes of Health and the government’s proposed budget cuts will most likely only make things worse. A joint statement from 15 leading autism organizations warned that “federal proposals to reduce funding for programs like Medicaid, the Department of Education, and the Administration for Community Living threaten the very services that Autistic individuals and their families rely on.”

Then came Easter Sunday, of all days, and Kennedy’s appearance on radio show The Cats Roundtable. He said to host John Catsimatidis that autism “dwarfs the COVID epidemic and the impacts on our country because COVID killed old people. Autism affects children and affects them at the beginning of their lives, the beginning of their productivity. And it’s absolutely debilitating for them, their families, their communities and for our county — just the pure economic cost of autism.”

Autism dwarfs the COVID-19 epidemic and the effects on our country because COVID killed old people. The message, as my daughter remarked, is that though autism isn’t a disease and isn’t fatal, it’s worse to be autistic than to die.  And the cost is “debilitating.” Kennedy sounds like former governor of New York (and Kennedy’s former brother-in-law) Andrew Cuomo, whose policies during the pandemic lead to the deaths of thousands deemed “expendable”—the elderly in nursing homes and also the disabled in group homes, the latter fact being something that has gotten little attention.

Kennedy then announced that NIH would create an autism registry, which NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said would compile information from individuals’ medical records, insurance claims, government records and even their fitness trackers! There was such a huge explosion of anger and fear from those on the spectrum and their families that Bhattacharya walked this back a few days later. But the fear remains, and many are cancelling diagnostic and medical appointments they may have been waiting months to attend.

The reaction to all this from the pro-life and adjacent (including religious) press? Pretty hard to find. (And if I am wrong, please let me know at maria@humanlifereview.com). Autism is not a partisan issue, but it’s being treated as such because it’s the mainstream media and the Left who are crying “eugenics” now. For example, in Forbes:

The language that Kennedy used about kids with autism was triggering to some people. As Dr. David Gorski, managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, said, “What he leads with is telling: ‘…these are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job…’ (Emphasis mine.) Let me say right here, this is some real, top grade, ‘useless eaters’ rhetoric.”

Saying “those with ‘severe autism’ ‘destroy families,’” Gorski continued, “is very reminiscent of the sorts of rhetoric used to justify the Aktion T4, the ‘euthanasia’ program instituted by the Nazis around the start of World War II to eliminate those with serious conditions that necessitated lifelong care in institutions.”

And from the New York Times:

To the medical historian Jacqueline Antonovich, Kennedy’s comments reminded her of eugenic arguments from the early 20th century … Almost everyone accepted the “basic premise of eugenics,” she said–which is that “we need to improve our genetic pool” …  One such address to the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1912 described the “feebleminded” as “never capable of self-support or managing their own affairs’”adding that they cause “unbearable sorrow at home.”

Sound familiar?

The best I’ve seen, in explaining the entire situation  is from Ivan Plis, writing in The Bulwark:

But Kennedy’s assertions also rest on a more foundational error: an assumption that a life is only worth what it can give back to society. This idea, in turn, is also central to the suggestion that “severely” autistic people—those Kennedy’s defenders might say he really has in mind—differ in kind from the rest. Such “productive” autistic people, like Elon Musk, would in the past have been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. (This distinction did not protect Dr. Hans Asperger’s own patients, in whose murder by the Third Reich he acquiesced.)

Kennedy seems to have a subtractive view of autism, a belief that it steals a child’s “true self” from their innocent parents. This and similar attitudes have been present for decades: One infamous ad campaign depicted autism as a kidnapper of children, threatening parents with ransom notes. This also explains why the puzzle piece has become a symbol of autism: to parents who see it as a disturbance or aberration, something is missing from their child, and they wish for that problem to be “solved.” Autistic adults, who are former autistic children, generally dislike the symbol, and some have offered the infinity symbol as an alternative, emphasizing their wholeness—each individual, no matter their condition, is a complete universe. Their goal for the public perception of autism is not awareness, but acceptance.

…Today, in its words and deeds, the government seems to treat autistic life as a deadly infection while dismissing the very real threat of preventable disease as merely the cost of liberty. This is exactly backwards. Each human life—no matter how much it might diverge from the expectations of the powerful—is a self-grounding good; it is its own reward. If Kennedy is sincere about finding a cause for the suffering he sees, he would do well to begin his search in his own heart.

Some heart-searching is needed. For so many of us, this past April was indeed the cruelest month.