Geez... I was just doing some reading on the internet and got a punch in the gut.
This started because I saw a post in a womb twin survivor support group where someone had posted and was describing how they were born with a pin hole in their spine, which sounded very similar to my own diagnosis of Spina Bifida Occulta.
Anyway, certain health problems are more common in Vanishing Twin Survivors, and I thought I remembered that Spina Bifida was one of them, so I was looking it up to see if I was remembering correctly.
As I'm scrolling, one link said, "Spina Bifida a vanishing nightmare." So I clicked on it, and it was a quick thing about how numbers were going down, and they weren't sure why, but part was attributed to terminating affected pregnancies. The conclusion was that if they continued "preventative measures" i.e. termination, Spina Bifida could disappear. Of course! The solution to this health problem isn't to work on an *actual* cure or improve treatments... it's to just kill the people who have it. That will solve everything.
I'm just... I don't even know why I'm surprised. They wanted to kill me then. Of course, they would want to kill me if I was born today. I don't know why I would expect anything else... but it made me so... sad.
You know... I had an older cousin who had a much more severe case of Spina Bifida than I do. And when I say older, I mean he was like my parents' age. He was worse off than me, but he was always smiling. He was always joking with people. He volunteered his time to his local church, he stood by his principals, he helped out people in need without ever asking anything in return... and when he died, the funeral home was packed. There was a line around the building of people waiting to say their goodbyes, and it kept up the entire visitation. People were parked way down the road and had to walk to get there. My cousin was a light in people's lives.
But if he had been born right now, people would just weigh his life based on his disability and determine that he should be killed before his light could reach anyone. But sure... we can eliminate this disorder by killing the people who have it. It's disgusting that people think that way. There's no other word for it.
