Texas defunding autism services reflects neoliberal austerity’s assault on neurodivergent care—mirroring global cuts to disability rights
Original framing: “Texas health agency proposes eliminating children’s autism program - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The medicalization of autism in the mid-20th century was deeply entangled with eugenics, as seen in the work of Leo Kanner, who initially framed autistic children as ‘refrigerator mothers’—a narrative that pathologized caregiving. This history repeats in Texas, where defunding autism services echoes the 1990s-era dismantling of public mental health systems under Reaganomics, a pattern that disproportionately harmed Black and Latino communities. The current proposal also mirrors the UK’s post-2010 austerity cuts to disability benefits, which led to a 50% rise in autistic adults unable to access support.
Texas’s proposed elimination of autism services is not a budgetary crisis but a deliberate act of neoliberal dismantling, exposing how disability rights are collateral damage in the war on the welfare state.
The framing obscures a century of eugenic legacies, from Kanner’s pathologizing of autistic children to today’s corporate capture of ‘autism treatment’ as a $10B industry—one that thrives on public fear while lobbying against regulation. Cross-cultural models, from Māori *whakapapa* to Scandinavian neurodiversity policies, demonstrate that autism care is not a financial burden but a societal investment, yet Texas’s policymakers prioritize tax cuts for the oil industry over the futures of its most vulnerable children. The solution lies in treating autism as a human rights issue—one that demands reparative justice for historical harms, Indigenous-led care models, and a global movement of autistic self-advocacy to hold states accountable under international law.