I’m writing to urge you to immediately oppose any federal effort to create a disease registry that tracks Autistic individuals through medical record surveillance. Not only is this a chilling overreach into personal health data — it’s a direct violation of privacy rights protected under HIPAA and supported by legal precedent, including Whalen v. Roe.
There is no medical or ethical justification for building a government database of autistic people. This isn’t public health — it’s pretext. And it should alarm anyone with even a passing understanding of our history.
We’ve seen this before. In the 20th century, eugenics programs in the U.S. used registries and diagnosis labels to justify forced sterilizations, institutionalization, and other human rights violations against disabled people — often under the banner of “protection” or “prevention.” Framing autism as a disease and tracking people like a public threat isn’t just dehumanizing — it echoes the logic and language of that dark history.
Autism is not a disease. It’s a neurotype. And building a federal database of neurodivergent citizens is a step down a dangerous road that has never ended well.
I urge you to:
• Oppose any legislation or funding that enables a federal registry of autistic individuals;
• Investigate whether such a program violates medical privacy law and the constitutional right to autonomy;
• And publicly denounce eugenics-adjacent policies that treat disabled people as a public threat to be tracked rather than individuals to be supported.
History is watching. Please be on the right side of it.
First sent on April 22 by Christina
