… what?

Yeah, that’s a totally fair concern and is one of the points the episode addresses. Researchers acknowledged that the definition has broadened, but they also emphasized that it reflects a better understanding of autism as a spectrum. It does make the label less specific, but it’s also helped a lot of people. Especially women and people of color. It helped them get more accurate diagnoses instead of being misdiagnosed or ignored.

Overall, it’s a stat worth celebrating as it means more people are getting the support they needed all along.

The Science Vs. podcast just did an episode on this.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2eKgmLJZrEKTbVzCVYzp0u

Spoiler: It’s exactly as the meme describes. Autism rates are rising not because more people are becoming autistic, but because we’ve expanded the definition and improved how we recognize and diagnose it.

I read the WSJ article and she is absolutely infuriating. Her reasoning contains several fallacies:

False Cause:

“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst”

She blames political messaging instead of considering that vague legal language created legitimate professional uncertainty.

Straw Man:

“There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion”

This is particularly frustrating. Advocates aren’t celebrating her needing an “abortion”, they’re pointing out her experience is exactly what they predicted: doctors hesitating due to legal uncertainty. She had to argue with staff, pull up laws on her phone, and call the governor’s office during a medical emergency. That’s the system breakdown advocates warned about, not a misunderstanding of medical definitions.

False Dilemma:

“We have turned the conversation about women’s healthcare into two camps: pink hats and pink ribbons. It’s either breast cancer or abortion.”

This drastically oversimplifies complex healthcare policy into just two opposing sides and the irony is staggering. It’s like a company ignoring safety advocates’ warnings about a confusing manual, then when accidents happen, blaming those advocates for ‘scaring’ workers instead of fixing the manual.

She lived the very scenario abortion rights advocates had been warning about all along, yet somehow, in her mind, the problem isn’t the law, it’s the people who tried to stop it from hurting her in the first place.

I’m frustrated with the reflexive “both sides are equally bad” response that shuts down any meaningful analysis of what’s actually happening in our politics.

I’m not naive about the Democratic Party’s problems. They struggle with internal divisions, sometimes cave to corporate pressure, and they’ve made compromises that disappointed their base. But when I look at voting records, policy proposals, and legislative priorities, I see meaningful differences that have real consequences for people’s lives.

On issues I care about (healthcare access, climate action, voting rights, ext.) one party consistently proposes solutions and votes for them when they have the numbers. The other party doesn’t just oppose these policies, they fight tooth and nail to undermine them, delay them, or dismantle them entirely. That’s not a matter of opinion. That’s a matter of public record.

When Democrats fail to deliver, it’s often because they lack sufficient majorities or face procedural roadblocks. When they do have power, they’ve passed significant legislation on infrastructure, climate investment, and healthcare expansion. Meanwhile, when Republicans have unified control, their priorities have been tax cuts for the wealthy and rolling back environmental protections.

I understand the appeal of cynicism. It can feel sophisticated to dismiss all politicians as equally corrupt. But that cynicism serves the interests of those who benefit from the status quo.

If you can’t tell the difference between someone trying to reform a broken system and someone actively working to keep it broken, you’re not offering insight. You’re providing cover for obstruction.

Does this mean Democrats are perfect? Of course not. Should we hold them accountable when they fall short? Absolutely. But pretending there are no meaningful differences between the parties just because neither is perfect makes it harder to build the coalitions we need to create the change we actually want to see.