“And then she said, “But here’s the thing.” She’s like, “Honestly, we don’t want to work with autistic children.” And she said, “They’re just really hard.” And she said, “So, you know, we just are really hopeful that someone in the community will want to work with him, but we’re not it. We are going to focus on working with children who are not autistic.”

These are the words of a health care professional cited in a new study, “Perceived Disability-Based Discrimination in Health Care for Children With Medical Complexity,” just published in the journal Pediatrics 152:1 (July, 2023).

This is what we’re fighting against. Sadly, I’m not at all surprised.