Does Toni Braxton Think Autism Is A Punishment From God?

Singer Toni Braxton is getting a lot of attention for her new book, Unbreak My Heart, and not all of it is good. The R&B mainstay and reality TV star has become something of a star among anti-abortion conservatives, and a subject of ire among autism advocates, over widely-and-sketchily-reported remarks in her book explaining that when she learned of her son’s autism diagnosis, she thought it was “God’s payback” for an abortion she had years earlier. Is what she really said about her son’s autism as bad as people think it is, or worse?

The answer is a little bit complicated, because the quotes that are being pulled from the book are definitely not being fairly contextualized. Here’s how TheBlaze reported them, based on a New York Daily News article:

The singer found herself wondering whether Diezel’s autism was God’s retribution for her decision to end the earlier pregnancy and whether her parents’ messy divorce and her lupus diagnosis in 2010 were additional punishments.

“Is God punishing me for that abortion?,” she writes in the book, noting that she found herself thinking that it was “God’s payback to give my son autism.”

That reporting has caused a social media backlash against Braxton, and rebuttals from autism advocates. Not helping matters is the fact that Braxton has repeated the tale in a series of interviews promoting her book, and didn’t bother to explain if, how, or why she was wrong to think that. She even told The View‘s shitshow autism parent Jenny McCarthy that she still struggles with the guilt.

However, the actual passage from the book seems to indicate Braxton realizes this was an irrational belief…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.