Seven Posts About Abortion, Prenatal Testing and Down Syndrome
| October 19th, 2005Post 1: Trite criticisms of a Washington Post essay.
Whenever I am out with Margaret, I’m conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don’t know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.
Imagine. As Margaret bounces through life, especially out here in the land of the perfect body, I see the way people look at her: curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed. I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living. [...]
What I don’t understand is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value. I’d like to think that it’s time to put that particular piece of baggage on the table and talk about it, but I’m not optimistic. People want what they want: a perfect baby, a perfect life. To which I say: Good luck. Or maybe, dream on.
And here’s one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what’s driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby; it’s also about a woman’s right to choose which baby she wants to have.
There’s a lot to unpack in this article:
1) Bauer is, I think, correct to believe the lives of people with Down Syndrome are worth as much as other lives. Objectively, having Down doesn’t make life less rich or worthwhile, nor does it make loving and being loved less rewarding.
2) Bauer’s essay is marred by her habit of attributing unflattering beliefs to large groups of people, based on dubious reasoning. For example, she writes “I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living.” Huh? Even among the tiny minority of women of childbearing age who aborted a fetus with Down Syndrome, it’s unfair to assume that they consider people with Down Syndrome to be leading lives not worth living; there are obvious other reasons they might have chosen an abortion (for instance, not believing that they personally had the ability or the resources to care for a child with Down Syndrome).
(Baggage Carousel 4 has further discussion of this point - including dubious speculation about Bauer’s motives. Holy Irony, Batman!)
3) Whatever Washington Post editor edited this sentence:
I don’t know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.
should be sentenced to several months of editing Judith Butler’s essays for readability. It’s impossible that 80 to 90 percent of pregnancies are aborted because of Down syndrome, which only occurs in 1 in every 800-1000 pregnancies. Presumably, the author means that 80 to 90 percent of fetuses with Down Syndrome are aborted.
Post 2: Responses to Pro-Life Responses to Bauer
1) Predictably, many pro-life bloggers have been linking to this piece, some comparing the abortion of disabled fetuses to the Holocaust or genocide. It seems to me that this argument begs the question, when applied to the abortion debate. Deliberately killing thousands of people with Down Syndrome would be genocide, beyond any doubt. But calling the abortion of Down Syndrome fetuses “genocide” assumes that fetuses are people. Whether or not fetuses are people is one of the primary questions pro-choicers and pro-lifers disagree on; you can’t just assume it’s true and then accuse pro-choicers of genocide.
Even pro-life responses that aren’t extreme enough to compare pro-choicers to Nazis tend to make this same basic logical error of assuming what’s at issue.
2) Also on the abortion question, even if we agree that abortion in order to prevent Down syndrome is wrong, and even if we agree that government intervention is called for (two very big ifs), that still doesn’t lead to banning abortion. It would be less extreme to simply ban testing for Down syndrome.
3) If there were a prenatal test for potential obesity, I have no doubt - none whatsoever - that the large majority of expectant mothers in the U.S. would take the test, and would abort any fetus which was likely to become obese. People like me would virtually cease to exist. I’ve been thinking about this hypothetical all day, and although I believe it’s true - given the choice, most mothers would abort a fetus if they knew it would someday look like me - that doesn’t alter my views on whether abortion or prenatal testing should be legal. If the options are limiting women’s reproductive rights or limiting the births of people like me, the latter is the lesser evil.
4) Speaking only for myself, if I were a pregnant woman, told that my fetus had Down syndrome, I believe I’d choose to abort. People with Down syndrome are significantly more likely to die young (Down syndrome is associated with severe heart conditions). My cousin died at age sixteen, in a car accident. My cousin was wonderful and her life well-worth living and all her family and friends are blessed because we were lucky enough to know her; but it would have been better still, immeasurably, had she lived decades longer.
Worldview Warrior disagrees with my approach.
That is reality… you want a perfect baby? Sorry to break it to you, it won’t happen. This desire for perfection is a fundamental longer for the way things ought to be but the means by which we try to obtain perfection in our fallenness is flawed.
I agree that life comes sans guarantee. Some born with terrible heart conditions defy doctor’s expectations by living to 90; some in perfect health die young in stupid car accidents. But even though I can’t control what happens, what’s wrong with trying to improve the odds?
Post 3: Separating the Issues of Down Syndrome and Abortion
Imagine it is discovered that dumping folic acid into the water supply cuts Down syndrome births by 80%. Some areas begin putting folic acid into the water (similar to the way some areas have reduced cavities by putting fluoride in drinking water). Hypothetically, let’s assume that this has no side effects.
How many people would object to an 80% reduction in Down syndrome births, if it didn’t involve abortion? From this pro-choicers perspective, there’s no logical distinction between a reduction in Down syndrome births due to a “cure” and a reduction due to voluntary selective abortion. So if someone is appalled by the latter, but okay with the former, that suggests that they’re not really against Down syndrome being wiped out; they’re just anti-abortion.
Post 4: Is Preventing Down Syndrome Ethical?
Suppose that in the future, scientists discover that trisomy 21 - the condition that leads to Down syndrome - is indirectly caused by a virus which effects one in every 1000 or so births. A program of inoculation wipes out the virus, and Down syndrome in the following generations no one is born with Down syndrome, ever.
Is this genocide? Or a boon to humanity?
I don’t know.
The argument that attempting to prevent disability, is the same as saying disabled people are worthless and should be wiped out, compels but does not persuade me. When I say I’d like to wipe out poverty in my lifetime, that’s not saying that I’ve judged poor people’s lives and found them “not worth living.” If I invent a car seat which better protects spines, so fewer are crippled in accidents, that doesn’t mean I’ve judged the lives of people in wheelchairs not worth living.
Everyone faces limits - but a person with Down syndrome, or a person in a wheelchair, faces limits most of us never experience. If fewer people face those limits, how is that terrible?
On the other hand, that argument ignores the very real prejudice against the disabled. What if the energy put into “curing” disability was instead put into fighting against anti-disabled bigotry? The Useless Tree argues that instead of seeking to ban abortion, we should instead solve the problem of selective abortion of disabled fetuses by increasing understanding (hat tip: 11D):
…We should think of ways to allow people, and especially prospective parents, to see the beauty of children with disabilities. And the first way to do that is to put more resources and attention into supporting families with disabled children.
If securing needed therapies and programs for disabled children in schools was less of a struggle and more of a welcoming and constructive process, then some of the stigma of disability might disappear. If there were more healthy and happy group-living accommodations for adults with disabilities, adults whose parents have passed away, then new parents with disable children would worry less about what the future might hold. If there were as much emphasis in our culture on common humanity as there was on individual productivity (I am, you will remember, against productivity), then there would be less questioning the value or worth of disabled people.
I agree with all that. It is impossible that disability will ever be completely eliminated; even if Down syndrome is wiped out, people will still be born with other disabilities, or become disabled after birth. Since disability can never be “cured,” it logically follows that a genuinely accessible, non-bigoted society is a better and more comprehensive solution to the “problem” of disability.
But doesn’t putting it that way assume that we face an either-or question? The truth is, “both/and” is the most realistic path. We can assume that efforts to reduce disability are good, and still believe that disabled lives are as rich, fulfilling, and worthwhile as the lives of (temporarily) ablebodied people.
But wait a moment - that makes no sense. If “disabled lives are just as rich, fulfilling, and worthwhile,” then isn’t it an enormous waste of money and effort to attempt to prevent or cure disability?
And round and round I go.
Post 5: Is It a Disability to Have a Disability?
Some people find that painting, comics, and beautiful sights immeasurably enrich their lives; some people aren’t all that touched by that stuff. But no blind person gets the chance to find out if they feel rapture when reading a great comic book.
I realize that many blind people lead full lives, and that there’s as much pleasure to be found in the other four senses as there is in sight. I certainly don’t think a blind person’s life is not worth living. But the world is better when everyone has as many options as possible, and blind people are cut off from many options that they might (or might not) have enjoyed. Nonblind, their choices are broadened.
But then again… everyone faces constraints on their options - it’s part of the human condition. And everyone (well, everyone who doesn’t face direly constraining injustice) faces more options than they’ll ever pursue. If I had been born blind, I wouldn’t love comics; but I would have pursued other interests. Life is short, and possibilities are infinite.
Post 6: Diversity vs. Medicine
Meanwhile, our futurists sigh in ecstasy at the thought “seizing control of human evolution” and making “better” babies enhanced for increased intelligence, beauty, or longevity. Yet, developmentally disabled people are some of the most “human” people I have ever met, most merely wanting to belong, contribute, love, and be loved. Somehow that point is lost on the Brave New Worlders, as is the very concept of unconditional love for children regardless of “characteristics.”
We are told by “transhumanists” and others that the future will be an individualist’s paradise, with all of us able to remake ourselves and our children into whatever form of life we choose. But the reverse seems true. As we claim to believe in diversity, in many ways we are actually well down the path to destroying it.
Isn’t a more diverse society richer? In this sense, isn’t a society with less blind people, less Down syndrome people, less fat people, etc., simply less interesting and worthwhile?
I’ve always admired Deaf culture - its beautiful and efficient language, its arts, its ability to survive in a larger and too-often hostile culture. But Deaf culture is shrinking as medical science advances, both because fewer and fewer deaf children are born and because incurable deafness is becoming rarer. I can’t say that I think medical advances are bad; nonetheless, I think the utter loss of Deaf culture would be tragic.
If fatness were safely, easily curable, how many fat people - even fat activists - would take the cure? I suspect nearly all of us would. Would a society in which no one was fat be worse?
Post 7: Sort of a Conclusion
But logically, I realize that human happiness isn’t based on being able to walk, or see, or learn quickly.
* It is an empirical fact that some disabled people, including many with Down syndrome, lead happy lives; it is also true that some nondisabled people are miserable all their lives.
* Multiple studies have shown that ablebodied people who are basically happy before becoming disabled in an accident, remain basically happy people after the shock of being disabled passes.
So perhaps my heart is wrong.
I don’t think efforts to cure or prevent disability should be stopped, because some disabled people would prefer to be non-disabled. But at the same time, I think it’s more important to reform society, and the way we view disability, ability and the pursuit of happiness. That, in the end, has more potential to improve human lives and bring happiness than medicine does.
Maybe.
October 20th, 2005 at 12:40 am
What strikes me about many of the comments you posted is the false dilemma between certain disabilities (i.e. Down’s syndrome) and “perfect”, as though parents who would rather not have a child with Down’s could only be satisfied with a perfect baby. Weird.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 1:18 am
Amp, much to chew on. Thank you.
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October 20th, 2005 at 2:02 am
I share Bauer’s discomfort with selective abortion, and genuinely believe it should be discouraged through education and advocacy. Even assuming fetuses aren’t people who can claim rights, they are individual biological entities; distinguishable from either parent by a unique set of DNA.
If allowed to grow uninterrupted by miscarriage or medical intervention, most fetuses already existing will grow into people. This potential is a real and tangible thing.
That is what would differentiate an effort to eliminate Downs Syndrome through adding folic acid to the water, from the desire to reach a similar goal by offering (and, for lack of a better word, encouraging) selective abortion. The former method removes potential from the equation altogether, making Downs Syndrome itself the target of an eradication effort. The latter method, on the other hand, targets existing biological entities for destruction. These are potential people who, if left alone, would develop into children with Downs Syndrome.
Here’s my problem: I honestly don’t understand how anyone can say she values people with disabilities, and yet argue selective abortion is either a neutral thing or a good one. It’s designed specifically to eliminate genetically unique organisms - the living potentials from which we all develop individually - based solely on their high probability of becoming disabled people rather than able-bodied ones.
It doesn’t matter if the organism will grow into a smart, funny, talented author because these good attributes are outweighed by the existence of a disorder that will make his life less worth living than those of smart, talented, and funny non-disabled authors who are allowed to continue growing according to design.
Yes it does devalue disabled people already alive when supporters of selective abortion argue the existence of a disability is in itself such a catastrophic harm that it outweighs any good packed into a specific set of DNA - that it is morally acceptable to abort an otherwise wanted fetus based on the presence of an “undesirable” characteristic.
This view leads, moreover, to the commodification of life. I personally find more people are treating pregnancy and birth as primarily commercial activities. Wrongful birth suits are but one example of this process. Another is tied in with the argument that disabled kids cost society more and (are assumed to) produce less, thus rendering them less valuable than their able-bodied counterparts. Encouraging this kind of cost-benefit analysis cheapens life, not just in the womb but at every stage. Pensioners, homeless people, those on social assistance, and even prisoners - these groups all produce less tangible economic good for society than strong young able-bodied people who work 40 hours a week.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 3:09 am
I believe that folic acid is used to prevent spina bifida, not Down’s Syndrome. Down’s Syndrome is not caused by nutritional deficiencies, and connot be prevented through diet or similar means.
Also, while I don’t think people with Down’s Syndrome necessarily do society “catastrophic harm,” they may do catastrophic harm to parents and families, and they need to be considered too. I do think that potential parents have the right to decide if they want to spend the rest of their lives caring for an individual with such great needs, who may never be independent or accepted by society. It’s heartbreaking to have one’s child be “different” or rejected or suffer in any way, even in much more minor ways. As only one example of many in my personal experience, my brother is a high-functioning autistic individual whose “differently-abled” characteristics tore our family apart, caused my mother untold anguish, and played a great role in my own unhappy childhood (family stress and dysfunction is very common where one family member has problems that require everyone’s energy and attention…)
I don’t think Down’s Syndrome is “minor,” and I personally wouldn’t be willing to bring a Down’s Syndrome child into the world if I had any choice about it. Would you force parents to shoulder a burden of that magnitude if they decided they weren’t capable of it? I think you can only feel that way if you have no real experience of the situation, and view it as a hypothetical moral issue only. Having mental retardation (Sorry, “disability”) is not analogous to having a minor “imperfection” or some idiosyncratic characteristic which adds to the wonders of human diversity. It’s a fairly major chromosomal flaw, one of the few that isn’t fatal. That some parents may be perfectly able to raise a Down’s Syndrome child with love and appreciation doesn’t mean everyone is able to do that, that they should have to, or that there is anything “commercial,” “perfectionistic,” selfish, or morally bankrupt about them.
This comment was written by Jennifer B..Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 4:36 am
Jennifer, a couple of studies have shown that women who take folic acid supplements are less likely to have Down syndrome children. However, the work is tentative, and my suggestion of achieving huge results by putting it in the water supply is pure science fiction.
Other than that, I agree with you entirely.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 5:25 am
[...] And sometimes they write much much better responses to misguided articles about abortion [...]
This comment was written by Word Munger » Some people write MUCH longer posts than InstaMunger.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 6:07 am
Abortion should be a private decision made by an individual pregnant woman. Making a decision about having a child with disabilities is hard enough; it shouldn’t be made more difficult by public pressures on either side of the issue. Whatever we think about the decision to abort or not, we are not the ones who have to make and live with that decision.
Believing that we would be better off if a specific disability was eradicated is not the same thing as saying we would be better off without those people who happen to have the disability. It is quite easy to want there never to be another child born with Down Syndrome while still loving someone who has already has it. I have a delightful, sweet, and charming niece with Downs whom I love very much but if I or her mother or any member of our family had the power to cure her, we might hesitate for a bit, thinking about how it would change her but we’d still do it. If we could prevent another Downs child being born, we wouldn’t hesitate for a nanosecond.
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October 20th, 2005 at 6:09 am
If we could prevent another Downs child being born, we wouldn’t hesitate for a nanosecond.
And I realize I should clarify this statement to add that I meant “by having a pre-natal cure for it.”
This comment was written by AndiF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 6:23 am
I think the big issue here is intent. The implication is that having an abortion may well be perfectly moral for some reasons, but having one for reason X is wrong - in this case because the fetus has Down syndrome. I don’t think questions of intent come into this at all, if a woman has a right to have an abortion (for all the classic reasons: autonomy, bodily integrity, non-personhood of the fetus) then she has a right to have one regardless of the specific reasons why she chooses to do so. I don’t think the type of argument in the article should influence us at all.
I think the reasoning above extends to situations where people decide to abort a fetus because it’s black or a girl or not your husbands or so on, and I’d defend its use in those situations too.
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October 20th, 2005 at 7:17 am
After instigating this post by e-mailing the link to Amp, I e-mailed it to a good friend of mine who has a young son with Down’s. In her case, “the test” came back negative, so they didn’t know about the disability until after he was born. I asked her if she would have chosen abortion if “the test” had come back positive. She replied that she honestly doesn’t know the answer to that question, in part because she nearly miscarried at 14 weeks (which is before they would have gotten any prenatal test results back). The impact of caring for a child with a disability on her family was significant, and the drive-by snarking she gets on a daily basis is very similar to that reported in the article. On the other hand, her son is a wonderful, sunny, funny little boy and she can’t imagine life without him.
I think it is important to discuss the attitudes exhibited by many people towards parents of children with “accidental” disabilities (such as Down’s or spina bifida), as well as towards people with inheritable disabilities who choose to have children. In the context of this thread, is it any different for couples who know their children have a significant chance of CF or Tay-Sachs? Too many people do have the opinion that you shouldn’t deliberately bring a disabled child into the world, maybe because the whole idea of dealing with the disabled squicks them out.
My friend with the Down’s syndrome son once said that having one disabled child should count as having twins - that dealing with the disability is sort of like dealing with another child. So if being pro-choice truly means supporting whatever choice the mother makes, then we should be equally accepting of those who decide they can’t handle the disability as of those who decide that they can, just as we should be equally accepting of people who decide they can’t handle one more (or any) child and of those who decide they can.
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October 20th, 2005 at 7:30 am
M-T, history is full of institutions that exhorted women and men to keep spawning until they could produce a son, because a son was inherently more valuable than a daughter. History is full of institutions that exhorted a woman to have as many babies as she could until it wrecked her health and sometimes took her life, because more was better when it came to having a family. For that matter, it’s been common throughout history to view women who couldn’t reproduce as inherently less valuable in the “marriage market” than women who could.
Can you really sit there and tell me that the “commercial” aspect of birthing is a new thing ?
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 7:33 am
“It would be less extreme to simply ban testing for Down syndrome.”
Actually, this would be a fairly extreme solution too, since you would have to ban almost all prenatal testing, including amnio and ultrasound. These tests pick up a lot more than Down’s. Would you want, for example, to prevent a woman who had had a child with Trisomy 13 or 18 (both of which are usually deadly within one year of life, after much suffering on the part of the infant and parent) from knowing whether her next child is healthy or suffers from the same abnormality? I think that in such a case, many women would simply chose to not risk another pregnancy. Personally, I would never have risked becoming pregnant if prenatal testing weren’t available. So my perfectly healthy child would never have been born if this ban were put into place. I may be unusual in this, but I doubt that I am unique.
I think the distinction between wanting a “perfect” child and wanting a basically healthy child is an important one. If I were pregnant with a fetus with Down’s, I’d probably have an abortion. If I were pregnant with a fetus with a tendency towards obesity, I wouldn’t. (Unless it had leptin deficiency or lacked a satiety center or some other defect which meant that it would not only be morbidly obese but would never feel comfortably full and suffer from hunger its entire life. That I’d abort to avoid. A tendency towards being overweight, who cares?)
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October 20th, 2005 at 7:55 am
I believe that folic acid is used to prevent spina bifida, not Down’s Syndrome. Down’s Syndrome is not caused by nutritional deficiencies, and connot be prevented through diet or similar means.
I was merely using a ‘for example’ based on something in Ampersand’s post.
Also, while I don’t think people with Down’s Syndrome necessarily do society “catastrophic harm,” they may do catastrophic harm to parents and families, and they need to be considered too
Is it the individual with Downs Syndrome who does catastrophic harm, or the fact society hasn’t provided nearly enough in the way of respite care or other practical support?
I do think that potential parents have the right to decide if they want to spend the rest of their lives caring for an individual with such great needs, who may never be independent or accepted by society.
I agree, in a sense: I’m not for criminalizing abortion or stigmatizing those who have one. My own stance is based on the idea education and advocacy should be used to reduce the rate of abortion - and that includes advocacy for increased scholastic opportunities and better residential placement options for people with severe disabilities.
It’s heartbreaking to have one’s child be “different” or rejected or suffer in any way, even in much more minor ways. As only one example of many in my personal experience, my brother is a high-functioning autistic individual whose “differently-abled” characteristics tore our family apart, caused my mother untold anguish, and played a great role in my own unhappy childhood (family stress and dysfunction is very common where one family member has problems that require everyone’s energy and attention…)
I used to provide respite care to a high-functioning autistic boy. I don’t know what it’s like to live with one, however. I don’t see how this invalidates my initial points.
I don’t think Down’s Syndrome is “minor,” and I personally wouldn’t be willing to bring a Down’s Syndrome child into the world if I had any choice about it. Would you force parents to shoulder a burden of that magnitude if they decided they weren’t capable of it?
I wouldn’t force anyone to do anything, but I would provide increased literature and a pre-surgical chance to interact with kids who have Downs Syndrome. Raising a child with that condition would provide unique challenges, but your characterization of it as a burden suggests you have pre-conceived notions that bear personal examination.
I think you can only feel that way if you have no real experience of the situation, and view it as a hypothetical moral issue only.
And I think you’re making a mistake by impugning my motives when you know little about me or my background.
I’ve spent a great deal of time wrestling with the questions Ampersand presented. My husband has a genetic anomaly - one that promises a lifetime of pain and disfigurement to anyone affected by it, in those cases where it’s not lethal shortly after birth - that he could pass to half our offspring. But his own life has turned out well; he has a close family, a good education, and a great personality.
The world would be a poorer place without him in it. He is, without exaggeration, the only man I’ve ever loved. In our case, pro-choice is as much about coercion as pro-life is to you: where you worry about intrusion into a private decision to terminate a pregnancy, we worry about being penalized both socially and materially for possibly deciding to take a chance.
For my part, I’m legally blind, and find the thought that people “there there” me - “oh, you’re so brave; if the world were perfect, however, you’d cease to be, or there would be a better, faster ‘you’ instead of this one” - to be the ultimate form of dehumanization.
I’m personally tired of my disability, or my husband’s, being used in academic debates about whether disability is such an overpowering characteristic that it could render life not worth living - or less worth living than life without disability.
Having mental retardation (Sorry, “disability”) is not analogous to having a minor “imperfection” or some idiosyncratic characteristic which adds to the wonders of human diversity.
I’m not sure what you mean with the scare quotes, but I think you’re implying I’m so blinded by the rightist version of political correctness that I’m treating disability as a convenient (but wholly academic) moral problem rather than as a living fact that effects real families.
It’s a fairly major chromosomal flaw, one of the few that isn’t fatal. That some parents may be perfectly able to raise a Down’s Syndrome child with love and appreciation doesn’t mean everyone is able to do that, that they should have to, or that there is anything “commercial,” “perfectionistic,” selfish, or morally bankrupt about them.
There’s a heavy whiff of commercialism tied in with the decision to kill a disabled fetus - if not on the part of the parents, than in those sections of the medical community that actively support that option over other alternatives by failing to provide accurate information about disability.
If I had a nickel for every “the doctor said he’d never attend a regular school or have a family” horror story parents have told me, I’d be a millionaire. And I’m just talking about blindness.
Yes, I think parents who pick and choose from among potential children are turning pregnancy into a commercial event. I agree with Bauer that a lot of people are under the impression nature or society somehow owes them a child without blemish; that they have a right to be angry, even going so far as to sue, when their wishes aren’t fulfilled.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 8:25 am
FWIW: A random survey of people selected for the following criteria: 1. they were around 2. they weren’t likely to slap me for asking gave the following results to the question of whether they would abort if they were pregnant with a fetus with Down’s: 3 said yes, 2 no, one “depends…how bad is the cardiac malformation” (that’s what I get for asking a cardiologist). Based on these results, I think it’s safe to say that if the decision is left to the individual, Down’s will not cease to exist, for better or worse. Leaving it to the individual seems to me to be the best way: the idea of forcing abortion on those that don’t want it is even more repellant than the idea of forcing those who want it to carry to term.
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October 20th, 2005 at 8:36 am
Correction: I should have said: “Too many people act horrified at the idea of deliberately bringing a disabled child into the world or otherwise treat those who do as misguided,” not “Too many people have the opinion”.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 8:50 am
“Too many people do have the opinion that you shouldn’t deliberately bring a disabled child into the world, maybe because the whole idea of dealing with the disabled squicks them out.”
And you are perfectly free to disagree with these people and fight for greater resources for the disabled who, as Amp says, are frequently born as the result of non-discoverable issues, and even more frequently are created after birth by virtue of accidents, illness and, horror, aging. To cast this debate as one solely about the legality of abortion is dishonest, we can help all disabled people without resorting to enforced childbearing for unwilling women. Indeed, to structure the argument as if disability is always the result of prenatal events leads me to suspect strongly that one isn’t worried about the disable, and in fact, that one has only a passing familiarity with disability, so much as one is seeking to restrict abortion by setting up this false conflict between those who make awesomely difficult decisions regarding their whole future and that of their family, and complete strangers who have no legitimate stake in that decision. One does not deny an individual a right simply in order to create a critical mass of other individuals who can sway public policy decisions.
I am all in favor of giving people undergoing prenatal testing accurate information. A geneticist once told me that it’s not easy to get people to keep alarming information in perspective. Wanting a “normal” child is not the same as wanting a perfect child. Most chromosomal disorders are not only catastrophic, they are not survivable. Many fetuses with DS also die before or shortly after birth. Mental skills vary greatly. How you put these incredibly confusing, uncertain and scary possibilities together is an individual decision. Ms. Bauer (along with many in her shoes) is writing from the hindsight perspective of a woman with a high functioning daughter with DS. She should advocate for her daughter, she should disseminate accurate information about DS — but she only gets to live her own life, not other peoples’s.
As for the connection between folic acid and DS — it’s way, way complicated, but women with a specific genetic defect in certain biochemical pathways involving Vitamin B have been linked by some studies (but not others) to an increased risk of giving birth to a baby with DS. And DS children have the same defect, which some argue aggravates common DS “symptoms” that can and should be treated with a special diet. If there is anybody interested in this subject, go look at the following URL:
http://www.homocysteine.net/pages/news/1/2003_11_downs.htm
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 10:11 am
You could make it illegal for the labs or doctors to report the test results regarding Down syndrome, while leaving it legal to report on other issues.
However, I hope you understand that I’m not advocating this solution at all; I was just mentioning it as something that, while extreme, is less so than entirely banning abortion.
Well put, and I agree. However, some parents of children with Down syndrome - including, I suspect, the author of that Washington Post article - might describe their children with DS as “basically healthy.”
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 10:32 am
Dianne’s post (#12) reminds me of an article by an article by Osagie K. Obasogie. that I blogged on here.
Essentially, he was arguing that we may need to take steps to prevent sex-selective abortions, but ones that did not involve restricting abortion; i.e. ban prenatal tests for gender, at least until the fetus is too far along for an abortion (assuming that there are retricitons on when abortion is allowed). Unfortunately, he said this in a very roundabout way.
He insisted that it was not logically inconsistent to be for unrestricted access for abortion and to outlaw gender selection (other pro-choice countries have restircitons on methods of gender selection that involve, e.g., centrifuging sperm), but ignored the practical inconsistency; if abortion cannot be restricted or prohibited for any reason, then any method of selecting characteristics in your children that involves aborting children who do not have the desired characteristics is de facto legal. The only way to prevent it is to force the parents to be ignorant about the child as long as abortion remains an option.
It seems to me that anyone who is consistently pro-choice has to support the legality of characteristic selection through abortion; because it is extremely anti-choice to deny someone the right to perform tests on their fetus because they are afraid of what they will do with the information. That is, how can one truly have bodily autonomy if they are not allowed to have certain tests performed on them? (One could, I suppose, argue that the tests are not being performed on them but on the fetus, but that would deny the fundamental pro-choice doctrine that the woman’s autonomy extends to her fetus).
Put another way, if one believes in unrestricted access to abortion but limited access to tests in orer to prevent selective abortion, then one is not truly pro-choice; they are pro-choice only when it does not interfere with their design for society, and are willing to surrender bodily autonomy when it might lead to results they don’t like. (This would apply to Osagie K. Obasogie; but from most of the comments on this issue, I don’t think it applies to most Alas readers).
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 10:44 am
A sidelight: Many of the pieces I’ve seen about the possibilities of genetic engineering mention “tall” as one of the desirable traits. Now, aside from the fact that not everyone can be tall any more than everyone can be above average, I find it a little chillling that apparently a lot of people think my life (at 4′ 11″) is so unsatifactory that of course it should have been prevented if possible.
On the other hand, I also agree wih the prochoice arguments–I just wish people were less crazy.
This comment was written by Nancy Lebovitz.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 10:59 am
If allowed to grow uninterrupted? Try “if supported, protected, supplied with oxygen and nutrients by a woman, who shoulders a heavy and often unpleasant physical burden in order to do so,” most fetuses will grow into people. Fetuses don’t grow on their own.
If they did, we’d have a perfect compromise in removing the fetus, alive, and transfering it to a preemie ward for the next six or seven or eight months. Well, almost perfect; certainly the misogyny that inspires most of the anti-choice movement would find something wrong with that, too, and continue their fight to control women (or maybe they’d just disregard the fetuses as no longer a useful tool to push for control of women). But fetuses DON’T grow on their own; women enable them to become babies, women enable them to become people. Babies, people, humans, don’t make themselves; women make them.
Exactly. I may want children some day. But I am not a baby person; the reason I’d want children is to enjoy them when they’re older, when they’re capable of interacting on a more adult level. Having to carry them in my body and care for them during their first few years is something I would consider more of a burden, something I put up with so that I could have older children that I’ve raised. I would not be a good mother to a child with Down’s syndrome because I am not comfortable interacting closely with people with mental handicaps, whether temporary (as in a baby or toddler) or permanant (as in Down’s syndrome), and because having a child that stayed dependent and childlike in personality and intelligence forever, would never satisfy the reasons I want children, while extending the burden for a lifetime. This means that in addition to not wanting a Down’s syndrome child, I would not be a good mother to a Down’s syndrome child, and therefore I should do all I can to avoid having one, because I am not prepared or willing to make the necessary sacrifices. And certainly if I cannot reasonably expect the benefits I outlined before from a child, I have no reason whatsoever to suffer through a pregnancy.
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 11:14 am
If I’m going to be morally judged for aborting a pregnancy that could produce a severely disabled child, then I’m likely going to be judged for aborting a pregnancy that would produce an able-bodied, intelligent child.
I carry a gene that could cause a disease in any sons I had. They could go blind by their twenties if they contracted it. However, if I wanted children, I wouldn’t abort based on that.
If the child I was carrying was going to be so disabled that I didn’t think I could handle the financial, emotional, or mental strain, then I would abort. In my case, though, this is moot, as I have no desire to have a child. I couldn’t handle any of that for an able-bodied child–I do not want to be a single mother, or a mother, period. I do not want to be pregnant, and do not want to deal with the physical strain and risks of pregnancy. No matter what the state of the fetus was, I would abort.
What bothers me about these red-herring arguments like the WaPo essay is that judgements are passed on us from either side. I’m either evil for aborting a disabled fetus, or I’m evil for aborting, period. All depending on the reasons, of course. But no one would know my reasons for doing so because they would be no one’s business but mine.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 11:23 am
MonkeyTesticle, what you’re not getting is the difference between accepting (and even valuing) disabled people who are already here, and accepting the responsibility to care for one. The former is really no burden at all; the latter is a *huge* responsibility, and not everybody’s capable of doing it; not everybody wants to do it.
I have a friend with cerebral palsy. Being her friend is just fine, but I could not be her mother; I could not have been her caretaker when she was a child. I can be a good friend, a good acquaintance, a good person passing someone disabled on the street or in the mall, but I could not be a good mother.
In addition, the people with disabilities living today already exist; it is not draining *my* resources to keep them alive and healthy, the way it would drain my resources to create a baby, disabled or not, inside me, or the way it would drain my resources to care for a disabled child. Yes, to have children I must accept the possibility of having a disabled child or having a child become disabled; but I will do all I can to make that possibility as low as . . . well, possible. No pun intended.
I believe that it’s wrong to bring a child into the world without seeing to it that that child is cared for, as long as it needs care. To bring a child into the world without intending to care for it yourself, is adding to the number of children needing care, WITHOUT correspondingly adding yourself to the pool of caretakers, and I find this to be irresponsible, and even more so in cases of disability, because that increases the discrepency between care needed and care available even more. While I would never encourage any “selective” abortions (it is, as with all abortions, entirely up to the mother), I do not find the practice reprehensible in the slightest. To refuse to put large amounts of effort toward the making of a baby is any pregnant woman’s perogative, and so is to decide what would be too much of a burden to her, whether in time to prevent that burden from having to fall on someone else, or not. The difference is between “I don’t want it, so I won’t make it” and “I don’t want it, here, somebody else has to take it,” and I completely fail to see how the first is worse than the second.
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 11:32 am
This is different from the opinion that “you can bring a disabled child into the world if you want to, but don’t tell me I have to.”
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 11:51 am
If you’re reading my original post, please scroll down to my correction. I accidentally deleted the wrong part of the sentence as I was editing and hit “submit comment” too fast.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 12:49 pm
I think one of the points that Bauer was trying to make was that there is a certain judgmental attitude among the mostly pro-choice, mostly liberal people she encounters, that you are not making the “problem” of disabled people go away if you don’t take advantage of a legal procedure to abort fetuses that could potentially be disabled children.
If we support disabled people as valuable members of society, then there should be no judgmental comments when the pregnant woman makes her choice. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I think most of us here would agree that as a society we do have a negative bias when it comes to disabilities (especially visible ones).
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Although there are always individual exceptions, I think a lot of people change their opinions once they’ve actually got a baby to care for.
Although I don’t have links offhand, I think I’ve read more than one essay by a parent of a disabled child who said that they once thought that they’d never be able to raise a disabled child - but when the reality came about, their attitudes changed.
The reality is, it’s very difficult for most people to live with an infant or child and not learn to admire it for what it is, and treat it with affection. Some people aren’t like that, of course - there’s too many examples of abusive parents to deny that - but I think most people reflexively love the infants they have.
* * *
Lee wrote:
I understand that was a main point she was making, and it may be true, but I wish she had provided a more convincing argument. Instead, most of her examples seemed to be her projecting negative thoughts on to people based on very little evidence - and sometimes the groups she was projecting on to were ridiculously broad, such as “women of childbearing age.” To me, that’s not very persuasive. Her essay, to me, seems to fit in with a long pro-life tradition of just making up horrible attitiudes and beleifs and unfairly attributing them to pro-choicers in general.
Even if she’s right, she’s probably way overstated the case; and there’s very little in her essay to convince me that she is right. On the other hand, I don’t know that she’s wrong, either.
Plus, her choice to make her criticism so completely one-sided - can she really find NOTHING to criticize about conservative attitudes towards the disabled? Are pro-choicers really the ONLY people in this culture who harbor any prejudice against disabled people? - makes me doubt her objectivity.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
Therefore, by your logic, we should be perfectly ok with gender-selective abortions.
Well, why shouldn’t you be? Why shouldn’t anyone be?
I really don’t understand all this mushy middle theorizing. Either you think a fetus is a person/a potential person, whose existence is worthy of significant consideration, or you don’t think that.
If you think a fetus is valueless, then there is no discussion to be had; abort if you feel the urge, have the baby if you feel the urge. Abort to avoid Down’s syndrome or because you decide you don’t want to stop working for a month or to save your life or because you look fat in maternity clothes or because you find out the kid is a girl and girls are considered a burden in your culture. It makes no difference what your motivation is; if a fetus is garbage, then do whatever you want.
If you think a fetus is worthy of consideration as a person or as a potential person, then and only then is there some kind of moral dilemma to face concerning any aspect of abortion. Then and only then are any of these questions even of theoretical interest. There’s no coherent position that a fetus has no significant existence, and yet there’s some question about it being OK or not OK to abort for particular reasons. You gotta buy a “Fetuses are important” ticket if you want to ride the abortion as a moral dilemma train.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
MonkeyTesticle, what you’re not getting is the difference between accepting (and even valuing) disabled people who are already here, and accepting the responsibility to care for one. The former is really no burden at all; the latter is a *huge* responsibility, and not everybody’s capable of doing it; not everybody wants to do it.
I do see the difference, Kyra; I just don’t assign it the same value as you do. This is, in my opinion, precisely the same kind of argument closet homophobes make when they say, “we think it’s okay to be gay, but we don’t want those homos holding hands or kissing in public.” In this case, the argument reads, “we value the disabled, just as long as we can avoid ending up financially or emotionally responsible for helping someone with a disability.”
I have a friend with cerebral palsy. Being her friend is just fine, but I could not be her mother; I could not have been her caretaker when she was a child. I can be a good friend, a good acquaintance, a good person passing someone disabled on the street or in the mall, but I could not be a good mother.
I see your point and respect you for saying it straight, but I honestly think such a view devalues the disabled. There’s no way around this impasse. We’ll have to agree to disagree.
This is different from the opinion that “you can bring a disabled child into the world if you want to, but don’t tell me I have to.”
This is why I occupy that lonely gray zone between pro-life and pro-choice: I don’t think law makers or pressure groups or anyone else should be intruding on the privacy of women by telling them they have to carry a child to term (or not). But I still think the act of abortion - and, in this case, the act of aborting a disabled child for its disability - is morally wrong. Fetuses should be worthy of moral consideration.
Another reason why I can’t find sorority among pro-lifers is because their positions, in general, are contradictory. I can’t, for example, understand how anyone could be both a social and economic conservative at the same time - how someone can justify cutting social service programs while castigating women for aborting unwanted children; or how someone else can argue children are a gift from god then complain because women having “unauthorized” sex aren’t being forced to bear children as a curse for wrongdoing.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 7:20 pm
Some points:
1. The best quote on this matter I have read is from Michael Berube (who has a child with Down’s). When told of someone who wanted to abort after a positive test for Down’s because they didn’t want a “‘tard.” (Paraphrase) That person is an asshole. The last thing we want to do is to encourage the idea that assholes should be raising disabled children. Couldn’t find the post I’m thinking of, but here’s a great one about his kid.
2. One thing that noone has mentioned is that non–rich families didn’t raise severely disabled children in the home until the 1960s and 70s. For the most part they did not survive early childhood, or were institutionalized. The expectation that a family should devote its resources to nurturing a disabled child and maintaining him or her into adulthood is only a generation old.
3. Snark overcame me and I wanted to tell Patricia Bauer: “Bitch, if you didn’t dress your kid in such fucking ugly clothes people wouldn’t stare at him, now would they?”
4. I think I would also tell her to get over herself. People looked oddly at Down’s Syndrome children before there was legalized abortion.
This comment was written by Violet.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 7:25 pm
I can’t, for example, understand how anyone could be both a social and economic conservative at the same time - how someone can justify cutting social service programs while castigating women for aborting unwanted children
When examining an apparent contradiction in the thinking of someone else, I find it useful to recollect that their starting assumptions may be different. For example, I find it contradictory that people who say they care about the well-being of the working poor also support a wide variety of legislation that damages the interests of the working poor; but the people supporting the legislation don’t believe it to be damaging. This is a difference of opinion and worldview, not a flaw in their logic.
Imagine that you believe government charity drives out and weakens private charity, and that government social programs are iatrogenic - i.e., that they usually make the problem worse rather than better.
Now you’re an (intellectual) conservative, and the contradiction disappears. Cutting into government-run social services helps the less fortunate, or so we believe. Private social services are another matter entirely, which is why we like things like government vouchers for private welfare agencies and churches and such.
For details on this thought pattern (which although not obviously and manifestly and undeniably true, is supported by a fairly considerable body of evidence) see Charles Murray’s “Losing Ground”.
or… argue children are a gift from god then complain because women having “unauthorized” sex aren’t being forced to bear children as a curse for wrongdoing.
I am not aware of any conservatives who make that argument, although I am aware that it is a frequent charge leveled by the shriller variant of feminist. Could you provide a cite?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
“Either you think a fetus is a person/a potential person, whose existence is worthy of significant consideration, or you don’t think that.”
At risk of going off on a tangent, I don’t agree. One can think that some fetuses are more worthy of consideration, others less so. The line I draw has to do with the beginning of conciousness. It’s an imperfect distinction as exactly when conciousness first appears is unclear. However, it is virtually physically impossible for it to occur in the first trimester, when about 90% of abortions are performed. During that time, I have no problem with people aborting for whatever reasons seem good to them and whether I think their reason for wanting an abortion is a good one or not is completely irrelevent. On the other hand, a 35 week fetus with normal neurological development probably does have some level of conciousness and therefore is very worthy of consideration. At that point, abortion is much harder to justify, although I have problems barring abortion even at this point in the case of anencephaly or elevated risk to the mother.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 9:14 pm
I am not aware of any conservatives who make that argument
I’m not going to waste my beautiful mind combing through piles of bullshit to find these, but they do exist. The World O’ Crap (blogs.salon.com/0002874/) archives are filled with examples. Go look….if you daaaare.
…although I am aware that it is a frequent charge leveled by the shriller variant of feminist. Could you provide a cite?
You’re aware of that, are ya? Can you provide a cite?
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
Actually, Robert, I decided to get off my lazy butt and find a recent example of the ideology I mentioned above: http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001154.cfm
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2005 at 9:32 pm
You’re aware of that, are ya? Can you provide a cite?
Yeah, you, just now. Though I acknowledge that I don’t know if you’re a shrill feminist or not, so that characterization may not apply.
There isn’t a word in the Kass piece you linked that characterizes childbirth as a curse for female wrongdoing.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 5:48 am
Amp, I think the main problem with the Bauer piece was that it was a poorly edited venting piece. It could have been a lot stronger and more coherent to make her points really stand out, and yeah, she was using a really broad brush. Maybe this is the “new journalism,” because the N.Y.T. has had a lot of pieces lately that have the same kind of problem. Or (conspiracy theory alert) maybe it was poorly edited because the editor was pro-choice.
But seriously, aren’t we having a valuable discussion about the disability-value of life matrix that she brought up (even though she didn’t present it very well)?
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 5:55 am
Robert: Either you think a fetus is a person/a potential person, whose existence is worthy of significant consideration, or you don’t think that.
Well, Robert, perhaps not. Perhaps, as you so eloquently pointed out,
For example, there might be a starting assumption that the needs of a living woman get more consideration than those of a “potential person” — which, of course, doesn’t in any way say that the fetus shouldn’t be given consideration and it certainly doesn’t suggest that anyone here thinks, in your quite shrill words, that “a fetus is garbage.”
This comment was written by AndiF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 6:36 am
Well said, Andi.
Lee, I certainly agree that the piece is worth reading and thinking about, and I’m enjoying this discussion. I’m glad you emailed the link to me.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 8:17 am
The Bauer piece was quite weak — little more than venting that not everyone is willing to share her experience. What I would say in retort is that there’s a world of difference between accepting the consequences of a decision freely made (including when you refused to find out) and accepting a fate that has been forced upon you by the actions of third parties. Michael Berube is the go to guy on this issue. His posts on his son, and DS and disabled living generally, are wise and compassionate.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 8:26 am
Good piece, Amp.
As someone fairly new to studying disability theory and activism, I find the distinction between impairment and disability useful in parsing out a very dense and heartfelt issue.
Impairment is used by disability theorists to describe a person’s physical, mental, emotional reality. Thus, a person with Down’s syndrome may be described as having certain types of neurological impairments.
The disability arises from social (and legal and cultural attitudes) towards this person with certain types of neurological impairments.
What strikes me about this comment thread is that few seem to take up the larger social implications of why parents must decide if they have the resources - physical, mental and economic - to raise a child with Down’s syndrome. They do not make the decision in a vacuum.
At the risk of overstating disability literature, american society despises significant numbers of people living with all types of impairments. Raising a child with Down’s syndrome is more than just enduring the snark drive-bys. It is also about the fact that medicaid and medicare won’t pay for home aid. They’ll happily pay to institutionalize your kid; but won’t pay for them to live at home; even when congressional testimony (see testimony at http://www.notdeadyet.org) suggests that it is cheaper for the government to pay to have the kid live at home.
That we live in a society that forces individual women to make decisions about a fetus with a potential life-changing impairment says much about our society. These are not decisions that we make as communities. Once again, it seems, we force women to do the moral dirty work of our culture.
As a transsexual, I feel ambivalent about prenatal testing for gender. I suspect (though I have no evidence to prove this) a majority of parents would have aborted me.
That some commenters here would not abort me or Amp but would abort a child who tested positve for Down’s speaks, I think, the very hidden nature of ableism in our society.
Ableism is not simply about ramps and assistive listening devices. It is about why certain bodies get devalued. And why temporarily-able bodies folks cannot come to grips with the vulnerabilities and failings of our own bodies. What do we gain by aborting a baby with Down’s syndrome? What do we gain as a society by letting people with disabilities languish in nursing homes and living with a high rate of unemployment (anecdotally: 70-80% of the employed disability community remains unemployed)?
People living with impairments represents the largest group of oppressed people living in the U.S. What I find intriguing is how our aging population will reduce barriers to access for people living with impairments; and whether this acceptance will rework how we understand the “would you have an abortion if you get tested postive for transsexualism? or obesity? or Down’s syndrome” debate.
Kind regards,
This comment was written by Jay Sennett.Jay
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October 21st, 2005 at 9:42 am
Jay said:
I think some of the people who would make that decision would make it because they are aware of the nature of ableism in our society. The impariment by itself might not be enough to cause them to think their child’s life would not be worth living, or that they couldn’t handle raising the child - but combined with the artificial barriers set up by prejudice against the disabled, it’s more than they could take, or they think their child could handle.
In a society where Down’s syndrome was accepted and accomodated, I imagine there would be a lot fewer abortions of fetuses that tested positive for Down’s syndrome.
As for transsexualism, the commentators here seem to be more accepting of transsexualism than the population at large, and - significantly - I would imagine many of them live in communities where it is accepted. Ask the same set of questions in a community of conservative Christians - assuming you could find some who weren’t opposed to abortion from the start - and I bet most of them would be willing to abort a fetus that tested positive for transsexuality (assuming such a test could be devised).
For myself, I’ve pre-emptively eliminated the discussion, so to speak - I’ve decided not to have any children, in large part because I think our society is so poisinous in general that I wouldn’t want to subject even an able-bodied, highly intelligent, straight person to it, especially with the kind of upbringing I’d be able to provide. (Okay, so I’m an incurable cynic.)
This comment was written by Rook.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 9:59 am
My son had a malignant brain tumor when he was four, seven years ago, that left him mentally and physically disabled. He can’t walk, is incontinent, has a feeding tube (he can eat some but not enough to stay alive), and functions cognitively at roughly age 2.
He is a burden. No two ways about it. My husband and I have to change his diapers, clean up his messes (he loves to throw things, including poop), bathe him, dress him, feed him, medicate him with anticonvulsants, and generally wait on him hand and foot.
All of this puts great stress on me and my husband as well as on our, I’d better be PC and say typically functioning, 9-year-old daughter. Not because of discriminatory beliefs or policies but because our son is just flat-out a lot of work, and will need to be supported in the same way for the rest of his life. Anyone who tries to tell me it’s not a burden, or that I shouldn’t consider it one, will have a fight on their hands. And, with due respect, I don’t believe anyone who hasn’t been responsible for a disabled child 24/7 has a clue what it’s like.
My son will never read or write or hold down a job or be a moral agent. He knows we don’t like his doing some things, but he’ll still do them right in front of us if the impulse takes him, and he has no concept of empathy: he’ll pull his sister’s hair just for the fun of hearing her scream. He will never have a spiritual life in any meaningful sense.
He is just as much a person and just as worthy of respect as I or anyone else. It breaks my heart, though, to think of what might have been.
This comment was written by Lu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 10:01 am
As a transsexual, I feel ambivalent about prenatal testing for gender. I suspect (though I have no evidence to prove this) a majority of parents would have aborted me.
I think “prenatal testing for gender” really means prenatal testing for biological sex; I don’t think that we have the ability to detect transexualism in the womb yet, and may be unable to do so if the causes are not genetic.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 10:05 am
I agree w/ Robert w/ regards to aborting female fetuses. I don’t see how you can be pro-choice (in the sense that abortion is a choice for a woman and anybody she wishes to consult) and wish to outlaw the aborting of fetuses for whatever reason. (Please don’t confuse that with limits on time based on viability/consciousness/whatever parameters one may have for that).
In my view of pre-viability/pre-possibility of consciousness or self awareness fetuses not being people I can’t see outlawing aborting based on genitalia. I may think that it is a stupid & self-defeating choice, but that is my opinion. The fact of the matter, to me, is that it is not yet a person and it is, therefore, entirely up to the woman in question to decide whether to give birth or abort.
As to the rest of Robert’s comment (the part with the fallacious assumptions about value assigned to fetuses), I think that Dianne & AndiF have done a fine job of responding.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 10:09 am
Yeah, I agree with Jake. Though it’s pretty amusing that Robert gets to point the finger at those of us who are –to his thinking– unsuitably “ambiguous” on the whole issue of abortion, even though he’s on record here as possibly favoring the procedure in cases of rape or incest.
Would every other feminist in the room who’d be proud to wear the “shrill” label were it bestowed by a self-described proud sexist, please raise her hand ? :p
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 10:19 am
Glaivaster,
Actually newly emerging research out of UCLA suggests that we may, in fact, begin to test for these types of things. In fact, this research may ultimately overturn one of the fundamental tenents of human biology: that female is the default sex. The determining of sex/gender may prove to be more complex, and less genetic than previously thoughts. For more on this topic, see “More on EDCs” at my blog.
And for your information, folks in the gender community use sex/gender interchangeably.
And I know you did not mean to sound patronizing. ;-0
This comment was written by Jay Sennett.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 10:33 am
OK, now apply that same reasoning to the freedom of business large and small to decide which customers they want to engage in transactions with, or which potential employees they should hire and retain (all things I think most of us are abstractly in favor of) . Yet we’re all pretty clear that that freedom doesn’t extend to barring the door to all customers of color, or refusing to hire women, and so forth.
It would be much harder to enforce a ban on sex-selection abortions, but that doesn’t mean it’s a philosophically untenable idea.
Reading all of these comments makes it clear to me why abortion must remain a personal choice.
This comment was written by paul.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 11:42 am
Yeah, you, just now. Though I acknowledge that I don’t know if you’re a shrill feminist or not, so that characterization may not apply.
I’m a social conservative, but don’t think I should have to trot out my ‘right-cred’ every time someone on an internet bulletin board decides to start a name calling contest by rehashing the tired old canard about how shrill feminists can be *yawn*. Shrill - like the term “chicken hawk” - is yet another meaningless word grown popular, so that now everyone and his dog uses it to describe the speaking styles of people they don’t like. For me, it’s use is a big red flag that warns: “Don’t bother debating with this person; he’ll just waste a whole lot of your time.”
And Kass said, point blank, that he wants to re-stigmatize “bastardy.” There are no two ways about it; anyone who opposes abortion on the one hand, but wants to punish both women and children for existing outside social strictures, treats childbearing as a deserved punishment in those situations.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 11:57 am
And Kass said, point blank, that he wants to re-stigmatize “bastardy.”
Where?
He says that the destigmatization of bastardy hampers courtship and marriage; i.e., that it makes people less likely to marry. This is an observation, and not a particularly controversial one. Incentives matter. Nowhere does he suggest that bastardy by restigmatized; indeed, he says that our hearts must go out to those whose parents made these wrong choices.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 11:58 am
I’m pretty much with Bean on this one, Lu; what if you didn’t have to fight for help? What if some of those folks who claim euthanasia (for example) should be illegal came to your house and helped on a regular, and substantial, basis?
I understand the characterization of disability as a burden comes from either living with a disabling condition, or with someone who is thus affected. It’s more accurate to say that disability shouldn’t be a burden - that people are, in some ways, adding to this load by being discourteous, unhelpful,, or just plain brainless.
That’s why positive education and advocacy efforts are so important; far more important, in fact, than trying to outlaw abortion.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 11:59 am
Provinces in India that have made affirmative efforts to raise the status of women have a much lower incidence of gender selected abortion, without changing any legal structures that are in place regarding abortion (as evidenced by the male to female ratio). If we made comparable affirmative efforts to lessen the social burden of caring for the disabled we might experience a similar reduction in the rate of abortion of DS. Those who think that people should just shoulder the potentially immense burden of what they are given are, in fact, expecting individuals (mostly females) to function at a higher moral level than society itself chooses — it’s no surprise that individuals make the choices that they do, because society merely reflects the majority of individuals who make it up. This, it seems to me, is the conservative libertarian dilemma — expecting people to be no better than they ought to be (the age old expression about not expecting any prizes for retaining one’s virginity until marriage) doesn’t seem to work when the level of effort required is often heroic.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 12:14 pm
Robert:
Here’s what Kass says about present-day conditions:
Here’s what Kass says causes this ‘profoundly sad state of affairs’:
Yeah Rob, that was a value-free statement if I’ve ever seen one. It’s just impoooossible to see what Kass means by it.
Now, if only we could return to a time when:
And how do we return to this golden era? By reversing the changes that “hamper” the kind of marriage and courtship Kass values. If you think he’s suggesting something different, let’s hear it.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 12:30 pm
I don’t need to defend or rephrase Kass’ writing; he is quite eloquent.
You want his nuanced and somewhat reasonable, if very old-fashioned, approach to translate into “women who fuck are evil and they have to be punished”. That’s your prerogative, but that isn’t what it says there on the page.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 12:50 pm
OK, now apply that same reasoning to the freedom of business large and small to decide which customers they want to engage in transactions with, or which potential employees they should hire and retain (all things I think most of us are abstractly in favor of) .
This is true only if you view a fetus as a person - a position that I have explicitly said that I do not hold.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 1:08 pm
Robert:
I don’t need to defend or rephrase Kass’ writing; he is quite eloquent.
…and quite obvious.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 1:13 pm
“Eloquent” ? Sure, if you find bodice-rippers eloquent. Yeesh.
“…A spur to manly ardor…” Right. Because in the glorious, golden past, all those men whose “ardor” led them to seek the chaste woman for their wife stayed faithful ever afterwards. None of them snuck off behind the wife’s back to sire bastards on some willing or unwilling “loose” female. Whatever.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 3:52 pm
It’s true that a lot of the problems facing a child with Down’s Syndrome wouldn’t exist in a non-ableist society–but we don’t live in such a society. Yes, more people with children with Down’s Syndrome who advocated for disabled rights would change this situation. But I don’t think I’m obligated to carry a pregnancy to term and cope with the hardships of raising such a child in order to make a statement and contribute to political change.
FYI–if I lived in India and a female child would drastically lower my socioeconomic status, I just might do a sex-selective abortion. Who knows? I certainly wouldn’t judge a woman who does that.
And even if I did choose to abort a fetus with Down’s Syndrome for ableist, prejudiced reasons, I’m pro-choice because I think I have the absolute right to control my body. This means that I have every right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason or no reason. I don’t think I need a justification.
This comment was written by Linnet.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 4:00 pm
But wait a moment - that makes no sense. If “disabled lives are just as rich, fulfilling, and worthwhile,” then isn’t it an enormous waste of money and effort to attempt to prevent or cure disability?
I think you’re falling into some black-and-white thinking here, Ampersand. Couldn’t you say that the ability to do certain things freely, things that disabled people can’t do, can help life become more fulfilling–even though not everyone who has ability X is necessarily more fulfilled than everyone who lacks it, and even though there are ways to live a fulfilled life without ability X?
I mean, people can live fulfilled lives if they lack arms, legs, eyes, significant life expectancies, modern medicine, iPods, fertility… It doesn’t mean we don’t want these things. You can say infertile women can have wonderful lives and still say we should look for cures for infertility.
This comment was written by Linnet.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 4:04 pm
i’m posting because i think the topic is fascinating, and because, as a woman approaching 35 and as yet nulliparous, down syndrome is a legitimate concern to me. a few other things so other readers can properly orient what i’m about to say:
1. i am completely pro-choice. if a woman wants to abort a fetus because of its gender, its chromosomal status, its eye color, whatever, i would not stand in her way. while it is my opinion that some of those reasons may be stupid, it is none of my business. and i wouldn’t wish a girl child on a family that would prefer to abort a female fetus.
2. i believe that a fetus does have some inherent worth. a fetus has the potential to become an independent person. for some reason i can’t put my finger on, i believe that independent people have inherent worth.
3. i believe that a woman, as an independent person, has the right to control her body, and to exercise whatever control over her body she wishes. i believe this right outweighs any right a fetus might have.
that said, here’s my point: despite what bauer and her ilk may think about selective abortion, it should have no bearing on the abortion debate. either you believe that a woman’s rights outweigh those of a fetus, or you believe a fetus’ rights are equal to or greater than a woman’s. if the former, you should support abortion on demand, regardless of a woman’s reasoning. if the latter, you should be against abortion for any reason — including rape, incest, and serious threat to the life of the mother.
throwing down syndrome, gender selection or obesity into the mix should not have any bearing on the central debate. this is not about social engineering, this is about whether or not individual women (and their spouses/significant others) should be able to exercise control over their reproductive lives and make choices about the life they want for themselves and their family.
This comment was written by laloca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 5:07 pm
It’s true that a lot of the problems facing a child with Down’s Syndrome wouldn’t exist in a non-ableist society”“but we don’t live in such a society.
And we never will if people aren’t willing to advocate for a more equal society. This has implications beyond abortion, in that our society does little more than pay lip service to the rights of people who became disabled later in life. Most - yes, most - “adaptations” are poorly constructed attempts to meet legal codes, rather than well-planned efforts to make places easier for everyone to use.
For example: http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1129225.ece
But I don’t think I’m obligated to carry a pregnancy to term and cope with the hardships of raising such a child in order to make a statement and contribute to political change.
Certainly not - and in particular, not if the above is your only reason for doing it. But I would hate to think parents are frightened or coerced into abortion, rather than making the decision without feeling pressured into it by scary stories or guilt trips.
FYI”“if I lived in India and a female child would drastically lower my socioeconomic status, I just might do a sex-selective abortion.
Thus helping to ensure the status quo is true for five generations more instead of just for another two or three. Most people want their children to both inhabit a better world than that where their parents grew up, and make the world a better place for future generations. If parents in India are willing to engage in selective abortion, despite a belief it wouldn’t be right in a perfect world, then they’re doing themselves and their future offspring a disservice.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 6:56 pm
If I had the power to cure all of my son’s disabilities, I would do it in a heartbeat. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It is pure PC nonsense to argue against trying to prevent or cure disability on the ground that this would somehow devalue disabled people. The person is just as valuable with or without the disability.
You’re basically saying that a disability is part of a person’s identity, and I suppose it can be. But there’s a huge difference between respecting a person’s choice to remain deaf, for example, rather than undergo surgery at the age of 40, and supporting research to prevent deafness. It goes back to bodily autonomy again.
If I could legally do it, would I have my son euthanized? A thousand times no. Of course not. But that doesn’t change anything I said before.
This comment was written by Lu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 7:25 pm
If “disabled lives are just as rich, fulfilling, and worthwhile,” then isn’t it an enormous waste of money and effort to attempt to prevent or cure disability?
I think that people with moderate and low incomes can have lives as fulfilling as the wealthy, that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t try to become a millionaire if I could.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 7:32 pm
Bean and MT, I think you are basically saying that the burden of caring for disabled people should be spread more evenly, and in principle I generally agree with you — much as we spread the burden of building and maintaining roads, educating children, and so on. And in fact my family does get “help on a regular and substantial basis”: both kids go to school full time, my son gets various therapies and services through the school, and we have an after-school (adult) babysitter four days a week (I work three days a week, the fourth day of babysitting giving me flexibility and a break). We pay for the babysitter ourselves, of course, but everything else comes from your tax dollars and mine. My son’s education costs roughly six times that of a child who receives no special services.
(Question for Robert and RonF, if you’re lurking: if single people shouldn’t have kids because of the burden it places on the rest of us and because it flouts normal evolutionary rules, does the same apply to knowingly having a disabled baby?)
But it is a burden. You can’t make that go away. If it were spread so thin that no one person felt it much (like highway taxes), it would still exist. And I do know that my son is much more severely disabled than most people with Down’s syndrome, but that’s just a matter of degree.
This comment was written by Lu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 7:39 pm
Question for Robert and RonF, if you’re lurking: if single people shouldn’t have kids because of the burden it places on the rest of us and because it flouts normal evolutionary rules, does the same apply to knowingly having a disabled baby
No.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 7:43 pm
Why not, Robert?
This comment was written by Lu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 8:21 pm
You mean, why is it OK to not abort the Down’s Syndrome (or what have you) baby, and not OK for a single woman to decide to get pregnant, even though both burden the community?
The first is a selfless act which invites the community to share in the selflessness. The second is a selfish act, made all the more selfish by the fact that it puts an obligation on the community which the community is by design structured to obviate the necessity for.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 9:11 pm
Robert, you still haven’t explained on the other thread, why a single person’s child is any more of a burden on society than a married person’s child.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 9:24 pm
Because they use more services, because single-parent homes are more likely to be dysfunctional.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 9:29 pm
Because they use more services, because single-parent homes are more likely to be dysfunctional.
Both statements are false.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 9:38 pm
For example, according to an enormous study published in the Lancet (2003) that tracked more than a million children for more than ten years. (Link here.)
Researchers found that single-parented kids were:
twice as likely to develop major mental illness
three (girls) or four (boys) times as likely to develop drug addictions
twice as likely to commit suicide
twice as likely to develop alcoholism
Most tellingly, this study was conducted in Sweden - where social service availability is at pretty much the peak achievable level.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 9:51 pm
[rolleyes] So if a single woman carries a disabled child to term, do the degrees of “selfishness” cancel each other out ?
My head hurts, and not just because I have a cold.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 9:57 pm
For example, single-parent families display a host of increased problems (from this research overview:
* Lone parent households are over twelve times as likely to be receiving income support as couples with dependent children (51% versus 4%). They are 2.5 times as likely to be receiving working families tax credit (24% versus 9%).
* Young people in lone-parent families were 30% more likely than those in two-parent families to report that their parents rarely or never knew where they were.
* Among children aged five to fifteen years in Great Britain, those from lone-parent families were twice as likely to have a mental health problem as those from intact two-parent families (16% versus 8%)
After controlling for other demographic factors, children from lone-parent households were
* 3.3 times more likely to report problems with their academic work, and
* 50% more likely to report difficulties with teachers.
(That falls into the “needing more support at school” category, La Lubu - and taking up a disproportionate share of the teacher’s finite time.)
* In England and Wales during 2000, the sudden infant death rate for babies jointly registered by unmarried parents living at different addresses was over three times greater than for babies born to a married mother and father (0.66 per 1,000 live births as compared with 0.18). Where the birth was registered in the sole name of the mother, the rate of sudden infant death was seven times greater than for those born within marriage (1.27 per 1,000 live births as compared with 0.18).
* At age 33, men from disrupted family backgrounds were twice as likely to be unemployed (14% compared with 7%), and 1.6 times as likely to have experienced more than one bout of unemployment since leaving school (23% compared with 14%).
* Although 20% of all dependent children live in lone-parent families, 70% of young offenders identified by Youth Offending Teams come from lone-parent families.80
* American studies have shown that boys from one-parent homes were twice as likely as those from two-birth-parent families to be incarcerated by the time they reached their early 30s.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2005 at 10:02 pm
For example, from this report drawing on Canadian longitudinal studies:
Numerous studies have examined the impact of single- and two-parent families on children’s developmental outcomes, including measures of academic achievement and social emotional well-being. They have demonstrated that children growing up in single-parent families are more likely to repeat grades, to possess poorer language skills, and to be less healthy than children living in two-parent families. These children are also less likely to get along well with friends and parents than children living in two-parent families
I can keep going. There isn’t exactly a shortage of data.
Bottom line:
Single-parent families have higher levels of dysfunction than two-parent families.
Single-parent families use higher levels of social services than two-parent families.
There is little to no credible dispute on these points. What disputes do exist center around peripheral issues.
You may believe whatever gets you through the day, but single parent families are not functionally equivalent to two-parent families in terms of outcomes and in terms of the social inputs required to get those outcomes.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 4:10 am
I’m fairly certain that both of these things are also true of families with disabled children, for what it’s worth. I don’t see how you can be a utilitarian when it comes to single parents but not one when it comes to disabled people. But it’s a moot point, because I don’t think you really are a utilitarian when it comes to single parents. You don’t believe in abortion, you don’t believe in single parenthood, and you’ll use whatever contradictory arguments seem to work to defend either position.
I don’t have anything coherent to say about this. On the one hand, I don’t think that disabled people will ever be valued and treated with dignity as long as there’s a cultural assumption that the world would be better off if we’d never been born. On the other hand, I’m really loathe to judge the choices of people dealing with scary and difficult dilemmas, and it’s unfair to downplay the difficulties that come with having a severely disabled child. So I don’t know. I do know that I’m getting a little sick of hearing about how disability issues are “side issues” that distract from the “real issue”, whatever that may be. I wish that feminists would be better about recognizing the way in which disability issues are marginalized, since it’s quite similar to the way in which feminist issues have often been depicted as distractions from the important stuff.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 6:40 am
I haven’t read the whole thread in detail, so possibly this question has already been considered, but…Have you considered this question from the point of view of the potential child? I have a varient of autism known as Asperger’s syndrome, which is essentially autism with normal language ability. If you want to know what it’s like, it’s sort of like always using the internet for communication: the language comes through fine, but no non-verbal signals do. It makes social interactions difficult and sometimes painful. It is more or less difficult to live with depending on the social context. In a nerdy, academic family it’s pretty easy to deal with. In a family where most of one’s value was measured by one’s social ability it would be pure hell.
If I found out that I was going to die tonight and had the choice of either being reborn in a family which would value me only for my ability to charm others and interact socially, perhaps because they thought I was valuable only as a potential wife and becoming a wife involves charming a man and (ideally) his family, or having the fetus that would become me be aborted and just being dead, my last act would be to send my potential mother some RU-485. There are worse things than being dead or never being born and one of them is being born to a family that you can never please, no matter what, simply because of who or what you are. So maybe it’s better for a woman who would abort a fetus because it was female, gay, had Down’s, would be fat, or whatever, because she would make the child’s like miserable. Not because she is an awful person or would be an awful mother, but simply because the child would not be able to please her.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 7:53 am
I’m fairly certain that both of these things are also true of families with disabled children, for what it’s worth.
Probably.
The difference is that nobody ever sets out to have a disabled child.
Man gets hit by a truck that jumps the curb, society spends million$ on therapy and assistance, I don’t mind at all.
Man jumps in front of a truck for thrills, and I do.
YMMV.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 8:25 am
I don’t think that people who don’t believe fetuses have worth/value/rights can legitimately that distinction, Bean. People who do think that fetuses have worth/value/rights (even if those rights are in the end less compelling than an adult woman’s) can make that distinction.
But you’re right that the end result is what really matters.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 9:17 am
The difference is that nobody ever sets out to have a disabled child.
I don’t think most single parents set out to be single parents, either. And I don’t think that the data you cite differentiates between those who do, most of whom have probably made some judgements about whether they’re in a position to raise a kid alone, and the much larger number who find themselves in a situation in which they didn’t necessarily want to be.
I don’t think that people who don’t believe fetuses have worth/value/rights can legitimately that distinction, Bean.
I think they can. There will never be genetic testing that will be able to screen out all disabilities, so there will be disabled people for the forseeable future. And it’s really not good for disabled people to be seen as the unfortunate folks who fell through the prenatal screening cracks. If people look at me and think “someday maybe we’ll have good enough prenatal testing that people like that won’t be born,” they’re going to have a hard time seeing me as someone with worth and dignity. It is possible not to value fetuses but to value the disabled people who are born and actually exist in the world.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 10:00 am
There are also those who can see value/worth/rights of all fetuses, but can recognize that at certain points, and for certain reasons, someone else value/worth/rights outweigh those of the fetus.
Well, you’ll need to argue with Mythago (I think it was), then. According to her, that position - which I basically share - is completely untenable.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 10:27 am
No. I am not making that assertion.
I am raising a dichotomy. If you believe that a fetus has no value, then it is illogical/invalid/illegitimate for you to engage in moral navel-gazing about whether it’s OK to abort in this or that or the other circumstance. You’ve have already established as a foundational premise that fetuses have no value - and that they can therefore be treated as you wish. No morality applies to our handling of morally valueless objects.
If you believe that a fetus has some value - then it makes sense for you to be wondering about the moral calculus involved. Since you have stated that you do believe a fetus has moral value, as do I, then you and I (or either of us separately) can have a relevant discussion about whose rights are more important in a particular circumstance, or if it’s OK to abort in a certain circumstance, or what a public policy ought to be, or what have you.
You believe that a fetus has some value. Very well, it is rational for you to balance rights and obligations and all the rest and decide whether a given abortion is appropriate/acceptable or not. Only if you disbelieve in that fetal value does it become logically bizarre for you to wonder about the morality of a particular abortion choice.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 10:41 am
Uh, no. The fetus I’m carrying can be treated as I wish. The one bean, Sally, your spouse, etc. are carrying ?– that’s not in my power. Nor would I want it to be.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 11:12 am
Thus helping to ensure the status quo is true for five generations more instead of just for another two or three.
Monkey Testicle: yes. But if someone really were going to suffer for having a female child (e.g. financially, emotionally, mistreatment by the rest of your family for bearing only female children) I wouldn’t hold it against them for choosing not to fight the status quo through childbirth. There’s a limit to how much we can expect people to do to change society; childbirth and childrearing are past that limit.
I completely agree that people shouldn’t feel forced into unwanted abortions because of medical advice or social values or what-have-you; I’m just equally concerned about the effects on women if you add to their burden of guilt when it comes to abortion.
This comment was written by Linnet.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 11:53 am
Bean, I wasn’t using “you” in the personal sense. If ONE believes that fetuses have no value…etc. Sorry for the confusion.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:00 pm
Robert, the children of single mothers do just as well in school”. You might also want to check out Myths and Facts about fatherlessness”. I find it interesting that in your first link, one of the doctors cited brought up that the issue was not single parents, but quality of parenting. Poor parenting can take place in either single or married homes, with the exact same results. Controlled for income, the children from single parent homes do just as well as their same-income married counterparts.
Why haven’t more studies been done comparing non-poor single parent families where there was no traumatic dysfunction to the child (parent splits before birth, or soon afterward, or single mom went to the sperm bank), with non-poor married families? Because the results would clearly show that the single status of the parent does no harm to children—and that is threatening to the world view of those who insist upon gendered sex roles, women submitting to husbands, and the whole nine yards of b.s.
In any case, before we get too far off track (since you ran away from the original thread that held that particular line of argument, something I’ve noticed is your M.O.), not every pro-choice person believes that a fetus has no value. In fact, very few pro-choice people seem to have that view. Pro-choice people just tend to believe that in the grand scheme of things, the woman, the actual, present person takes precedence over the fetus, the potential person.
Actual. Potential. Ok? So, it is not illogical to take issue with certain reasons for abortion, like aborting because of race or gender. Even if the particular pro-choice person doesn’t assign any value to a fetus, that pro-choice person probably does assign value to actual, present people, and can still find the idea of erasing every particular representation of humanity—-as in genocide, for example—-through abortion, morally repugnant. Or, as has been discussed here, aborting disabled fetuses for that reason. It is an entirely different matter to say “I want an abortion because I simply can’t handle the time or expense of raising a severely disabled child” than to say “disabled fetuses should be aborted because they would only turn into nonproductive citizens, a drain on society”. Or even, “ok, you don’t have to abort your disabled fetus, but since you chose not to abort, screw you! No assistance for your selfishness!”
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:33 pm
La Lubu, your study follows 1500 people for four years. Just one of mine followed a million for more than a decade. The Cornell study is interesting; it ought to be looked at; it is a far outlier in the social science research, which overwhelmingly supports the proposition that single-parent families are worse off. Not a little bit; not it’s a value judgment; overwhelmingly.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 1:04 pm
Sigh. Robert, I am not disputing that drug-addicted single parents in impoverished, neglectful environments do a worse job at raising children than married, middle-class non-dysfunctional homes. What I am disputing is that there is any difference in the outcomes of children raised in single parent homes and married homes, when the other factors have been controlled for. Compare the drug-addicted neglectful single parents with the drug-addicted, neglectful married parents. Compare the loving, involved, supportive single parents with the loving, involved, supportive married parents. Same results.
The reason this matters, is because the focus on marriage as a remedy for some or all of the ills facing single parents is wrong-headed, and produces negative results. I’m not anti-marriage. I’m neutral to marriage. What I am saying is that generally marriage is viewed as a positive, when it should be viewed neutrally. Marriage is not always a positive, or we wouldn’t have the divorce rate that we have in this society.
Think I’m just being contrary? The first link you cited was from an organization dedicated to helping stepfamilies heal wounds—wounds of divorce or trauma from their own family of origin. Obviously, marriage isn’t always a positive, no? It can be. It can also be a negative. In and of itself, marriage is a neutral factor.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:01 pm
Not that I’m anything less than fascinated by Robert’s views on the relative crappiness of single parent families, which I guess it’s possible we’ve all missed the other 50,000 times he’s stated them, but does anyone have anything further to say about the ethics of aborting fetuses that would end up being disabled?
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:14 pm
which overwhelmingly supports the proposition that single-parent families are worse off
In Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s article “Dan Quayle Was Right,” she cited studies showing that children in stepfamilies were worse off, emotionally, than children in single-parent families.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:34 pm
Robert’s idea of pro-choicers not valuing a fetus, disabled or not, is wrongheaded. We all know this- look around at the mothers you know. They valued their pregnancies. They love their kids. Yet a huge percentage of them have had abortions.
I think the pro-choice stance is simple, ethical and practical: sometimes a fetus’ rights are in conflict with the mother’s and maybe her other children’s. More so, perhaps, if it is disabled. The mother, owner of the host body and captain of the family, has the veto. End of story.
My husband’s nephew is severly disabled. He has little or no corpus callosum- I don’t know the name of the condition. His family is Ecuadorean. When he was 11, they came to Florida for three years because this “ableist” society has free special education, even for foreign immigrants. They are very wealthy, and in Ecuador can afford for a fulltime live-in caretaker and a full time live-in maid. He is 17 and can’t walk, eat or go to the bathroom by himself, or talk more than a few words. He’s like a 17 year old 1 year old baby. They love him like crazy. They have support and love from a HUGE extended family. I asked my husband if he would want to go forward with a pregnancy if he knew the baby would be like his nephew, and he said absolutely not. I have never asked his sister the same question of course, but I wonder. The question wouldn’t be: do you wish he weren’t here? The question would be: if your daughter had to choose between living with having had an abortion and a lifetime of a severly disabled person for her and her other children to deal with, which would you want her to choose? And how can we be surprised when women are practical and protective of themselves and their other children and decide they’s rather deal with the guilt than deal with all that raising a very disabled child entails?
This comment was written by Elena.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 4:21 pm
I find the discussion over whether or not abortion for Reason X should be allowed tiring; obviously, no one in the pro-right-to-an-abortion (I am not using the term “pro-choice” for reasons that will become obvious) community is going to argue that a woman should ever be prevented from getting an abortion if she so chooses.
So, really, the actual policy question in here is not whether or not abortion should be restricted.
The question, as I alluded to before (comment#18), and as a few other people have touched on, is going to be whether or not the government should prevent selecctive abortions by banning parents from having the information needed to make a selection.
Those who believe we should do so are, in my opinion, hypocrites; they may be pro-abortion-rights, but they are not truly pro-choice nor do they actually believe that people should be given control over their own bodies.
paul writes (#49):
It would be much harder to enforce a ban on sex-selection abortions [i.e., than enforcing a ban on workplace discrimination based on race], but that doesn’t mean it’s a philosophically untenable idea.
It’s not philosophically untenable, but it does mean that the person advocating such a policy really doesn’t value bodily autonomy all that much, and is really not pro-choice.
A better comparison than workplace discrimination would be discrimination in one’s sex life. In such a case, bodily autonomy certainly implies the right to discriminate based on race. (That is, a person who wants to only have sex with people of a certain race has the right to refuse to have sex with anyone else).
Also, this statement (paul, #49):
OK, now apply that same reasoning to the freedom of business large and small to decide which customers they want to engage in transactions with, or which potential employees they should hire and retain (all things I think most of us are abstractly in favor of).
Does not strike me as true at all of most of the people who write for/comment on this blog.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 4:48 pm
By the way, in case it isn’t clear, the reason I used the term “pro-right-to-an-abortion” rather than “pro-choice” is so as to include the people who favor abortion rights but who believe that the parents’ access to information on their fetus ought to be restricted by law to prevent them from being able to use abortion for selection; such people are not truly pro-choice, but they are one side of the debate between whether or not prenatal tsting should be restricted, so I used a term that included them.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 8:51 pm
I guess I find the whole question of banning selective abortion, or for that matter banning prenatal testing, kind of a distraction. Neither of those things is going to happen, at least not in the U.S. There’s no political will to make it happen, except from a tiny segment of the disability rights community, who don’t count for anything to anyone with power. What is much more likely, actually, is that the reverse will happen. In a post-Roe America, I think we’re likely to see a lot of anti-choice laws that make a specific exemption for fetuses that would have disabilities. An awful lot of basically anti-choice people believe that “innocent” parents should be protected from the pain of having to raise defective children. Anti-abortion laws with “health of the child” exemptions are my absolute nightmare scenario, from a disability rights perspective, and obviously that’s a grim prospect from a pro-choice perspective as well.
I’m never going to be crazy about the idea of aborting fetuses because they’ll have Down’s Syndrome. But to me, the solution to this lies in the culture, not in legislation. If parents know that having a kid with Down’s won’t be a catastrophe for the kid or for their family, they’re much more likely to go through with the pregnancy. The solution is to improve services, treatment, and education. On the other hand, there’s no constitutional right not to feel guilty, and I’m not going to keep quiet about the fact that I think parents who abort disabled fetuses hurt all disabled people. It is not just a personal decision. It’s not just an exercise of personal autonomy. It is those things, which is why I have trouble condemning it. But it also contributes to the idea that disability is so tragic and horrible and burdensome that disabled people should be prevented from existing.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2005 at 9:58 pm
There’s no political will to make it happen
There’s political will against it. People are always pro-choice when it comes to abortions they think they might need.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 2:40 am
Right. It’s partly that many people think they would want to abort a fetus that would have disabilities, and it’s partly that parents who abort for that reason are conceived of as innocent victims, and a lot of the anti-choice impulse is about punishing single women for being sexually active.
So can we stop pretending that the all-powerful disability-rights cabal is going to trample on your sacred rights? That’s a convenient frame for people who don’t want to engage with critiques of selective abortion, but it doesn’t have any basis in reality.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 3:29 am
This is Linnet quoting Monkey Wrench
I have a more fundamental objection. I don’t believe that giving birth to, and raising, any child, will make any difference to your society. Individuals deciding to bring girl children to term doesn’t stop misogyny; individuals deciding to bring Down’s Syndrome pregnancies to term won’t change our society’s attitudes to, or resources for, people with Down’s Syndrome.
This comment was written by reddecca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 8:10 am
individuals deciding to bring Down’s Syndrome pregnancies to term won’t change our society’s attitudes to, or resources for, people with Down’s Syndrome.
I don’t agree with this. If the default solution to the problem of Down’s Syndrome is to prevent people with Down’s Syndrome from existing, then there’s no reason to put resources into improving the lives and opportunities of people who have Down’s. We don’t fund research into rare conditions: I can tell you that as someone who has one. (And since there will probably be class bias in who gets prenatal testing, it’ll probably also be true that disabled people will increasingly come from poor families, which is to say people with very little political clout. People with cognitive disabilities have benefited quite a bit from having various Kennedys advocating for better treatment and services.) If people who have kids with Down’s are seen to have made a choice, and if it’s seen to be a freakish choice that normal people would not make, then it’s much easier to say that they’re responsible for dealing with the consequences of their choices and that they shouldn’t expect the government to help. And in general, if disabled people are seen as merely the sum of their disabilities, rather than people with both potential and impairments, then they’re not going to be valued by society. Every time someone hears about a relative, a neighbor, or a person in the newspaper deciding to abort a fetus because they decided that fetus’s future disabilities outweighed its potential, that sends a message about how you should think of all disabled people.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 8:41 am
I read Lu’s story, and I know that I couldn’t handle it. And if I knew my pregnancy would lead to a child that severely disabled, I’d probably chose to abort. And offering the explaination that things would be better if there was more support for families with severely disabled kids doesn’t change anything for Lu or people like her right now. And it doesn’t change anything for people who know they can’t handle such a situtation. Condemning them might make someone feel better, but it’s rather odd, considering the fact that we’ve already acknowledged that there is little support for parents like Lu. And forget it if you’re poor and can’t even affrod the time or money to get the meager resources out there.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 8:49 am
Linnet:
There’s a limit to how much we can expect people to do to change society; childbirth and childrearing are past that limit.
Why? Almost all people want their kids to inhabit a better world, and to influence society, but few are willing to follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion: childbirth itself is a catalyst for change.
I completely agree that people shouldn’t feel forced into unwanted abortions because of medical advice or social values or what-have-you; I’m just equally concerned about the effects on women if you add to their burden of guilt when it comes to abortion.
It’s one thing to affirm the right to chose, but quite another to value that choice so much you refuse to offer up anything that calls it into question.
Reddecca:
I have a more fundamental objection. I don’t believe that giving birth to, and raising, any child, will make any difference to your society. Individuals deciding to bring girl children to term doesn’t stop misogyny; individuals deciding to bring Down’s Syndrome pregnancies to term won’t change our society’s attitudes to, or resources for, people with Down’s Syndrome.
I profoundly disagree. Society isn’t some great unchanging monolith that stands guard over successive generations; it’s the people alive now, and the people yet to be. When even one person is born, that individual becomes part of the social fabric, either enriching it through his acts or causing it to decay. When even one Indian parent says, “I’m going against social convention to knowingly bring a girl into this world,” people see that and have to deal with its implications whenever they look upon the child. She exists because her parents decided she was of as much value as a boy would have been.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 8:50 am
Lu’s child’s disability occurred after birth and couldn’t have been prevented by selective abortion. So if you really think you couldn’t handle being in her situation, you shouldn’t have children. There is really no way to ensure that you won’t have a disabled child. That risk is part of being a parent.
As I said, people who are poor have less access to prenatal testing and are likely to be left high and dry when wealthier people opt out of having disabled kids.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:07 am
If people who have kids with Down’s are seen to have made a choice, and if it’s seen to be a freakish choice that normal people would not make, then it’s much easier to say that they’re responsible for dealing with the consequences of their choices and that they shouldn’t expect the government to help.
This is exactly what I see in mainstream U.S. culture. There seems to be a resentment against parents who didn’t abort fetuses with Down’s; there’s this idea that “abortion is legal, so why didn’t you have one?” It’s the same attitude expressed towards single mothers, with the same rationalization—the cult of individualism that says we are only responsible for ourselves, and have no obligations to the society as a whole that sustains us (other than obeying the law and going to war, natch). People with disabilities are an uncomfortable reminder of human frailty and mortality, and the fact that, like it or not, we are all dependent upon the work of others to get by. I see parallels with how the disabled and the elderly are disrespected and segregated in this society.
When I was pregnant, I was looked at strangely by the medical staff for not wanting prenatal tests for disabilities; my feeling was that since I wasn’t going to abort anyway, why incur the risk of miscarriage? But there was definitely this feeling that I had crossed a boundary. And I think that’s sad. Full disclosure here: my daughter was an extreme preemie, but ended up not being disabled (although it remains to be seen if she has any learning disabilities that may affect her processing—she’s just started kindergarten). She was at high risk though, and required extensive medical intervention and three years of therapy to bring her up to speed. She’s probably had over a million-and-a-half worth of medical care over her young life. When she was in the NICU, I spent pretty much all my time there, coming home only to eat, shower and sleep (I live a few blocks from the hospital, so it was pretty easy to be in the NICU all the time). I’d eat my dinners in front of the computer, researching her conditions; educating myself and learning the lingo—-you get more respect and information from medical personnel if you can get up on their terminology. And I found plenty of articles in medical journals, written by physicians, lamenting the expense of caring for preemies, especially since the majority of them were going to end up disabled. It’s also about a price tag. Some lives are literally valued less than others.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:44 am
Lu’s child’s disability occurred after birth and couldn’t have been prevented by selective abortion. So if you really think you couldn’t handle being in her situation, you shouldn’t have children. There is really no way to ensure that you won’t have a disabled child. That risk is part of being a parent.
Yes, but the effects–having to cope with a situation you can’t handle–are the same. My point was that if she–or anyone else–knew their fetus was going to develop a disability that would be as severe as she described, I wouldn’t waste my breath condemning her for choosing abortion. Telling people that’s the way it is and don’t have children if you can’t handle it doesn’t change anything, any more than telling them that things would be better for them if only they had more support.
As I said, people who are poor have less access to prenatal testing and are likely to be left high and dry when wealthier people opt out of having disabled kids.
I disagree. Wealthy people who live in wealthy towns and have the power to advocate for and organize funding for the resources in their towns and schools for their kids will not have much of an effect on the lives of poor people. It isn’t just a question of resources, it’s a question of working a night shift or staying home with your disabled kid who may be taken away from you if you work the night shift because it would be seen as neglectful. Or you could pay a caregiver, but who has the money? Being poor means you can’t afford the time, let alone the money, to even arrange for these resources.
My point wasn’t that we’re better off without disabled people, but that judging someone for terminating such a pregnancy isn’t going to help. It’s your right to make those judgements, but until things to change for families with severely disabled kids, judging them won’t help. People make choices based on the current situation and the resources available to them.
As for me not having children–I don’t have them and I don’t want them–mainly because I couldn’t handle having kids, period. Maybe I’ve been rude, and if I was, I apologize. While I realize that you aren’t anti-choice, I’ve run into a lot of judgements for my choices. Too many women who’ve had abortions are expected to somehow justify them and apologize for them, no matter what the situation. If I projected my great irritation and my extensive experience on the receiving end of this on you, I apologize.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 10:24 am
My point was that if she”“or anyone else”“knew their fetus was going to develop a disability that would be as severe as she described, I wouldn’t waste my breath condemning her for choosing abortion.
I’m not condemning anyone. I’m saying that their choices have consequences for real, born disabled people. I’m not sure why you don’t think you’re wasting your breath telling me to shut up about that.
Wealthy people who live in wealthy towns and have the power to advocate for and organize funding for the resources in their towns and schools for their kids will not have much of an effect on the lives of poor people.
Actually, a lot of important policy decisions about disability are made at the state and federal level. Have you been following the Florida medicaid story? And before you say that only poor people are affected, I’d point out that a lot of disabled adults from middle-class families receive Medicaid.
My grandparents, a T.V. repairman and a receptionist, were centrally involved in the fight to get better services for profoundly cognitively disabled people in their state, because my uncle was severely brain damaged at birth. They kept hitting brick walls until a powerful politician had a child with a cognitive disability. Then, magically, doors began to open. He knew how to work the system, and people with power were more likely to empathize with one of their own.
My uncle, who is 53, now lives in a pretty fabulous group home, which is funded by a variety of state and federal programs. My grandmother lives off of her social security check and could neither afford to pay for a decent placement nor take care of him herself, because of her own disabilities. The state is constantly talking about cutting its very expensive services for the disabled, and I honestly don’t know what my family would do if that happened. And you’d better believe that my grandmother doesn’t rate very high on her state’s political radar. (The rest of my family lives out of state and doesn’t rate at all.) So I’m actually glad that there are some people with money and power who think they have a stake in this, too.
Maybe that’s selfish. But that’s where I’m coming from.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 10:32 am
While I realize that you aren’t anti-choice, I’ve run into a lot of judgements for my choices
Yeah, well, I’ve run into judgements for my existence. During all the discussions about Hurricane Katrina, I pointed out that my disability would prevent me from following the escape plans that right-wingers advocated, and at least one person basically said that was survival of the fittest. And some of the utilitarian arguments about Terri Schiavo came off the same way. So you’re not the only person who’s emotionally invested here. But I should apologize, too, because I really am aware how tough it is to raise seriously disabled kids, and I don’t mean to imply that there’s anything evil about people who don’t think they can handle it.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 3:24 pm
I’m saying that their choices have consequences for real, born disabled people.
But isn’t this true of Amp’s plan to put folic acid in the water supply? It’s not abortion, but it suggests that disabled people shouldn’t even be born.
So if you really think you couldn’t handle being in her situation, you shouldn’t have children
Wanting to reduce the odds of being in that situation is not the same as coping with the situation once it’s thrust on you. I don’t think anybody would tell a single person, wishing to marry, “You should go marry somebody in a persistent vegetative state, because if you couldn’t handle that, you shouldn’t marry–what if your spouse had an accident?”
The real, pernicious problem is the attitude that disabilities make life not worth living, and that there is something dumb, or even morally wrong, about choosing to have a child who will be disabled.
La Lubu is spot-on about the price tag we attach to lives. I’d go farther and say that the disdain for parents of disabled children is partly because those children are not expected to succeed; your Down’s Syndrome child will not grow up to go to Harvard or run a Fortune 500 company, so what’s the point?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Monkey Wrench
This analysis flies in the face of both the history of India, and the present. Misogynist societies around the world have existed quite well knowing that roughly ever other pregnancy is going to be a girl. The ability to sex select pregnancies is relatively recent, and does very
Secondly it’s not like no girls are being born in India and China, and having a girl does not mean that people have to deal with any implications at all about the value, it just means people are having a girl.
Sex selective abortions are a symptom, not a cause of a misogynist society. The only way we can change any misogynist society is by organising together.
All these arguments apply to any effort to cure, or lessen an impairment, or to prevent them happening in the first place.
People who have kids with Down’s do often make a choice now, that’s a fact of the ability to do pre-natal testing. The rest doesn’t necessarily follow. And more individuals choosing to bring the pregnancy doesn’t change the fact they made a choice.
I agree and disagree with this. I that disabled people are not valued by society, and this must change. But an equal large problem is that capitalism does thrive on us all being as similar as possible, and therefore the resources we could give to making sure impairment is not a disability are not used in that way. I think it’s important to acknowledge that you can value someone in a wheelchair all you want, but unless every space where they live is accessible then that valuing won’t go very far.
But I don’t think that giving birth to a Down’s Syndrome baby changes any of this in any way. If we are going to change it, it does have to be through collective action.
But that’s your framing of their decision. When someone terminates a pregnancy for reasons other than disability, we don’t assume that those decisions had anything to do with its potential. The decision to terminate a Down’s Syndrome baby could be an honest assessment of a woman’s resources, and have nothing to do with a judgement about potential. There have been other places where people have assumed that they can see inside the head of women terminating pregnancies because of fetal abnormalities, and described the decision in derogatory ways (bean described women aborting abnormal fetuses as doing it because they were not good enough). I find that disturbing, and anti-woman.
This comment was written by reddecca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 4:47 pm
I’m not sure why you don’t think you’re wasting your breath telling me to shut up about that.
I never said any such thing. I said I wouldn’t waste my breath condmening someone who knew their pregnancy would result in a child as severely disabled as Lu’s and chose to abort, considering how crappy a system we’ve got. I don’t think it’s effective, but I never told you to shut up about it–I said it was your perogative to do just that.
Yes, it is good that wealthy people have a stake in this. But resources are often distributed unevenly, and even with the best resources, the poor do not have the same options the wealthy or even the middle class have. They cannot take leave from work to care for a severely disabled child, they do not have jobs and positions where they get much understanding if they need a flexible schedule for this. Leave the child alone and work a shift? You could be brought up on charges of neglect. So you get to chose between working and feeding your family, or losing one of your kids. These problems already exist for poor people with able-bodied kids; they increase tenfold once they have a severely disabled child.
I absoloutely agree that with more support more people would be likely to carry pregnancies of severely disabled children to term. But the support isn’t there yet–and that lack of support is the crux of the problem in my opinion. I also agree with La Lubu and Mythago’s point that the philosophy that the disabled don’t lead lives worth living is a big factor. I think that plays a large part of the lack of will behind proving support to families who have severely disabled kids. I see this lack of support and this pseudo-Darwinian idea that ther are “better” things for us to use our resources on as the biggest problem.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 4:55 pm
But isn’t this true of Amp’s plan to put folic acid in the water supply? It’s not abortion, but it suggests that disabled people shouldn’t even be born.
Ok, see, this really weirds me out, and I’m trying to articulate why. I have a disability. I’d rather not have the disability, and if they could come up with something to fix it, that would be great. But even with the disability, I think I’ve still got things to offer the world. It seems very different to me to say “Sally would have been better off if she didn’t have the disability” than to say “because Sally has the disability, she would have been better off not existing.” The argument to abort disabled fetuses seems to suggest that our disabilities outweigh every other thing about us, that our potential is completely eclipsed by our impairments. I guess I really don’t understand how people could say that fixing our impairments is the same as preventing us from existing. Maybe that’s because I’m applying this to my situation, and I’m not cognitively impaired. Maybe if I were taking as the typical scenario someone like my uncle, it would make more sense to me. Maybe I’d have an easier time seeing why people seem to think that he would basically be a completely different person if he didn’t have impairments, so much that it would be the same as the person he is now never having been born. But I guess that, even when I think about my profoundly brain-damaged uncle, I don’t think that.
Wanting to reduce the odds of being in that situation is not the same as coping with the situation once it’s thrust on you.
That’s true. But a whole lot of people here seem to think that a good argument for aborting disabled fetuses is that they hear about parents of disabled children and think that they literally couldn’t do that. And if they really couldn’t, that’s a big problem if they have or plan to have children. If what they mean is that they really don’t want to, but could if they had to, that’s a different issue. But people don’t say that, because it doesn’t sound as compelling.
The real, pernicious problem is the attitude that disabilities make life not worth living, and that there is something dumb, or even morally wrong, about choosing to have a child who will be disabled.
You don’t think that conversations like this one add to that attitude? I mean, don’t you get a pretty different idea about parenting a kid with Down Syndrome from, say, Sarahlynn’s blog than you do from this discussion?
(I don’t know if Sarahlynn reads this blog. If so, sorry to drag you in if you didn’t want to be dragged. And amp, feel free to delete it if she says she doesn’t want the link.)
I’d go farther and say that the disdain for parents of disabled children is partly because those children are not expected to succeed; your Down’s Syndrome child will not grow up to go to Harvard or run a Fortune 500 company, so what’s the point?
Do you think that’s a common attitude across the board, or just among hyper-achieving upper-middle-class parents? I think a lot of parents worry that:
1. They won’t be able to afford their kids’ medical bills, even if they have insurance, which is a fair concern. 10% of the cost of heart surgery is really fucking expensive. (There’s an article about this in today’s New York Times, which is nice, because the financial burden on *insured* sick people is generally ignored by the media.)
2. They won’t be able to devote enough attention or resources to their other kids.
3. Their child will never be independent, and they’ll be burdened with the kid’s care into old age. After they die, who knows what will happen? Siblings, who will probably have their own families to worry about, might be drafted to care for the disabled child after the parents die. This will be a constant source of anxiety.
Those are all completely legitimate concerns and things that desperately need to be addressed. And while I know that you’ll say they should be addressed, I’ll just point out that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of discussion of them in the feminist or lefty blogosphere. Being allowed to abort disabled fetuses is a real issue, a feminist issue, an issue about people who matter. Disabled people being able to have decent lives is not quite so central. And honestly, I’d be a lot less squicked by this discussion if I thought people were as passionate about fighting the Florida Medicaid thing, to mention just one example, as they are about defending the practice of aborting disabled fetuses.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:05 pm
I find that disturbing, and anti-woman.
Yeah, you know, you’ve figured me out. That’s actually my whole motivation. Deep down, I just really, really hate women.
I’m going to take a breather, because as I have said, I am not emotionally neutral here, and this is starting to feel a little bit like defending my very existence.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Red:
This analysis flies in the face of both the history of India, and the present. Misogynist societies around the world have existed quite well knowing that roughly ever other pregnancy is going to be a girl. The ability to sex select pregnancies is relatively recent, and does very
Before sex selection existed, there was the option of “exposure” - a choice many people made.
Secondly it’s not like no girls are being born in India and China, and having a girl does not mean that people have to deal with any implications at all about the value, it just means people are having a girl.
You don’t think people who have girls in India, and especially in China, deal with the implications all the time?
Here’s a bit of info from the trusty CIA World fact book on India:
Now let’s take a look at China:
Contrast that with the sex ratio in the US:
…Canada…
…and France.
The implications are pretty clear: at birth, there’s roughly 1.05 males to every female regardless of country. It’s as the population ages that you can see the effects of “exposure” and misogyny. Young women and men are about one to one in countries without a tradition of girl-killing, and the former far outnumber men - women naturally live longer - among senior populations. Not so in China or India. The ’selecting’ must be outrageous to make even a minor statistic difference in countries with over a billion people each - and this is a major difference. Look at the sex ratio for older people.
No, there are social implications attached to having and keeping girls in India or China. And these implications are well enough understood that a lot of people choose not to have or raise girls.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:23 pm
Sally:
I’m going to take a breather, because as I have said, I am not emotionally neutral here, and this is starting to feel a little bit like defending my very existence.
I know the feeling.
This comment was written by Monkey Testicle.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:26 pm
I’d go farther and say that the disdain for parents of disabled children is partly because those children are not expected to succeed; your Down’s Syndrome child will not grow up to go to Harvard or run a Fortune 500 company, so what’s the point?
Do you think that’s a common attitude across the board, or just among hyper-achieving upper-middle-class parents?
I’d say that attitude is reflected in the actions of policymakers who are increasingly voting in favor of harsh cutbacks in services to the disabled and their families. It’s not necessarily about having a child go to Harvard or run a Fortune 500 company (I assumed that was a little bit of exaggeration), but it is definitely about whether that child is or is not going to be a taxpaying, self-supporting citizen.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Take as long as you need, Sally. I’m sorry if I was part of the reason why you feel you needed to defend your existence. If you want to keep talking about it more privately, you can email me at pmac430@yahoo.com. Or if you choose to do it publicly here after a breather and answered/rebutted anything I said here, feel free to ping me via email.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 6:37 pm
It seems very different to me to say “Sally would have been better off if she didn’t have the disability” than to say “because Sally has the disability, she would have been better off not existing.”
Yes, I see your point.
If what they mean is that they really don’t want to, but could if they had to, that’s a different issue. But people don’t say that, because it doesn’t sound as compelling.
I don’t think it’s so much that they’re trying to be ‘compelling,’ as that we live in a world where it is not okay for women to say that they just don’t want to. That’s why you get arguments (having nothing to do with disabililty) where a woman will say “I can’t afford another baby” and anti-choicers will start pointing to support resources or analyzing her financial situation. Perhaps it is true that the woman really, truly wants the child but cannot afford it. It could also be true that the child would be a financial strain, but a bearable one, and it’s a strain the woman doesn’t want. But it’s not okay for her to say “Look, if I have another kid, the children I do have can kiss their college funds goodbye.”
Do you think that’s a common attitude across the board
I doubt it’s much on the minds of people who would never dream of their kids going to Harvard, and I certainly don’t believe it’s the only (or even the primary) reason someone might abort a disabled fetus. I was referring more to societal attitudes towards disabled children in a materialistic society; they’re not “useful”, therefore what’s the point? (Please let me reiterate that I don’t feel this way, at all, about the disabled.)
Sarah, I don’t think that dragging this topic into the open increases ignorant attitudes about the disabled–it gets people to talk, and it means that those who are disabled, or have disabled children, have a chance to speak up where their voices might have been overlooked.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 8:57 pm
Almost all people want their kids to inhabit a better world, and to influence society, but few are willing to follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion: childbirth itself is a catalyst for change.
…yeah. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people being reluctant to use their reproductive processes as a catalyst for change. Childbirth is intimate and it’s arduous and the idea that it should be done for a Cause of any kind is one that I have deep moral objections to.
It’s one thing to affirm the right to chose, but quite another to value that choice so much you refuse to offer up anything that calls it into question.
I refuse to accept the moral judgments made by outsiders about that choice as having any value or validity, yes.
This comment was written by Linnet.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 10:28 pm
What Linnet said. Why should a woman be somehow compelled to use her womb to advance some kind of social agenda if she doesn’t want to? Why must women be called upon to sacrifice in the name of some nebulous and vague social gain many years in the future? To use the female-infanticide or sex-selective abortion analogy: If a woman faces ill-treatment for bearing a daughter, why should she martyr herself for the cause? Is her wanting to be treated well and gain status in her society selfish? Should she welcome her beatings in the name of the Holy Cause?
I can’t help but note that it appears to be WOMEN, once again, who are being called upon to be selfless and self-sacrificing. Why not make it mandatory that fathers provide 50% of all care for disabled babies (or any babies) born? Why not demand that fathers also advocate for disabled children? And so forth.
This comment was written by Crystal.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2005 at 10:37 pm
Why must women be called upon to sacrifice in the name of some nebulous and vague social gain many years in the future?
Uh. Because that’s what adult humans do?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 12:04 am
Sally I’m sorry you feel your existance is under attack. I agree with your list of the main factors that people consider when it comes to whether or not to continue a pregnancy that has an impairment, or has a risk of impairment. Certainly it’s very accurate for the only person I know who has ever had to make a choice relating to these issues.
What I was trying to say, is that I don’t think that’s what the argument is about, and I don’t think that’s the decision that people are making. Just like I don’t think when someone has an abortion for any other reason it’s a statement about the potential of the fetus, but a decision the woman makes about her life. We trust women to make moral, or the right, decisions when it comes to terminating pregnancy, I believe that they can and do this when the issues involve include the risk of impairment.
Monkey Wrench:
I wasn’t arguing with that at all, I’m well aware of that. What I was disagreeing with was whether this was a symptom or a cause of misogynistic society, and whether not sex selecting would make society any less misogynist. I believe that no individual action by any oppressed people can end that opression, it is only by coming together and organising collectively that we can make a difference. Rather than finger pointing at the individual people who make a decision, we need to change a society so they don’t need to make those decisions.
This comment was written by reddecca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 12:34 am
Autonomy has its costs, it may often or even usually reflect societal attitudes that are painful, but it’s the best of any alternative I can imagine. As ableist as society is now, it has become a lot more accepting of disabled people within the last two generations, and I believe that this acceptance has resulted from an appreciation of the autonomy and rights of all people, whatever inherent limitations we ascribe to their fitness or ability to exercise them. Certainly this is true of the mentally ill. This is why I don’t think it advances argumentation to take the life decisions of third parties personally as a statement about the worth of an entire class. On the other side, I think it’s too much to ask individuals to assume a burden they aren’t equipped for in order to facilitate social change, and I fear that taking their decisions personally can easily slide into support for curtailing their freedom to make those decisions. This is basically what the pro-life movement is about, it was clearly in evidence in the debate over Terri Schiavo’s fate and, literally, it is what society required of women prior to the legalization of abortion. I also think this position is perilous for any group that can be marginalized by society as a whole, “for the good of the majority,” including the disabled. If you can see the logic of saying that couples should not undergo abortion in order to boost the standing of the disabled, is it so far out to imagine someone saying that it’s better not to honor the autonomy of the disabled when it comes to the expenditure of resources, in order to boost the chances of the class of normal people? Don’t many people already say this when it comes to the EHA, that boosting the rights of the disabled takes away from the able bodied in the classroom?
A person making a decision to terminate a pregnancy ex ante rarely has an understanding of what exactly caring for a disabled child will entail — they are given a range of possibilities from mildly to severely alarming. Perhaps some are making a decision out of personal disdain for disabled people generally, but it is more likely they are making a decision based on what they believe are the too high social costs of having and caring for a hypothetical disabled child that has characteristics they can barely imagine, and whose disposition has yet to be proven as sunny and loving or what have you. In short, no one is saying that they plan to abort Ms. Bauer’s daughter or someone with her specific character traits and achievements.
I believe that the caculus of many such potential parents is that they don’t want to be bad parents of any child, disabled or no, and they don’t want to expend or don’t believe they have the resources in either time or money to be good parents to the disabled child or perhaps to their other non-disabled children at the same time. And this assumes that they don’t have justification, as they may indeed sometimes have, to believe that they are alleviating suffering (e.g., where a life will be very short and very painful).
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 2:14 am
Bean I agree with almost everything you said. There is only one distinction I would make, and it’s a subtle one.
I don’t think that the problem is the choices people make, but the reasons people feel they have to make those choices. The hard work doesn’t just need to be done by those who are pregnant (or making choices about what to do about pressing charges), but by all of us (I also remain unconvinced that aborting a down’s syndrome baby has any wider implications).
I have to admit that here in New Zealand the idea that the pro-choice movement could hold anyone or anything to ransom is rather ridiculous, more’s the pity. So I think a lot of these issues have different resonance here (we also have a much better, but still nowhere near good enough, social welfare system).
This comment was written by reddecca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 6:16 am
“I don’t think that the problem is the choices people make, but the reasons people feel they have to make those choices. The hard work doesn’t just need to be done by those who are pregnant (or making choices about what to do about pressing charges), but by all of us.”
Yes, thank you for stating it so simply: singling out the choices pregnant women make reflects the larger societal problem — that the disabled are basically the responsibility of their parents and none of the rest of us.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 7:10 am
I think there are a lot of things that would make change a lot faster if people did the hard work involved. I won’t condemn individuals for choosing to take the easy route … but I also don’t think that not condeming individuals equates to not condemning a larger-standing “norm” or not discussing the implications of the “easy” choices.
But it is disingenuous to condemn women for making choices you don’t like when they’ve got no support to make different ones.
And no one has told you to sit quietly by and not say anything.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 7:16 am
Sally and La Labu, thank you for articulating so ably what I wanted to say about this article and couldn’t express anywhere near as well as you did. Maybe you should get together and co-author a follow-up piece!
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 3:55 pm
Sarah, I don’t think that dragging this topic into the open increases ignorant attitudes about the disabled”“it gets people to talk, and it means that those who are disabled, or have disabled children, have a chance to speak up where their voices might have been overlooked.
Are you serious? Because this discussion seems to me to be one of the most disability-hating things I’ve read in ages. Except for me, disabled people are present on this thread only as burdens. We’re only tragedies to be prevented. We have heard many, many stories about why people might want to abort a fetus that would be disabled, but not the slightest hint about why a parent might want to bring such a terrible burden into the world, let alone why such a person might want to exist. People have repeatedly rhetorically linked the act of curing disabilities, which almost everyone takes to be a good thing, with the act of destroying disabled fetuses. How can you not think that people are going to come away from this thread thinking of disabled people, as a class, as burdens on their families or society? And it’s not as if this blog is chock full of discussions of disability that would give you any other impression. There’s not even a category for disability to file the post in: it’s under “abortion and reproductive rights” and “fat, fat and more fat.”
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
OK, Sally says there is no discussion of health care for poor individuals and for the disabled under/uninsured in the lefty press, blogosphere, etc. Not so. In my state of Misery (Missouri), the jackass Republican gov. and legislature has kicked special-needs kids and disabled adults off Medicaid, and aims to stop all Medicaid by 2007. This has gotten lots of discussion in the local blogosphere, in the local newspapers, etc.
Forget disabled for a second. It is a rational choice for women to abort ANY pregnancy simply because there is little societal support for children and for mothers. No affordable high-quality daycare. Increasingly, no insurance or no affordable health care insurance. Mommy-tracking. Earning 67 cents for every male dollar.
Now, just add severe disability to the mix. In addition to the no daycare, etc, listed above, add: No respite care for stay at home moms. No insurance, because the state won’t support Medicaid and you have maxed out the insurance for the child. No career. High likelihood that husband or significant other will tire of the constant stress of severely disabled child, and abandon you, with the upshot that you are a currently unemployed (and haven’t had a job for a while) woman with no health insurance and a black mark against you for being a single mom of a kid whose needs are likely to cause you to have work absences. Moderate likelihood that other children in the family will have behavioral problems related to family stress and relative neglect of nondisabled members. Substantial likelihood of bankruptcy due to medical debt, loss of house and other assets. Inability to assist other children in getting college educations. Realization that society doesn’t care jackshit for disabled OR for abled children, since if this were a child-favoring society, there would be universal health insurance/care, free or cheap child care, respite care by trained developmental professionals, free college for the poor, etc.
It is hardly surprising if some women decide that the rational option is to not bear a severely disabled child if they know the diagnosis prenatally.
I don’t buy the argument that upper-class and middle-class people need to be at risk for bearing severely disabled children in order to get political action. They already ARE at risk, since few disorders are diagnosable prenatally or are genetic in origin, and squat has happened to take the burden off individual women’s shoulders and distribute it among the rest of society.
This comment was written by NancyP.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 5:36 pm
OK, Sally says there is no discussion of health care for poor individuals and for the disabled under/uninsured in the lefty press, blogosphere, etc. Not so. In my state of Misery (Missouri), the jackass Republican gov. and legislature has kicked special-needs kids and disabled adults off Medicaid, and aims to stop all Medicaid by 2007. This has gotten lots of discussion in the local blogosphere, in the local newspapers, etc.
That’s good to hear. I mostly read feminist blogs, and I can’t think of a single one that covers disability even occasionally. Maybe I’m reading the wrong ones.
They already ARE at risk, since few disorders are diagnosable prenatally or are genetic in origin, and squat has happened to take the burden off individual women’s shoulders and distribute it among the rest of society.
Well, what do I know, but it seems to me that more than squat has happened. When my uncle was a child, my grandparents had two options: take care of him at home, with literally no help, or send him to the incredibly grim state mental hospital. (He spent some time there. My grandparents pulled him out because it was clear he was being beaten.) I don’t even know if the concept of a group home existed. I know for a fact that the agency that runs the group home in which he now lives didn’t, because my grandparents helped found it, as I said, with the help of a powerful politician who also had a disabled child. The actual house in which he lives, which is on a nice, lower-middle-class residential street, was purchased and turned into a home for disabled adults about ten years ago. Before that, he lived in a separate “cottage” in a residential facility.
Things are very bad now. But they are much, much better than they were in the ’50s.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
Sally,
You might find Rivka’s blog Respectful of Otters interesting. She doesn’t update as frequently as other bloggers, but she has some truly stunning posts about feminism and disabilities. One of the best posts/essays I’ve ever read regarding disability rights and being pro-choice is Ambivalence.
(The second like isn’t showing up in preview, but I can;t find anything wrong with it. I hope it works.)
This comment was written by Jenny K.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 8:51 pm
Sally I think one of the ways we have been talking at cross-purposes is that I do not believe that if someone has an abortion for fetal abnormality that most of the time that has anything to do with the potential of the fetus. I hope I didn’t come across as believing that that’s because I don’t believe those with disabilities don’t have potential. It’s because I think the list you gave, rather than the ideas about potential, are what people actually think about when they make the decision to abort fetuses.
The only person I know who had to deal with anything like this decided to have an abortion because one of her children was really sick with a heriditary disease and she didn’t think she could cope if she had another child who got sick (there was no testing pre-natally for this disease).
I don’t think that woman was making any statement about the value of her living child’s life, or the potential of the child she didn’t have.
I do love that Barbara Ehrenreich article that Rivka linked to (I love most things she writes), and think she makes a really important point, which is that abortion for fetal impairment is treated as different, and more moral, than other abortion, and this should be opposed. But I think abortion for fetal impairment is exactly the same as any other abortion. Women weigh up a variety of factors in deciding whether or not to take a pregnancy to term. Most commonly would be a list something like: what resources they have, what the impact the pregnancy would have on their life, what impact the pregnancy would have on the life of other children, and whether they feel they can be good parents.
I think most women probably think about exactly the same factors if they’re told about a fetal abnormality. For some women the answers to those questions might be different, but I believe that’s a statement about our society, not a statement about the potential of those with disabilities.
I think people who read this thread will come away with a wide variety of views on the matter.
For the record I believe at the moment having a disabled child is often more expensive and labour intensive than having a non-disabled child, but that is because of the way we organise our society. I believe that society is a burden on disabled people, not the other way round.
This comment was written by reddecca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2005 at 9:08 pm
Things are very bad now. But they are much, much better than they were in the ’50s.
Or even the ’70s.
Because this discussion seems to me to be one of the most disability-hating things I’ve read in ages.
Worse than the people prattling on about how you should rely on able-bodied neighbors for disaster assistance or that it’s “survival of the fittest”?
You are also assuming that you are the only person on this thread who has a family member or a child with a disability.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 3:28 am
No, you’re right. That was worse. But that’s not saying much!
I’m not, actually. But I am, I think, the only person who mentioned it, except Lu, who mentioned it to say that her profoundly disabled child is a burden. So I stand by what I said: on this thread, disabled people are visible only as burdens on other people.
Thanks for posting that, Jenny.
So she took a look at her situation and decided not to have another child. That seems to me to be slightly different from a regime, planned and sanctioned by the medical community, in which women over a certain age are routinely screened for a particular genetic abnormality, in which when found to have it they are immediately informed that they will have to make a decision about whether to abort, and in which upwards of 80% do eventually have an abortion. If doctors said to expectant parents “your baby will be a girl. You should know that girls face discrimination in our society, but that many go on to have full and productive lives. You have a week to decide whether to abort,” don’t you think we’d believe that something was being implied about female lives?
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 5:32 am
We have heard many, many stories about why people might want to abort a fetus that would be disabled, but not the slightest hint about why a parent might want to bring such a terrible burden into the world, let alone why such a person might want to exist.
I haven’t brought this up, because not being disabled and not having a disabled child, I kinda felt I’d just be displaying privilege, or being patronizing….but since you brought it up….
I didn’t want the prenatal screening because I was willing to deal with having a child with Down’s. I wouldn’t have aborted. It’s easy for me to say now, because that didn’t turn out to be the case, but it’s the truth. There is no family history of inherited genetic abnormalities in my family, let alone the ones incompatible with life, so I didn’t see the need to take the risk of miscarriage. Again though, I’m feel I’m displaying privilege by saying that, because I have a decent paying job and I have health insurance. I live in an area where there is plenty of services available for disabled children, including parks. So, there’s that. If you ask me “why” I’d not abort a disabled child…I guess I’d have to say, “because I’d love her regardless.” Yet that doesn’t seem fair to say either, because I don’t assume that the parents who abort wouldn’t or don’t love their children either. Nancy P brought up some good points about the thoughts that may be going through folks’ minds. I dunno. It’s hard to talk about.
There aren’t any disabled people in my family. But, when I was growing up, I attended schools where there was some level of “mainstreaming” of disabled kids…and that trend continues today. I think desegregating disabled children has the potential to affect the way people think about the disabled, and take away that fear. But like Nancy P said, there is a mistaken notion by the public at large that parents of disabled children have all kinds of public assistance, or are “cutting a fat hog in the ass” at tax time, which just isn’t the truth. I found this out by some of the ignorant commentary that was shunted my way when my daughter was in therapy; there were people in my neighborhood and my local union who thought I had some kind of financial free ride. They had no idea that my daughter’s monthly medical bills were three times my mortgage payment, and that yes, I did have to pay them or she would go without services! When they asked about why I wasn’t fixing up my house, I had to explain that the fixing-up money was all eaten up by medical expenses. They thought that the State paid the medical expenses for me! It’s unreal.
When my daughter was born, she was given a 50/50 chance to live. Then, she was given abysmal odds of ever being able to…walk, talk, see, think. With all the complications she had, not much was expected out of her. Yet I didn’t care. All I knew was that I loved my daughter. I loved her even if they had to amputate one or both of her legs, like they thought they would have to do. I loved her even if she was going to be blind, as was expected. I loved her even if she was going to be retarded, as was expected. I did not care. I still held her hand and sang to her, spoke to her, read her stories. Told her about the world. Later on, I got to hold her. I didn’t know what the future would bring. That’s not the same as dealing with a fetus; a born child is an actual person, not a potential person. And please, if I’m just babbling on about my privileges, someone shut me the fuck up….I’m just trying to present my view of why someone would want to have and raise a disabled child. Love, check. Support, check. I think if our society provided more support (including financial), and more resources towards disabled children, more parents would feel able to take that plunge. Because yes, it is a greater burden to have a child with special needs. Few people are prepared for it….I know I sure as hell wasn’t. And yeah, I don’t know what the hell I would have done if she needed a wheelchair, because insurance pays for wheelchairs but does not pay for household accomodations, which I never would have been able to afford on top of all the rest of her medical expenses. I would have been in the position (like I already was) of not being able to afford the bills, yet earning too much money to qualify for help. The state of Illinois has such a strict line on qualifying for help, that even on unemployment I earned “too much”. You had to basically be on public aid or SSI to qualify for most assistance….ahh, I don’t have time for this!
I gotta get going to work. I won’t be back here till this evening. I hope dearly that I didn’t offend anyone by this post. If so, I apologize in advance as I won’t be here for most of the day to apologize in a timely manner. Peace.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 5:40 am
Sally, I did not mean to disrespect you or any disabled person by saying that my son was a burden. I was responding mostly to a comment of Bean’s in which she blamed discrimination and societal attitudes for the perception of disabled children as a burden. For me it’s not a perception, it’s a reality, and to deny that reality denies the real issues that parents face when they have to decide whether to abort a child with a severe abnormality, and the real issues that society faces of how best to support disabled people and their families.
The truth is that every one of us both burdens and contributes to society; every one of us is both able and “disabled” in some way. I for example can barely find my way around the block, and make people crazy demanding excruciatingly specific directions whenever I have to make my way to an unfamiliar place. Granted, this is more of an annoyance than a burden, but you get the general idea. As soon as you start trying to value any one person’s net contribution to society, you are headed down a dark and dangerous road.
I have a question for Bean and one or two others who have said that the burden on me and other parents of disabled children should be spread evenly across society (I have said I agree in principle that this is a good idea): how would you do this? The only way I can think of is institutional care, and we’ve already talked about that. As a practical matter, it seems to me that there’s no way around the parents’ having the primary responsibility and the emotional investment (which is a bigger part of it than you can suspect if you haven’t been there). Any ideas, anyone?
Some time back Amp made a post in which he said:
I didn’t comment on that thread, which IIRC very quickly turned into an old-fashioned all-or-nothing abortion debate, but I was struck by the implication that pro-choicers would not want lower abortion rates. I think (and I don’t want to presume to speak for Amp here, so I emphasize that this is my opinion) Amp touched on something very important: hard-line pro-choicers tend to emphasize a woman’s absolute right to an abortion to the point of callousness regarding the fetus (”it’s just a ball of cells”) because by according it any moral value at all would give ground to pro-lifers, would admit that there are no absolutes here, only a difficult balancing act. (Btw, MT, I believe that gray area is neither so small nor so lonely as you might think: you will have to share it with me at any rate, although if forced to pick a side I pick pro-choice.)
In this discussion we are trying to balance the rights of women, fetuses, and the disabled, and it’s not easy. I don’t have the answers either.
This comment was written by Lu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 6:52 am
Excellent points, Sally. I went back and re-read the thread after you took your break, and now I think I see why you needed one. I can see a definite attitude in many of the posts (including parts of mine, now that I look back at them) that stressed the negative side rather than the positive side of disability. Even the word disability is negative. So I apologize.
People who choose to celebrate, support, nurture, and love their wanted children should not be treated as if they were misguided, or religious wingnuts, or ignorant if those children happen to have traits or characteristics or diseases that are not considered ideal in this society. Members of this society should not pressure pregnant women to choose to abort fetuses who test into certain groups, nor should they pressure them to carry these fetuses to term. Every child should be entitled to treatment as a valuable member of this society.
Too bad it’s not that way now. What can we do about it? The Dems have mostly decided their new slogan will be “Together we can make America better” or some such drivel. Do we honestly think that “together” or “we” includes minorities, women, the disabled, the poor, GLBTs? If the so-called liberal party isn’t inclusive, than who will carry that flag?
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 7:37 am
Excellently said, Lee.
Unfortunately politicians assume that the electorate can’t tolerate complexity and has the attention span of a gnat, so we get drivel instead of nuanced discussion and feel-good slogans instead of policy proposals that actually try to address the real and hard questions.
One can’t entirely blame the politicians. Complexity is hard. Simplicity is attractive. That’s part of why Bush is still polling close to 40 percent.
This comment was written by Lu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 8:51 am
But I am, I think, the only person who mentioned it
Yes, you are, and I’m rather surprised that you decided to take a swipe at Lu. I thought I would share my own experiences, but I’ll probably just be called insensitive and clearly not valuing the lives of the disabled, so I think it would be better to bow out.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 9:01 am
Mythago, I’ve appreciated every single one of your posts on this thread. I was not including your posts in the negative-attitude group, and I apologize if you think I did. Please stay.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 9:25 am
Sally, another lefty blog that celebrates the disabled is Michael Berube’s, which I thought I mentioned. I would echo what Lee has said, that all of us are burdened, and certainly, those with disabilities are as varied in their needs and abilities as the abled — some require extraordinary care, some very little at all. Many abled people become disabled. It would be crazy to think that any of us is immune from becoming more burdensome to those around us than we are now, or that those around us might not become more burdensome to us than we bargained for. It would also be crazy to take a Pollyanna view that those caring for severely disabled children are completely compensated for their burdens by intangible or emotional benefits. I don’t think that’s true, as a matter of logic and experience, which tells me otherwise.
Focusing on prenatal testing and decision making as a litmus test for determining how people must feel about disability and the worth of disabled people is extraordinarily unfair. Prenatal testing usually forces people to make choices in an information vacuum. Providing information on the reality of various disabilities would do alot of good, providing universal health care would be even better.
I choose not to share my trip down this road because of the harsh judgments people like you and Lee bring to the table.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 9:26 am
Oops, I meant that I echo what Lu has said, not that I don’t value what Lee has said as well.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 9:41 am
Um, Barbara, did you read my corrected post at all? Because I’m trying not to be harshly judgmental - that’s the behavior I was being critical of. I apologize if you got the impression I would string you up after you shared your experiences with us.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 10:09 am
This is hard stuff to discuss without offending anyone. (That’s why politicians prefer not to discuss it.) I don’t feel swiped at; Sally’s reality is very different from mine, and I value her perspective.
I’d be interested in hearing other perspectives as well, but I respect anyone’s reluctance to share.
This comment was written by Lu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 10:58 am
That individuals think it logical and justified to infer that a woman’s decisionto terminate a pregnancy after prenatal diagnosis is, effectively, personally directed at them and a judgment about their indvidual worth in society is just another part of the picture that portrays a woman’s life as belonging to those around her rather than to herself. I do not mean to be unsympathetic, I am in favor of spreading the burden of disability and sickness, I would willingly share much more of my resources than I do now for this purpose, but I find the notion that women who terminate are the enemy of the disabled in society to be unfair and unjustified.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 11:54 am
bean, to state it plainly, the argument that bothers me is that a person who terminates a pregnancy as a result of prenatal diagnosis devalues the entire class of people who can be considered or who consider themselves to be disabled and is in some measure (more or less depending on the poster) responsible for the degraded place in society that disabled people occupy. This strikes me as the logical equivalent of saying that legalized abortion is causatively related to an increase in the rate of child abuse.
This is not to say that I don’t understand, and may even sometimes agree with what appears to be your position — which is that, without wishing to curtail rights, you nonetheless judge certain decisions as being immoral or at least unethical and not giving due deference to the quality of life that can be and has been attained by actual people with the same disability — that is, motivated by selfish interest or prejudice rather than by a realistic assessment. (I apologize if I misstated your position.) I can understand that — though I try not to be too harsh of a judge, certainly, I think people make decisions that I never would (or hope that I wouldn’t).
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Huh?
Look, as I’ve said, I’m really reluctant to judge individuals making difficult choices. But the fact remains that parents are offered abortions upon being told that their fetus would be born disabled. Would you not see it as a problem if parents were immediately offered abortions after being told that their child would be a daughter, but not offered abortions if it were going to be a son? How about if mothers whose children were going to be black were offered abortions when their pregnancy tests came back positive but not mothers of white children? There is a social assumption that it makes sense to abort fetuses that will be disabled. That assumption is reflected in medical practice and in other parts of our society. So it’s not just a personal choice, any more than it’s a just a personal choice when a fat person goes on a diet or a small-breasted woman gets breast implants. Those examples may seem trivial compared to accepting a lifetime of responsibility for a disabled child, but they’re similar in that they’re personal choices that both reflect and reinforce society’s attitudes about acceptable bodies. And I do think that they have consquences. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to condemn the person who does any of those things.
Ack! I can see how you could read it as a swipe, and it really, really wasn’t meant that way at all. I’m not saying that Lu shouldn’t talk about her reality. On the contrary, I think it’s vital that she does. I’m just saying that Lu’s experience is on one end of the spectrum, and it’s the only experience of parenting a disabled child that we’ve heard about here. And it does seem like people here have taken it as representative. And it seems slightly problematic to think about disability issues only from the perspective of non-disabled people, which is not to say that they shouldn’t be considered at all.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
Shit. That last bit was unclear. By “the perspective of non-disabled people,” I mean that the way this is posed asks people to identify with non-disabled potential parents and not think about what it means for disabled people at all. And that’s a way of thinking about disability issues, I think, that tends objectify disabled people. I realize that that’s a major point of contention here: I think this is about disabled people, and other people here think that, since fetuses don’t have rights and since they don’t believe that existent disabled people are harmed, it doesn’t have larger implications for disability rights.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
You make a couple of excellent points, Sally. I do speak as a parent of a disabled child, rather than as a disabled person myself (that was mostly what I meant when I talked about our different realities). And my child is much more severely disabled than most disabled people or most babies born with prenatally detectable abnormalities, as bean has pointed out. It would be great to hear from other folks who have raised disabled kids or who have cared for disabled people.
I went out of my way to emphasize the amount of work involved in caring for my son not to devalue disabled people or to characterize my experience as typical (I’m all too well aware that it’s not) but because, again, I think that to ignore or minimize that work makes it harder to discuss the issues realistically — and possibly easier to say “disabled people and their families don’t need extra help.” I wonder to what extent the fear of being left high and dry affects parents trying to make hard decisions.
This comment was written by Lu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2005 at 5:31 pm
Using the situation you’ve described I think you’d start by making sure the resources required to raise a child with severe (or any) disabilities were met collectively, not individually. Then you’d ensure that looking after the child was respected as work and that people were only required to do other work to the extent that they wished. You’d provide relief care in the home, as much as you can, and probably respite care outside the home as well. You’d probably also need to make sure that peole weren’t isolated in their living situation.
Parents will probably still have to take the primary emotional responsibity for their children, but the physical
Obviously in a country that doesn’t even have universal health care there are going to be problems instituting a system like that, but it’d be possible if we chose to organise our economic system differently.
Yes, but I’d see it as a symptom, not a cause. I believe that the only effective way to fight that situation would be to change the situation of girls in society. The other example you give doesn’t stack up, because women have prenatal testing for race when they look at themselves and the father. Believe me when I say my attitude towards this is dictated by my attitude towards abortion and nothing else, and it wouldn’t matter what examples you gave me, I’d give the same reply.
I live in NZ rather than America, so my experience may be different. But I don’t agree that there’s a social assumption that it makes sense to abort a fetus that will be disabled. I think at most I’d say that there’s an attitude that it’s OK to abort disabled fetuses (even among people who disagree with abortion in most cases), but I wouldn’t go any further.
I disagree with two aspects of this. First I don’t think someone going on a diet, or getting breast implants, reinforces society’s attitudes about acceptable bodies. They reflect them sure, but I don’t think they have any
Secondly, I agree that someone who goes on a diet or gets implants is usually thinking ‘my body is not acceptable’. I don’t agree that this is necessarily true for people who are terminating, for fetal abnormality. I don’t think they’re necessarily thinking on any level ‘the body of this baby would not be acceptable’.
It’s a reality that parenting a child with an impairment usually takes more time and resources than a non-impaired child. Like I say I think that should change, but I believe that to charactertise people who decide they don’t have the time and resources to do that as making a decision about acceptable bodies ignores the reality of disability that our society creates.
I think that’s a good summary of the fundamental disagreement.
This comment was written by reddecca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2005 at 1:05 am
Some very interesting points here. Everyone’s so polite, and so politically correct!
Is it wrong of me to point out that some traits are desirable, and that it’s natural for parents to want their children to have as many desirable traits as possible? My mother jokes that when she was pregnant she “prayed every inch of my long legs” onto me.
Fate is a joker, and it’s possible I could some day end up caring for a disabled child. I would do my very best to love and care for it well. That’s compassion, one of the traits that makes us human. That doesn’t mean that I don’t hope to have a child who’s pretty, red-haired like my husband, hopefully a girl since I wouldn’t have the first inkling what to do with a boy, intellectual rather than jockish, and please God not handicapped. Does any expectant mother hope and pray for a disabled child?
I think it’s natural for a mother to say of her disabled child, “My child is as good as anyone else.” She’s even right, if what she means is that all human life should be valued and cherished. If what she means is that Downs Syndrome really isn’t a disability, and we should all rush out and have as many DS babies as we can because it’s so much fun, then mother love has caused her to delude herself. Do we really have to pretend to agree with this out of politeness?
This comment was written by Allie.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2005 at 4:54 am
I think it’s natural for a mother to say of her disabled child, “My child is as good as anyone else.” She’s even right, if what she means is that all human life should be valued and cherished. If what she means is that Downs Syndrome really isn’t a disability, and we should all rush out and have as many DS babies as we can because it’s so much fun, then mother love has caused her to delude herself. Do we really have to pretend to agree with this out of politeness?
Allie: first, I don’t know quite what to make of your use of the term “politically correct.” I loathe that term, because where I live, it is most often used to infer that someone is being too polite, too respectful, when in reality they should just let all the supposed held-back obnoxiousness fly. But perhaps that’s not what you mean, so I’ll let it pass. There’s no one on this thread who is trying to say that a disability isn’t really a disability! Just that some of the dis in disability is artifically imposed from outside, rather than a direct consequence of the disability itself. And with that said…
I have a question for Bean and one or two others who have said that the burden on me and other parents of disabled children should be spread evenly across society (I have said I agree in principle that this is a good idea): how would you do this? The only way I can think of is institutional care, and we’ve already talked about that. As a practical matter, it seems to me that there’s no way around the parents’ having the primary responsibility and the emotional investment (which is a bigger part of it than you can suspect if you haven’t been there). Any ideas, anyone?
Lu, what I had in mind….well, some of it is already coming to pass. The ADA has and is helping folks with disabilities gain access to education, employment, and hell…just plain being able to go to the library, the post office, the grocery store, restaurants, even the damn bathroom! The ADA is being enforced more now than it used to be, although it’s not being enforced anywhere near as much as it needs to be. In my city, it is now possible for parents of physically disabled children to be able to take them to the park to play on playground equipment; that wasn’t true several years ago.
I think we could do a lot better in terms of the resources we provide. For example, respite care. It’s difficult for caretakers of disabled children (or adults, for that matter) to be able to access respite care—and if you’re working class or poor, about the only way to find any is to get on a waiting list for it (that is, state-assisted respite care; they give you so many hours per month). For parents of “average” children, this is called “babysitting”. Not so easy to find for parents of children who are severely disabled and/or have medical issues.
More financial assistance for families struggling to deal with the financial impact of disability. Like I said before, this was something that I did not have to deal with, but for a time I was wondering what the hell I was going to do if I had to make modifications to my house to accomodate my daughter if she ended up not being able to walk. There is a public perception that there is all this assistance out there, when there really isn’t. That’s one of the first things to go when budget cutbacks are made in the state (and I did experience the impact of cutbacks in Early Intervention and Specialized Services for Children when Illinois cut back). There is also the perception that insurance pays for a lot of services or products that it doesn’t. If a family is lucky enough to even have insurance, they can’t count on being able to afford equipment or accomodations that their child needs.
Speaking of financial impact, why are we willing as a society to shunt large amounts of dollars off to institutionalize the disabled, yet we are not willing to directly subsidize caretakers who are willing to perform home care? And when I say subsidize caretakers, I mean give them years of Social Security credit also. Why is is considered vaulable work when it is performed by strangers, but not by loved ones?
Transportation is a problem here, but that’s more of a problem for adults than for children. Finding housing is a problem, too.
There is still a trend towards segregating the disabled and acting like they don’t exist, or that they are such a small proportion of the population that they don’t really count. And that’s bullshit. It’s no wonder that many able-bodied folks are afraid of disability, or say things like “oh gosh, I wouldn’t want to live if x happened”, because they aren’t seeing that people can and do live fulfilled lives with x. Disabled people have the highest rate of unemployment in any subgroup of our population.
And disability is something that can happen to any of us. And if we’re lucky enough to live a long life, probably will.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2005 at 10:25 am
This is a link in re Reddecca’s posts, regarding gender selection:
http://www.thp.org/sac/unit4/missing.htm
Basically, gender selected abortion is just the beginning of how women’s lives are restricted and truncated via discriminatory attitudes and policies. It isn’t enough to say that gender selected abortion is wrong and should be made illegal for the good of the community when individual families continue to bear hardships associated with the birth of girl children, and society at large disadvantages women of all ages. It won’t work. Setting a minimum age for marriage, making the free public education of all children compulsory to a certain age, making investments in reproductive health services, extending microcredit to female headed enterprises, and so on — these will make a difference — and compared to these, abortion policy is just a sideshow.
I suspect that similar investments for the disabled would ameliorate the position of the disabled in society to the point that parents would not be as frightened of bearing and caring for disabled children as they are now, but there’s no easy comparison because of the tremendous variety of disabilities.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
November 2nd, 2005 at 2:25 pm
I am sorry that I missed this discussion. Even though the ship has sailed, I hope to come back later and respond to the articles in more detail. In response to some of the comments however, I have two quick notes:
1) It’s not just PC-nonsense to use person-first language. People for and against prenatal testing and abortion have responded saying things like “Down syndrome baby.” The child is a child first, with a disability second. It might be slightly more awkward initially in speech or writing, but it makes the most sense. Take any other group that seen perjoratively and stick that in front of “baby”. See what I mean? I have a child with Down syndrome, not a “Down syndrome child.”
2) At my daughter’s 2-year check-up yesterday, her pediatrician suggested that while my daughter is certainly above average for children with Down syndrome, she is also likely above average for all children. I think the doc is overly optimistic, but it certainly bears consideration. Some people with Down syndrome are very high achieving indeed. Like the rest of us, there’s a standard bell curve distribution. And that bell curve overlaps with the typical development/IQ distribution bell curve.
All that said, I agree with what Bean has said here.
This comment was written by Sarahlynn.Report this comment to the moderators
November 2nd, 2005 at 11:57 pm
I remember arguing this with you many years ago, Bean, but it seems that we’re in the same place in the end. I no longer feel like the “slippery slope” argument should preclude discussion of shades of gray.
Now on to the original posts - excellent work, Amp, I appreciate it very much.
Post 1:
It’s very interesting that the author puts the onus on women. It’s all about women choosing. As much as I’d like for that to be the case, it’s just not. Women aren’t making choices in a vacuum, and sometimes they aren’t making choices at all. I know a 36-year-old woman who was pressured by her husband to have amniocentesis because he was afraid of having a baby with Down syndrome. I don’t think that her situation is uncommon, and I don’t think that women are making decisions about whether or not to terminate pregnancies for wholly selfish reasons. Often there are family considerations too.
But I’d like to read your source for the statistics, Amp. (Down syndrome, which only occurs in 1 in every 800-1000 pregnancies.) It’s my understanding that trisomies might account for up to 50% of all pregnancies (many spontaneously abort, often before the woman knows she’s pregnant) but about 1 in 800 live births, which is a whole different ball of wax.
Post 2:
Amp said: f I were a pregnant woman, told that my fetus had Down syndrome, I believe I’d choose to abort. People with Down syndrome are significantly more likely to die young (Down syndrome is associated with severe heart conditions)
I understand that most people choose to abort when they learn that they’re carrying a fetus with trisomy-21. It’s a damn scary position to be in. But I think that the die young/heart condition argument is a bit weak and outdated. 1) Heart defects are the most common congenital birth defect, regardless of chromosomal status, and 2) Today’s technology insures that most AV Canal defects can be sucessfully repaired. (My daughter had a serious heart defect of the type most commonly associated with trisomy 21, complete AV Canal. It was repaired and she’s not expected to have any long term effects.) 3) Morever, serious heart defects are detectable safely through diagnostic ultrasound prenatally, again, regardless of trisomy status.
Post 3:
I disagree with your premise here. First, I don’t believe the folic acid connection yet; I’ll need to see much more evidence first. (I was young, had no family history, and took a supplement for 6 months before conceiving on top of a healthy diet, and still had a baby with trisomy 21.) Most research I’ve seen suggests that trisomy errors are likely to be present in a woman’s egg supply when she’s born. Second, there’s no arguing that Down syndrome is not something most of us would choose for our children. There are undeniably health and developmental risks. I am adamately pro-choice. But I do see a big moral difference between
A) making a decision to insure that my child is as healthy as possible, and
B) making a decision that the fetus I’m carrying isn’t healthy enough to be born.
In the first case we’re talking about the same child, just healthier. In the second case we’re talking about scrapping this attempt in favor of a “better” child.
Post 4: I agree, with the same reasoning as above.
Post 5: The trick is that it is possible, though not common, to have Down syndrome and not be measurably disabled: http://sarahlynn.blogspot.com/2005/06/blogoversary-and-role-models.html
Post 7:
I don’t think efforts to cure or prevent disability should be stopped, because some disabled people would prefer to be non-disabled. But at the same time, I think it’s more important to reform society, and the way we view disability, ability and the pursuit of happiness. That, in the end, has more potential to improve human lives and bring happiness than medicine does.
I agree. And I love my daughter with all of my heart. And I closely follow medical developments that might “cure” her. And if they discover a safe medical treatment to alleviate the developmental concerns associated with Down syndrome, I’d seek this treatment for her in a heartbeat. Because she’s still my wonderful daughter, with or without Down syndrome, but I want the most for her. And I don’t want her life to be any harder than it has to be. And until she’s old enough to make these decisions for herself, it’s my job to make them for her.
This comment was written by Sarahlynn.Report this comment to the moderators
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:15 am
Hi, Sarahlynn. Thanks for your posts here.
1) Regarding “child with Down” versus “Down child,” clearly you’re right. I’ll try to do better next time.
2) Unfortunately, I no longer have the link I used as a source for my stats. But given your greater knowlege, it’s probably you’re right and what I wrote was mistaken.
3) What I said about folic acid was meant as a sci-fi hypothetical, not as a realistic proposal.
4) Thanks for correcting my outdated info regarding heart conditions.
Otherwise, I think we’re in agreement. Which may not be as much fun as a nice juicy debate, but nonetheless I’m glad you posted here.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 3rd, 2005 at 6:56 am
Hey, I’ll take agreement any day! Especially today, when I am tired after defending a woman’s right to write an essay to “mothers” rather than to “parents” against criticism from one dad who takes any such “exclusion” personally. Sadly, that discussion was not on a blog where such debate is encouraged.
This comment was written by Sarahlynn.Report this comment to the moderators
March 18th, 2006 at 12:53 am
[...] That’s not always true. In some cases, the fetus is disabled but viable (there’s been some discussion of this on “Alas,” for example in this post. In other cases, the woman may have needed months to save up the money and put together the resources (transportation, days off, etc) required to have an abortion; this is particularly the case in states where pro-forced-childbirth forces have successfully put limitations on abortion access. [...]
This comment was written by Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Where The Campaign Against Sex Education Has Brought Us.Report this comment to the moderators