Dawkins sparks outrage for saying Down Syndrome babies should be aborted

[Whateverist]

This is an odd phenomenon. Few of us would choose to have a disability. But many of us know people who do. Sometimes those who do would not like to see their 'kind' go out of existence. Little people come to mind. Apparently it is controversial to use medical intervention to help kids with a dwarfish syndrome become taller. I can't imagine any blind person would object to having their vision improved. But those born with hereditary deafness often talk in favor of their alternate experience of life.

Kids with Downs syndrome are mainstreamed for the most part now as are kids with most disabilities. Three is a movement to end the use of "retarded" because it is hurtful on the face of it even if descriptive in another sense. There is no need to be offensive to people with disabilities. But it is curious to me which forms garner support as a way of life and which are universally seen as deficits. I taught with a fellow confined to a wheelchair, a real stand-up guy. He would speak up for access and empathy but he would never have advocated for it as a way of life.

[Thumpalumpacus]

That is just the same as labelling a Jiggaboo foetus "defective" or a Jewish foetus "defective".

No, it isn't. DS sufferers have objective metrics demonstrating lower cognitive ability. No such objective metric exists to justify the racism you're using as an analogy.

I was going to comment on this but then I thought it's better if I don't go near this can of worms! Oh yeah, you guys "handicap" is really rude. That hasn't been used since the nineties.

PC language sucks. As someone new to being disabled, albeit mildly, I don't care what someone calls me. I confess to agreeing with George Carlin in his complaints about the language being watered-down for the sake of appearances.

[Napoléon]

Tbh in the whole "handicapped" versus "disabled", I don't see why disabled is a better term to use, maybe someone could explain. In both terms you know what the person means and the intent is not to offend.

[Aractus]

DS sufferers have objective metrics demonstrating lower cognitive ability.

Lower cognitive abilities than who? Non-disabled people who've since suffered severe brain damage in a car accident??

[Esquilax]

And I've still seen no evidence presented that very many foetuses are diagnosed with Down's before 21 weeks?

That's why my own position on this changes depending on how far along in development the diagnosis is, and why Dawkins specifically mentions that he's against any form of hard dividing line between consciousness and non-consciousness in fetal development; if it's a late term diagnosis then obviously the situation is different, because... well, the situation is different.

Which is also why I'm not a fan of the blase generalizations that the Dawk was initially throwing around.

http://www.babycenter.com.au/a1487/scree...n-syndrome

(Emphasis added). As I said before, foetuses are diagnosed in the first and second trimesters (and probably the third as well). As I said before, it is not a 100% certain test. And as I also said before, you can still give birth to a baby with down's after receiving negative diagnoses for the foetus. Dawkins seems to live in some magical land where he thinks that such solid diagnoses do happen - it simply isn't the case, there is no way to know 100% whether your foetus has Down's before it is born.

Sure, the tests aren't perfect. No test is. But since when has anyone ever waited for 100% certainty on an issue before they act? 100% certainty is pretty much impossible for all but a few very simple things. But it's an easy decision to make, if we're talking about early term abortions, because you don't lose anything by aborting an early pregnancy.

[pocaracas]

When I was young, my mother kept saying stuff like she was oh so glad we (me and my brother) turned out whole, complete, without any problem.
At the time, there was no way to know if the fetus would be... err... defective... or not.
Nowadays, we can tell, with varying degrees of certainty for different disabilities, but we can. For those that gather a high degree of certainty, it makes perfect sense to abort. The inclusion of a ...err... defective... person into society comes at a cost... a monetary cost which not all couples/parents have access to... a psychological cost which is impossible to account for... and a social cost.

Plus, there is the knowledge that the...err....defective... person will be a burden for life and will, most likely outlive the parents, thus becoming a burden on the social services of the country... or die if no such services are available, or if there's no money to pay for similar private care.

Why knowingly bring forth into this world a child who will never be an adult? a child who will always require care by other people? A child which will always be a burden? A child which will have no independence, no freedom?
The moral choice should be the choice which brings the best for society... so I'd say Dawkins seems right, here...

[Dystopia]

The problem here is that, no matter how many scientific and ethical considerations we can make while arguing that a foetus is not a person since there is no conscience, and so nothing is lost by voluntarily interrupting a pregnancy, it isn't a piece of cake for all women. When it comes down to the decision of saying 'Hey doc, I want to abort this baby, that's the best call', that may not be so easy... I am not a woman and so I cannot talk, but I firmly believe there are different convictions between different females and every one of them will react differently to the possibility of aborting an unborn foetus or not.

The magic of being pro-choice is the choice itself - A woman can chose to keep the unborn 'baby' or not - It's not anyone else's business - And just like people have nothing to do with a woman's conduct of terminating a pregnancy, the same applies for her decision to keep a baby in rare circumstances, such as in case of medical deficiency or pregnancy as a rape consequence.

My vision here is that while I think X is X and Y is Y, other people do not have to follow the same orientation - Let's take the example of my girlfriend - Even though she didn't use these precise words I take that it's what motivates her - She believes that there is a biological, psychological, naturalistic and ethical obligation a woman has for an unborn foetus - Even if it is 2 weeks old. She isn't imposing this view on everyone else, it's just as she sees things, and while I may or may not agree with her (and I should worry because if everything turns out fine I'll be the father of her children) my only option is to accept her personal ethics. All of this to say different people will make different considerations about the topic of abortion - And that's why we should allow every women to make her biological, emotional and ethical decisions regarding the issue - I'm not even talking about women who believe it is a terrible hell granting sin to abort, but about the ones who may just not be ok doing it.

I talked about this with Napo - When a woman is pregnant and it was planned, she is usually filled with joy and inevitably an emotional attachment to the foetus is created, no matter how undeveloped or (to be more precise) non existent as a person it is - In the overwhelming majority of cases, foetus malformations are detected after the woman found out about her pregnancy, when the so called emotional attachment is already strong, and as we all know Humans are emotional beings, it's hard to make all of our life decisions based on reason solely, sometimes we rely on our guts or instinct more - And so it becomes hard to abort an unborn foetus - I'm not even mentioning the more problematic cases of malformations being discovered very late in pregnancies when it is either illegal to abort because the unborn baby is already considered a person and possesses the characteristics for that; or because even if abortion is legal it is a late stage one, it may require surgery, the line between foetus and human person/baby may be blurry, etc.

All of this just to suggest that abortion is rational because the foetus is not a person is not that simple and there's lots of diverging points that can be made on the subject - In my opinion it sweeps unto moral relativism almost completely - The case of a woman having an ethical obligation to provide for a foetus, I've seen women having completely opposite positions.

In my opinion, a woman should be able to abort or not - It is a personal choice and she can do it or not for any reasons she wants too - Even if those reasons are religiously motivated, it legally comes up to an individual decision

[Cato]

Lower cognitive abilities than who? Non-disabled people who've since suffered severe brain damage in a car accident??

Now you're getting it. Who buys a severely damaged brand new car?

[c172]

But how can we predict whether any one of us will get into a car wreck and suffer a disabling head injury? What do you do then? Death penalty?

[Whateverist]

But how can we predict whether any one of us will get into a car wreck and suffer a disabling head injury? What do you do then? Death penalty?

Nope, not on my watch.