Dawkins sparks outrage for saying Down Syndrome babies should be aborted

[Thumpalumpacus]

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.

Exactly. A person can be insulting without using any disreputable verbiage whatsoever, too. Words aren't innately good or bad ... but human emotions are.

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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??

Than the average person, of course.

Also, I've got a family member who is employed rehabilitating a TBI patient. Saying that her patient isn't disabled doesn't make sense; a TBI patient is almost always disabled.

Are you really thinking your position through? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but your analogy doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Rather than defend it with special pleading, would not the discussion be advanced by simply acknowledging its weakness and trying to find some other, less flawed way to express your obviously strong feelings about the matter?

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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...

One of my first jobs was at a shitty fast-food joint. I had a co-worker named Doug who was DS, high-functioning, and could do most any job in the store. He was a genuinely funny and good guy. I've run into him again from time to time, and as the years have passed he's gotten some independence (had his own apartment the last I saw him).

He taught me a hell of a lot about my own prejudices, and how I could be a more thoughtful person.

I don't think a person's worth boils down to such bald economic terms, myself.

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I'm not adding a thing to what he said, I'm simply taking it apart. His response it not applicable to me - I don't know anyone with Down's, never have, and nor is my family or any of my current close friends affected directly by the issue of disability and disability care.

I didn't make an emotional argument, I mad a logical one, based on the very principles that my society is founded on. The values of a fair go for everyone and the others that I already laid out, and I'd rather not repeat myself at this time.

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Note, and this is where I will repeat myself, the point I was making is that his comments are not constructive to fixing the social and economic problems surrounding the issue of disability. It shouldn't cost parents any more, and it shouldn't mean that the mentally disabled cannot fully participate to their potential and live a happy a fulfilled life. If these problems didn't exist in the first place then there would no room in the first place to suggest that aborting all foetus's that may be disabled is such a great idea. Eg. "abort all the jiggaboos because then they they don't have to face the racial discrimination later in life".

As for your comment: fuck you. I had to hear racial slurs nearly every fucking day for 4 years, it affected my stress levels and so until I become a racist and used those terms every single day in a context where I am being racially hateful you don't get to tell me, ever, not to use them. I have to be able to express them to release the years of the built up rage and stress. I know it's not nice, but that's my point and that's the context that I do it in.

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No one told you not to use them, but your use of them is childish and annoying. I lived in South Georgia for 7 years hearing racial slurs was a daily part of my life. As well as witnessing first hand some pretty sick things done by racist horrible people. (Like the beating of a black kid for dating a white girl at my highschool. He was in the icu for a week). It's tragic and sad and it needs to be changed. So I will return your fuck you. Fuck you for joining the ignorant in their racism (regardless of whether or not you're actually racist), and becoming a part of the problem instead of a part of the change.

Hear, hear.

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No you're not getting it. My point is that judging others for their congestive ability, or generally just for being "not normal" is not healthy for society.

It is not a "judgment". It is an analysis of the facts at hand.

Also, it doesn't really have any social ramifications to say, "DS sufferers typically average lower intelligence", because that analysis makes no prescriptive admonishment. Now, if I said, "DS sufferers typically average lower intelligence, so let's discriminate against them," you'd have a point.

But I didn't, and you don't.