Disability and abortion

[BrokenQuill92]

So I as pro-choice person I always hit this little snag when the reasons for abortion are rolled out, and all of them are good except this one. My biggest red flag are the words "quality of life". And it always makes me really uncomfortable as a pro-choice person that people who quite often have never encountered a person with a disability or talked to one make judgments about the kind of lives we lead. Especially when your pregnancy is planned.

[Joods]

As a mom with a child with DS, I cannot imagine what life would have been like had I not brought her into the world. However, raising a child with a disability is not right for everyone. Not everyone can handle this. There are many factors to consider, including whether or not the child would suffer as a result of their disabilities. When my daughter was born, she spent nearly a month in NICU. She was in a room with four other babies at the time and one of them was born with so many problems, the outlook was not good. The baby required many life saving surgeries and sadly, at two weeks old the baby passed away, despite all that was done to try and save him. Those parents will forever have to live with the fact that they had to bury their child.

On the flip side of this, there is the abortion issue. If it is determined that a baby will be born with life threatening issues and this can be verified through an amniocentesis, ultrasounds and other invitro testing, then the parent(s) need to be able to make the best informed decision as possible.

Now, if we are talking about a disability that is not life-threatening and one where the child, through early intervention services and programs, will be able to have a good (or better) quality of life, then again, the parents still need to make an informed choice, but I think perhaps they should also talk to persons who already have the disability their child will be born with so that they can have their minds put at ease.

I found out ten days before my daughter was born that she would be born with Down syndrome. I had the wonderful opportunity to talk to parents who already had kids with DS. I met children who were toddlers to adults who were enrolling in college. Leading a full life is possible, but only with the right interventions in place. Depending on what country one lives in, they may or may not have access to such programs. There is a lot to take into consideration.

It's not just as simple as making a blanket statement of "quality of life". There's more to it than that.

[Esquilax]

So I as pro-choice person I always hit this little snag when the reasons for abortion are rolled out, and all of them are good except this one. My biggest red flag are the words "quality of life". And it always makes me really uncomfortable as a pro-choice person that people who quite often have never encountered a person with a disability or talked to one make judgments about the kind of lives we lead. Especially when your pregnancy is planned.

I get what you're saying, but I don't think the logic is quite as binding as you're making it. Pro-choice peeps are, of course, advocating offering women the choice of whether or not to abort, not arguing that every disabled fetus be aborted; I think it's uncontroversial that the only person who gets to make the judgment on the quality of life of a potential infant is the mother. I'm not necessarily sure it's a value judgment about disabled people as people; "your quality of life could be better," is not the same statement as "your quality of life is insufficient."

For the record though, this is coming from a guy who volunteered to work with disabled kids in a special needs class in his youth, and is married to a disabled person. Quality of life is a scale, not a binary proposition, and the arbiter of it should always be the person themselves in cases where they're competent to do so.

[c172]

I am disabled. I have spina bifida. I ambulate with crutches. I am also fiercely pro-choice, and in favor of the expansion of assisted suicide/euthanasia (is there even a difference?).

My life is something that is not for everyone. People look at me and want to look away, or they want to share with me how distraught they are over my disability. Or they want to proselytize (yes, I am a magnet for these types). The reactions are very, very hard to deal with. The assumption that with crutches, I must be intellectually impaired. This assumption invites a lot of baby talk towards me. A lot of "sweety" and "honey", but rarely "sir". Ironically (or maybe not), this has caused me to be quite lacking in social skills, to the point where I do have my moments coming across as intellectually disabled.

That said, I am fine that I was brought up in this world. My biological parents did their homework and decided that they'd be parents of someone with spina bifida. They devoted themselves to it, and sought out the support. The culture of SB, and of disability in general.

Raising a disabled person takes strenuous work. It is a different lifestyle than raising the star quarterback or the head cheerleader. I couldn't do it. Parenting seems hard, and even marriage does. It's just how things are now.

I don't really have much interest in climbing Mount Whitney or doing other things able-bodies take for granted. However, just plain discrimination does indeed affect my QOL. All that said, life is a unique era of our eternal journey: we can actually feel it. See it. Smell it. Hear it. When we die, all that goes out the window. I'd like to say I'll miss Earth, but...well...I'll unfortunately be dead.

[Alex K]

c172,

May I ask what kind you have? I did't know what it was and just now read up on it on wiki...

[Alex K]

Ever since "god" killed our two healthy boys just days before they could have survived, I have a strange attitude towards abortion. Somehow, it happens all the time in nature for no reason. If I had been aborted,I wouldn't care obv. Just a fly on the wall 36 years ago and it wouldn't be *me* anyways.

The main problem I have with abortion of fetuses with disabilities is however how the perception and self image of living persons with disabilities might be affected. Will they think 'I shouldn't be here' or even feel the need to justify their existence. That would be a problem.

[c172]

I have myelomeningocele. It is incomplete, and is at T-2, the second thoracic vertebra (very high for SB. Two notches below the base of the neck, approximately).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spina_bifi...eningocele