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The Atlantic published an article about how, essentially, due to screening, Down's Syndrome kids are not born in Denmark any more (and those who are born, mostly are from people who got inaccurate test results). In the entire nation of Denmark, it ranges from 0-18 kids a year. This has implications for the structures that exist to help these people, but also for the pressures on women, including how women are under tremendous ethical scrutiny on an individual basis. This article has generated a ton of discussion in women's spaces. TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS THREAD, YOU MUST READ THE ARTICLES IN THE ORIGINAL POST. THIS THREAD IS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THESE ARTICLES, AND WITHOUT READING THESE ARTICLES, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DISCUSS THEM. If an entire magazine article is "too long; didn't read" for you, do NOT post in this thread. (My takes are coming, but I'm formatting the OP at the moment. Thanks.) quote:Every few weeks or so, Grete Fält-Hansen gets a call from a stranger asking a question for the first time: What is it like to raise a child with Down syndrome? Pick fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Nov 22, 2020 |
# ? Nov 22, 2020 18:06 |
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# ? May 6, 2024 20:28 |
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quote:Parenting is a plunge into the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is beautiful in this way, but also daunting.
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 18:07 |
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A view at this by Jill Filipovic:Invisible Women posted:Two stories are on my mind this week: This one in the Atlantic, The Last Children of Down Syndrome, about how a national program of prenatal testing has has resulted in remarkably few births to children with Down syndrome in Denmark, and this one in the Times, about how American women have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, almost entirely because of their caregiving duties. Both lay bare one essential truth: When caregiving overwhelmingly falls on women, we see a series of negative consequences — not least among them that social judgments about caregiving, and penalties for being perceived as an inadequate caregiver, overwhelmingly fall on women.
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 18:07 |
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Recession with a Difference:quote:Recession With a Difference: Women Face Special Burden Pick fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Nov 22, 2020 |
# ? Nov 22, 2020 18:08 |
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Note: These articles are for extra flavor, and I do not consider them mandatory to participation like the preceding articles. Thank you! Here's the Atlantic's other, older little bit: A Generational Shift in Understanding Life with Down's Syndrome quote:When I was six, my friend Tom died. My Mum took me aside when I got home from school and explained that he had gone into the hospital for routine surgery but something had gone wrong. She said it was just as well that he had died. You see, Tom had Down syndrome. As well as yet other Atlantic piece, "A Pill For Down's Syndrome". quote:Ten years ago, our daughter Penny was born. She came into the world with a shock of black hair, piercing blue eyes, and, within hours, a diagnosis of Down syndrome.
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 18:14 |
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Some New York Times opinion responses they published:quote:Chris Kaposy makes an ethical case for having a baby with Down syndrome, urging expectant parents whose child has been diagnosed in utero not to abort the affected fetus. As the father of a child with the anomaly, he knows the “delight he brings to our lives” and wonders “why more people do not choose to bring children like him into the world.”
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 18:35 |
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NYT article (2007) "Prenatal Test Puts Down Syndrome into Sharp Focus"quote:DETROIT — Sarah Itoh, a self-described “almost-eleven-and-a-half,” betrayed no trace of nervousness as she told a roomful of genetic counselors and obstetricians about herself one recent afternoon.
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 18:38 |
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Anyway, here's my preliminary hot take: It is a serious problem that economic decisions, particularly about parenthood/family, are framed as moral ones, and that this moral burden seems to fall primarily on women. I engage in this topic as someone with a significant hereditary problem and I feel that context is significant here but my feelings aren't going to get hurt about whatever . But anyway, good example of an intersectional issue! With substandard support and care for people with disabilities, the "disability" question is inherently an economic one. With substandard support and care for people with disabilities, and an increasingly-atomized society that puts more and more pressure on the individual household, overwhelmingly the mother, the "disability" question is a mental health care/physical welfare one for the caregivers. With people, on the whole, exhausted either mentally, physically, or both, the risk associated with a variable diagnosis is very sharp (e.g., ok, will I get a happy and mostly functional Down's kid or one who is violent?) Is abortion truly an individual issue (hint: yes :t:mad:), and if it's individual, how can we address society-wide outcomes as a result? Down's Syndrome is one thing, but at what point will it be possible to be selective on, say, a purely aesthetic basis? Should any effort be made to address this? For example: These two girls are twins. Parents who wanted one baby, not two, might abort one (maybe they can't afford two). In that circumstance, they might feel the child on the left will have an easier life, and choose to abort the child on the right. Is this moral? If yes, yikes. But if no, then what's the point where aborting on the child's quality of life is justified versus not justified, and why? Was selecting against Tay-Sachs good? How do we protect and empathize with people in a discussion this fraught? Where's the common ground of people's values? Pick fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Nov 22, 2020 |
# ? Nov 22, 2020 18:39 |
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it seems obvious to me that your preliminary hot take is pretty much correct and i think it would be pretty difficult to argue with. however, i think your subsequent first line, that the "disability" question is inherently an economic one, is a bit reductionist in that there are nuances to the economic concern that i think need to be captured the thing that catches my attention is the assumptions that parents make about what is required to have a happy life, and the anxiety around hitting the "required" milestones to set your child up for happiness. this bit from the original story jumped out at me quote:Does she wish Michael had had the opportunities that kids have now? “Well,” she says, “I think maybe in some ways it was easier for us.” Of course the therapies would have helped Michael. But there’s more pressure on kids and parents today. She wasn’t shuttling Michael to appointments or fighting with the school to get him included in general classes or helping him apply to the college programs that have now proliferated for students with intellectual disabilities. “It was less stressful for us than it is today,” she says. Raising a child with a disability has become a lot more intensive—not unlike raising any child. i think certain types of questions a woman considering an abortion might ask themselves, such as "can i provide for this child's immediate physical needs"; "can i provide the physical and emotional labor necessary to raise this child while still providing for myself and any other people i am already responsible for", are broadly similar regardless if the fetus is likely to have downs syndrome or not. the scope of the labor, and the difficulty in providing it while also self caring will be different depending on the diagnosis, but the general question is the same. but i feel like the increased economic and emotional demands on women don't fully explain the discrepancy between the general abortion rate and the 95% rate cited in the article. i don't have the time to do a deep dive on the statistics, but a quick google search led me to a paper form 2013 putting the abortion rate at 12.1 per 1000 women of traditional child bearing age. while this is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison on skimpy data, it does suggest that there is a very sharp selection against fetuses with potential for downs. it seems to me to that in a country with such a robust social safety net, the economic and emotional demands of having a child with downs can't be so ruinous as to require orders of magnitude more women to make the choice that they can't support such a child there is a secondary concern that comes with potential disabilities, or even more generalized genetic disadvantages, which is "will i see my child suffer". and i think this is where people start letting the anxiety of parenthood run away with them. you run the range of "you're certain to see you child die before puberty" to "your child may be slightly outside the societal norms when they have social interactions" coming back around to the quote from earlier, i see a lot of the pressure of late stage capitalism in this. people with downs or autism are seen as less competitive in the marketplace (see the focus on college and jobs), and thus less likely to be happy. complementing this, the process of gathering lots of data and making a choice to minimize perceived inferior traits gives the squeezed middle classes a feeling of control in an out of control world in much the same ways as loading their child up with extracurriculars and college prep i guess my conclusion would be that beyond society providing the material and emotional support to mothers necessary to make them feel secure in having a child, we need to change the lens through which we view success, worthiness, and happiness. which now that i've written it out, feels obvious
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 20:09 |
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I don't have much to add, other then, as someone with a birth defect, the idea of aborting based on imperfection makes me nauseous, but that is entirely a visceral and personal response. I fully believe abortions are healthcare, but the eugenics nature of pre-screening for birth defects gives me pause. Is there a difference between a blind abortion and an abortion after a chromosome test? The feels test is telling me yes. I think ideally, we would live in a society where we will provide the material support for any mother who gives birth to a developmentally delayed child, and provide compensation for the emotional and physical labor of being a mother to all women who chose to have kids. E. Thinking more, in our current society without social guiderails, it would be immoral to not allow women to opt out of the potentially disastrous financial burden of a child with down syndrome. That's hosed, but Famethrowa fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Nov 22, 2020 |
# ? Nov 22, 2020 20:46 |
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However, women shouldn't have to justify any reason they individually choose to have an abortion, any more than anyone needs to justify why anyone else can't have their organs. A person, male or female, has ownership of their own body. "I don't want someone to have my organs, even if they want them," is the same position as "My body should not be commandeered for the production of a child for any reason, even if my objection is as simple as 'I do not want that.'" We can arrange circumstances such that more women's whose objections are, say, economic, are addressed. Or we can adjust our view of what an "accomplished child" looks like. But you can't tell a person "your reasons are bad so you have to do it" any more than you can criticize a person holding on to two kidneys for being selfish and therefore introduce legislation that cedes a person's rights to maintaining a two-kidney orientation.
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 21:10 |
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^^^ Exactly - I feel like there's an unavoidable conflict where there's no way to avoid the "self-selecting eugenics" thing without infringing upon the right for a woman to choose to have an abortion for any reason (or to know about the condition of her own body, which the fetus counts as).Famethrowa posted:I think ideally, we would live in a society where we will provide the material support for any mother who gives birth to a developmentally delayed child, and provide compensation for the emotional and physical labor of being a mother to all women who chose to have kids. There isn't really a way to fully "compensate for emotional labor," though. There are circumstances that you can't really expect a potential parent to willingly subject themselves to (like having a child that is likely to experience immense suffering and/or die at a young age). There are also two sides of the coin with respect to things like "if my mother made this choice, I wouldn't exist." I'm basically the opposite of your situation - my mother got pregnant once before me and the fetus was revealed to have a spinal defect that would have likely resulted in either death as an infant/fetus or a lot of suffering. Since my parents only ever planned on having one child, that abortion essentially resulted in me (I also had a spine issue, but a much more minor one - my mom had me at a pretty late age, so that might have something to do with things). I don't think that is really the most important part of the moral calculus there (I think the most important part is just the way my mother felt about it at the time), but it's worth taking into account the fact that many (probably most) parents will be wanting to have the same number of kids regardless, so having one child will often correspond to not having another child in the future. All that being said, I do think there's an area where the situation becomes a lot more difficult (even using the reasoning above). I definitely think (and I imagine most people in this thread agree) that it's very problematic to abort based upon things like sex or characteristics that don't actually have any health ramifications. This means that a line needs to be drawn somewhere about when it's okay to make such a decision, and I'm not sure where to draw that line. If a fetus has some sort of condition that might cause some problems but not be completely debilitating, the reasoning for "conditional abortion" become weaker. At the same time, though, it feels wrong to deliberately restrict information about the fetus a woman is carrying from her (or to not allow her to have an abortion if the reason isn't "correct" enough). The logic of "it's the woman's body" also applies to the health/condition of the fetus, after all. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Nov 22, 2020 |
# ? Nov 22, 2020 21:32 |
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If we want free and unrestricted abortions, it requires us not to question the motives of the persons having them. As science allows us more and more access to prenatal information, abortions based on this will increase, I believe. Imagine a person having an abortion based on having information that their future child will be predisposed to develop a certain malignant type of cancer, or having a genetic marker that probably will make them homosexual. Would that be ok? Morally I don't think so, but starting to selectively restrict abortions based on whatever moral course society is on at the time will not lead to anything good. This quote:She loves her child, because how can a mother not? “But you love a person that hits you, bites you? If you have a husband that bites you, you can say goodbye … but if you have a child that hits you, you can’t do anything. You can’t just say, ‘I don’t want to be in a relationship.’ Because it’s your child.” hits me in the feels.
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 21:37 |
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Our early genetic screening came back with a high chance of T21 so we had further tests which showed we had another problem instead. Baby is now 3 and perfectly healthy. Had she had T21 we wouldn't have continued with the pregnancy. I had hyperemesis gravidarum, so I couldn't face the idea of another pregnancy, so she was always going to be an only child. We don't have a lot of family and no reason to believe she would suddenly have a lot of cousins who would take her in and look after her when we died. I was in my mid 30s when she was born and her dad was in his mid 40s, if she lived until she was in her 60s, then I'd be in my 90s and probably unable to look after her.
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# ? Nov 22, 2020 21:46 |
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Ytlaya posted:There are also two sides of the coin with respect to things like "if my mother made this choice, I wouldn't exist." I'm basically the opposite of your situation - my mother got pregnant once before me and the fetus was revealed to have a spinal defect that would have likely resulted in either death as an infant/fetus or a lot of suffering. Since my parents only ever planned on having one child, that abortion essentially resulted in me (I also had a spine issue, but a much more minor one - my mom had me at a pretty late age, so that might have something to do with things). I don't think that is really the most important part of the moral calculus there (I think the most important part is just the way my mother felt about it at the time), but it's worth taking into account the fact that many (probably most) parents will be wanting to have the same number of kids regardless, so having one child will often correspond to not having another child in the future. That's an interesting and important point, so thanks for mentioning that also. In this age where family planning is widely practiced, most families do decide "how many", so it's not unreasonable to view it as a substitution, which matters in the context of the quality-of-life rebuttal that life is "better than no life". Quite often, there will probably be a life either way.
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# ? Nov 23, 2020 00:44 |
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Another factor, both mental and logistical, is divorce. Parents of children with Down syndrome (and other "special needs" children) are more likely to wind up divorced, which puts additional pressure on the custodial parent (generally the mother). How do we define a "free" choice? "You're free to have this child, but it will destroy your career" "You're free to go ahead, but it will tear your marriage apart" "You're free to have this child, but good luck navigating the bureaucracy"
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# ? Nov 24, 2020 01:04 |
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no such thing as unconditional love and quite frankly the world needs to acknowledge and accept that.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 13:50 |
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Heavy reading. I think that both sides get shamed more than they have to here. A woman choosing to keep a Down syndrome baby (or other disability) is not a monster who is costing the state money or what have you. (Admittedly this view would be rare on these forums I’d imagine ) A woman choosing to terminate based on Down syndrome or any mental or physical ability is absolutely entitled to do so, and not just because it’s her body or because we can’t restrict abortion for other reasons, but because it is her life and that is what matters more. This is sadly a take I’ve seen on these forums or similar with many debates about this and other conditions in the past. Asking parents to take on the mental physical emotional and yes, financial toll of some of this stuff is really ridiculous, for what? Offending the sensibilities of people who have overcome their own battles? That’s amazing for them but it sure as poo poo isn’t everyone’s story.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 14:26 |
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Part of what makes this subject difficult me (someone in the US) is the fact that states like Tennessee have "prohibited abortions if the doctor knew the patient was seeking an abortion because of [...] a diagnosis or screening that indicated Down syndrome", to quote CNN. While the ban is suppoed to be anti-discrimination with language that also bans abortions based on fetal sex or race, the punishment of up to 15 years in prison just goes to show it's a Trojan Horse to criminalize abortion.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 02:20 |
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teacup posted:Heavy reading. i agree with this and i feel like this issue is interesting to think about but if you have an enlightened society where "a woman has unilateral control over her body" as a fundamental principle, all of the debate in the world cant really create a situation that bypasses it. are there any issues or circumstances where you could morally argue that the state should legislate that a woman shouldnt have the choice to give birth?
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 02:53 |
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A lot of the discussion I've noticed in the thread is currently based on the ethics around the possible practice of screening to inform the mother of a possible disability allowing them to selectively abort that fetus that they would have possibly have carried to term otherwise? Do the ethical considerations change when we consider the very highly likely widespread proliferation of genetic engineering? Technology/techniques like CRISPR and its future derivations might allow for any detected disabilities in the womb to be easily corrected. Does the ethical question being discussed in the thread disappear with future-CRISPR or does it just merely shift laterally?
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 06:18 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:A lot of the discussion I've noticed in the thread is currently based on the ethics around the possible practice of screening to inform the mother of a possible disability allowing them to selectively abort that fetus that they would have possibly have carried to term otherwise? I suppose the ethics become do you wipe out conditions for ever. 99.9% of people would fix something like Down syndrome. Or some heart defect. Other conditions get a lot more controversial. It’s split in deaf communities because with so few people being incurably deaf sign language is dropping off and people aren’t forming the vibrant deaf communities of the past. This has led to some deaf couples intentionally not letting their deaf at birth children get hearing aids. They end up forever growing with an impediment because even if you leave home at 18 and get help it’s too late for your speech etc It’s even more of a thorn bush with neurological issues. We are very far away from diagnosing them in the womb let alone fixing however.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 06:50 |
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teacup posted:They end up forever growing with an impediment because even if you leave home at 18 and get help its too late for your speech etc This has always bothered me about deaf culture, but there is a deaf culture; it's something that can be taught and passed on and celebrated even it's based on the lack of an ability that most people have and deaf people live their lives as any other people do just without the ability to hear. What's the moral calculus on bringing someone into existence you know in advance will have an incurable, debilitating developmental disability that substantially lowers their quality of life forever? That's not a smartass question, it's genuinely troubling to me and I don't have an answer.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 07:01 |
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i think im of the mindset that there is a moral imperative for the state/society/the healthcare system to provide the resources (if they exist) to make those decisions. if CRISPR is capable of modifying the genes of a fetus to fix deafness or blindness or down syndrome and its not outlawed then i think it should be provided to all mothers that want it, unconditionallyThe Oldest Man posted:This has always bothered me about deaf culture, but there is a deaf culture; it's something that can be taught and passed on and celebrated even it's based on the lack of an ability that most people have and deaf people live their lives as any other people do just without the ability to hear. What's the moral calculus on bringing someone into existence you know in advance will have an incurable, debilitating developmental disability that substantially lowers their quality of life forever? i dont know about the moral calculus but i believe i'd be somewhat mad if my parents continued with my existence if they were aware of a major debilitating birth defect and i think i'd be extremely mad if they hosed with my development as a child in that regard. that said, that isnt my life so i can only guess Verviticus fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jan 14, 2021 |
# ? Jan 14, 2021 07:01 |
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And there's the effect of class. Even if you have public services and support available, lower-class people are less likely to know about them or be able to access them. And genetic screening (and/or alteration) is going to be out of most people's reach. If you wind up with some kind of Gattaca-style comprehensive genetic embryo screening, who can afford it, and what sort of stigma attaches to the "naturally" born before/if testing becomes widely available? Considering how our society stigmatizes the poor and stigmatizes the "defective," what happens when those two combine?
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 07:09 |
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The Oldest Man posted:This has always bothered me about deaf culture, but there is a deaf culture; it's something that can be taught and passed on and celebrated even it's based on the lack of an ability that most people have and deaf people live their lives as any other people do just without the ability to hear. What's the moral calculus on bringing someone into existence you know in advance will have an incurable, debilitating developmental disability that substantially lowers their quality of life forever? Preamble: I am assuming that your question only relates to the the person themselves, and that there is no balancing against the quality of life of the parents and social impacts. This question boils down to how you would go about defining where the threshold of quality of life is for a life worth living. This is a obviously very tricky question, and one that I'm finding frustrating to research because of the litany of self-help woo-woo drowning my search results . I'm inclined to be of the opinion that for an outside observer, the bar is surprisingly low, if only because of the consensus that lives of people living in very inhospitable parts of underdeveloped countries are not considered wasted. Verviticus posted:i dont know about the moral calculus but i believe i'd be somewhat mad if my parents continued with my existence if they were aware of a major debilitating birth defect and i think i'd be extremely mad if they hosed with my development as a child in that regard. that said, that isnt my life so i can only guess The bolded part is crucial. Once the minimal threshold is passed, it's the business of the person itself to determine whether their life is worth living, which is unfortunately not helpful at all here since we are talking about prenatal decisions.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 08:46 |
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Aramis posted:Preamble: I am assuming that your question only relates to the the person themselves, and that there is no balancing against the quality of life of the parents and social impacts. Is not the fact that they feel the need to sabotage the child’s ability to make a choice later down the line (by deliberately not providing hearing aids to those who are not incurably deaf) not an implicit acknowledgment of the probable choice of the individual impacted though? It’s essentially a statement that “I know they will not make the choice I would like so I am going to hinder their ability to make the choice I don’t like” in practice. Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Jan 14, 2021 |
# ? Jan 14, 2021 09:17 |
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Aramis posted:
I'm not making a value judgment on the kid or their life, I'm making a moral judgment on the parents. How much pain is it OK to knowingly inflict on someone by bringing them into existence with some debilitating and incurable condition baked in? It feel like it's easy to say the bar is low in this case because Down's is viewed a no-fault condition and all life has innate worth, but what about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome? Is there a point at which the parents simply proceeding with the pregnancy, and what that will mean for the person that will be born, constitutes harm done to that person? Verviticus posted:i dont know about the moral calculus but i believe i'd be somewhat mad if my parents continued with my existence if they were aware of a major debilitating birth defect and i think i'd be extremely mad if they hosed with my development as a child in that regard. that said, that isnt my life so i can only guess I'm in this boat. I don't know if I could ever forgive my parents for knowingly allowing me to be born with a severe developmental disorder, assuming I had the mental capacity to even understand what had been done to me by their decision.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 09:34 |
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This also sorta reminds me of the debate around circumcision.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 09:38 |
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Aramis posted:The bolded part is crucial. Once the minimal threshold is passed, it's the business of the person itself to determine whether their life is worth living, which is unfortunately not helpful at all here since we are talking about prenatal decisions. i think it can be applicable (though maybe less profound) in many childhood situations. why did you make me grow up in an FLDS commune, etc. many of those decisions are de facto prenatal
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 10:16 |
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The Oldest Man posted:This has always bothered me about deaf culture, but there is a deaf culture; it's something that can be taught and passed on and celebrated even it's based on the lack of an ability that most people have and deaf people live their lives as any other people do just without the ability to hear. What's the moral calculus on bringing someone into existence you know in advance will have an incurable, debilitating developmental disability that substantially lowers their quality of life forever? Yeah it’s tricky. And really the deaf one is a real world example that is likely “simpler” than most. Like do we support aborting based on gender? Do we support it based on size? Let’s pretend we can pretty much tell any condition or malady that could ever pop up. Would we abort based on Down syndrome? Cleft palate? Heart defect? Severe brain abnormalities? Non severe? Anti social? Neurodivergent/on the spectrum? These will have different answers for different people. And some people would be aghast at allowing your child to say, be deaf, or not be able to walk ever know you could have either cured the deafness or found out about their disability at 8 weeks and terminated. But then they may be OK with allowing (again hypothetical, we can’t tell this in the womb) their baby have a cleft palate because they knew someone and they got along fine with it. It’s complicated and I also don’t know the answer. I just know that when my wife was pregnant and still to this day I would do anything to ensure she leads as normal a life as possible.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 11:01 |
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As someone with mental and physical disabilities, as someone who has cost his parents significant time and money beyond that of a normal upbringing, as someone who had themselves voluntarily sterilized to avoid passing on defective genes, these sorts of debates strike close to home.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 13:15 |
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Parents want their children to be like them. This bias is inherent to humanity. At least there isn't a gay gene, or people would be trying to eliminate that.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 16:21 |
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Mycroft Holmes posted:As someone with mental and physical disabilities, as someone who has cost his parents significant time and money beyond that of a normal upbringing, as someone who had themselves voluntarily sterilized to avoid passing on defective genes, these sorts of debates strike close to home. I think everyone who posts here would be extremely interested in your perspective.
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# ? Jan 14, 2021 20:49 |
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The Oldest Man posted:I think everyone who posts here would be extremely interested in your perspective. Well, I support the mothers right to choose. I personally believe my parents would have been happier with a child without disabilities, despite their protestations to the contrary. I had a vasectomy so there's no chance I could have a child, partly because any child would have health problems.
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# ? Jan 15, 2021 09:01 |
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To add to the initial article, I want to expand a bit on the show colloquially known as "Morten og Peter". It wasn't just like, a regular show hosted by two people with Downs' Syndrome, but a series of documentaries of their daily lives stretching from their early teens (1991) to late thirties (2013), and it's been extremely popular. The average viewership, stretched out over a handful of reruns, is about the equivalent to half a Super Bowl and pretty consistent across time. I wonder if perhaps it has had an impact on this: Children with Downs' born after having tested positive (percentage) The show has done a lot to demystify Downs', showing the two* as essentially "normal", with their relative lack of filter putting extremely relatable emotions front and center. I imagine the effect of the show has probably been as close to a normalization of having Downs' Syndrome as you can find anywhere in the world, and in a relative sense it does seem to have shifted opinions quite a lot, but the vast majority still go for the abortion. *Technically there were three, but the girl/woman seems to have been sidelined (or chosen to leave). Verviticus posted:i dont know about the moral calculus but i believe i'd be somewhat mad if my parents continued with my existence if they were aware of a major debilitating birth defect and i think i'd be extremely mad if they hosed with my development as a child in that regard. that said, that isnt my life so i can only guess teacup posted:Yeah its tricky. And really the deaf one is a real world example that is likely simpler than most.
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# ? Jan 16, 2021 09:23 |
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Your disorder is someone else’s “disorder” though. Including deaf people. Where do you draw the line?
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# ? Jan 16, 2021 12:38 |
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teacup posted:Your disorder is someone else’s “disorder” though. Including deaf people. Where do you draw the line?
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# ? Jan 16, 2021 13:27 |
I basically never post in D&D but as someone whose struggled immensely in school due to learning disabilities if genetic engineering could eliminate those disabilities id be completely in favor of it. Lots of people like to make hay about how morally unjust it might be metaphysically, but at the end of the day the shear amount of suffering you need to go through to make it in society as a disabled person makes me feel like that's missing the forest for the trees. It's fundamentally not the same as the "well if we could engineer peoples genomes to prevent ADHD why not do it to prevent homosexuality?" either because the latter may impact your ability to integrate socially into society (depending on the society), but ADHD will always negatively affect your ability to do everything. And no. It shouldn't be the parents choice. Abortion is fine. Making someone live 90 years of poo poo because you were too high and mighty to take the fix for your kid is loving abhorrent. Hell even when they are born theres tons of parents that patently refuse to acknowledge their child has a disability!! It sucks rear end!!
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# ? Jan 16, 2021 17:45 |
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# ? May 6, 2024 20:28 |
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Ok, as a person with a couple of developmental disabilities (not Down's syndrome), I think some of these takes suck and seem pretty eugenicist. Society is ableist, and is structured so it's not accessible to a lot of people. That doesn't mean you remove the people that society is inaccessible for, it means you make a less lovely society. I don't want to be "fixed" on the developmental disability front because I've gotten myself into a niche where I can succeed-- and I recognize that not everyone is as lucky or as privileged as I am, but again, that speaks to improving society, not getting rid of people who are different. I think a lot of the concern about having disabled children comes from the lack of social support available to parents, and if you want to have a debate about the circumstances of disabled people, then the entrenched ableism in our society is the first place to start. I have a buddy with similar issues to me. He's on social support. His life, as a result, is very very different than mine, but that's because our "social support" is actually entrenched poverty due to ableism. If disabled people can't work, our lives are seen as less, which is quite frankly, the major problem in my opinion. There's also a marked unwillingness on the part of various governments to support families who can't draw on extended relatives or hired help, even when doing so would be of greater social benefit to society. Edit: to the point about most of the child care and support for disabled children coming from women, this is accurate and a very valid concern, and speaks to the need for increased support to women and families. Also, as a disabled person, I will have a genetic child, assuming my body cooperates on that front. It may not, and I may adopt instead. But fundamentally, my life as a disabled person has been good, and honestly a lot better than abled people in lower socioeconomic statuses. I don't see the decision to have disabled children as being a moral decision, really, because even with all the information available, it's never 100% and there are always degrees of disability. And people acquire disabilities on a very very regular basis, with approximately 22% of people ending up experiencing disability in their life. The idea that there's a 1/4 chance of a child/person experiencing disability over a lifetime, and this is a moral decision is kinda...weird imo. Lien fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jan 16, 2021 |
# ? Jan 16, 2021 19:15 |