Part 2: what if you found out their diagnosis 1 week after birth
Abortion is fine no matter what, but in particular for this case yes; Down’s syndrome isn’t the almond eyed happy somewhat simple child that Facebook memes make it out to be. They can have awful congenital heart disease, they have a much larger chance of getting leukemia, and they age seemingly twice as fast, a Down’s syndrome person in their forties is incredibly frail. They’re happy enough people and can often enjoy a good quality of life, there’s a guy who is a bartender in Buffalo at a Mexican restaurant who makes amazing drinks, for one, and there’s nothing wrong with having a child with Down’s if you want, but if you find out you are pregnant with a baby with Down’s you really should see medical genetics and have a fetal echo and maternal fetal medicine and ensure you make a decision that works for you. There are Down’s syndrome babies who never leave the hospital because of the comorbidities.
Every time you don’t want to have a kid for whatever reason is ethical to abort.
What’s not ethical is to have a child you don’t really want.
Part 1: GOD YES!!!
Part 2: And thus my long watch has begun.
Yes
This is a decision made by the pregnant person, informed by her/their doctor. I can also see her/their family having some input in informing the pregnant person’s decision, to the extent that they are not being coerced by their family.
As far as outside agents, such as ourselves, are involved, pregnancy is a medical issue. This is the only responsible way for society to handle these questions. Society is able to provide support for parents, esp those who are caretakers of children with severe disabilities, and we can improve education and access to contraceptives. But it is irresponsible and unethical to become involved in the medical decisions of others under any circumstances.
If we really care about unborn children we should care doubly about born children and the families who take on the responsibility of ensuring those disabled individuals are able to experience love and joy. Trying to collapse ethics and morals into pure individual choice is a scam.
Yes.
Part 1: yes, abort
Pat 2: you’d have to be blind to not see that your child has down syndrome for a week. Not much you can do at this point outside of putting the child in the system to be abused and abandoned or murdering it so this is the point where I become stuck with a mentally challenged child.
These are always technology problems more than moral problems. The issue is our technology is too shit currently to fix the genetic disease. Same with abortion generally. If we had artificial wombs then we could even have late term abortions and birth the child to be adopted and yes there is a shortage of babies to be adopted.
and yes there is a shortage of babies to be adopted.
So adopt literally anyone besides a baby instead. The issue is that adoption is almost singularly focused on babies, while the foster system is falling apart at the seams due to being overfilled and underfunded. In the foster system, any child older than 4 is considered a “late” adoption.
The sad reality is that if a baby doesn’t already have adoptive parents waiting for them when they’re born, they likely won’t ever get adopted. Because adoptive parents are entirely focused on adopting babies. And that really says more about the adoptive parents, because it means they’re adopting for their own sake, instead of the child’s. It’s selfish to sit on an adoption list for years to get a baby, instead of simply adopting a toddler who needs a home. The sheer level of arrogance and narcissism on display is honestly astounding. Adoptive parents see a system bursting with kids who need a home, and then go “nah, make a new one just for us. We want that bun straight out of the oven.” It’s honestly disgusting.
It is, I mean unless we start forcing people to adopt kids they don’t want to adopt or something else I’m not sure that will change anytime soon. As for me in my family it’s more like accidental adoptions aka a more distant family member can’t take care of their kid whose 10 then someone else takes them in. It worked that way with family friend’s kids as well. It’s not like official legal guardianship or adoption, more so an informal familial help.
There’s very much an ethical problem here. Sure, it’s fairly clear-cut with some debilitating genetic issues. But there’s a point at which you’re veering into eugenics, and that’s sooner than people think.
Take children who are deaf due to a genetic defect. I’m sure most parents imagine being deaf a terrible lot in life that they’d like to spare their kids from.
Then listen to actual members of the deaf community. They’re proud of their identity, they have their own language, and they’re terrified of the prospect of being essentially eliminated in just a few generations by well-meaning folks that can’t imagine a happy life as a deaf person.
What if we discover a few years from now that there are genetic markers for being queer? What if we can genetically engineer people to be thinner, more muscular, have a more attractive bone structure, lighter skin? Those are all things that offer an objectively more comfortable life, which I’m sure many parents would want for their kids without much thought given to what the societal implications are.
And what if this technology becomes available to a charismatic cult leader, a narcissistic tech CEO, a fascist regime?
Such technology doesn’t just fix genetic diseases. In a hierarchical global society that measures people’s worth by their body rather than their character, it eliminates human diversity.
Yes designer babies are totally going to be a thing. The ethical discussion we had about this in college boiled down to it being ethical if and only if an individual could choose to undo and redo the changes as they desire.
I’ve run into that argument from the deaf community. It’s a tough one, should a community of people have more of a say over what health outcomes are chosen than the parents of said child?
Ultimately technology should make whatever one wills be (short of causing suffering to other minds). Anything less than this is insufficient or otherwise broken technology. Theoretically if we had sufficient technology one could take any form whatsoever they desire at any moment with any senses they desire and so on. Now it’s a quite far fetched concept short of us gaining the ability to digitize our minds or otherwise inhabit simulated realities. To achieve this in physical reality would be quite difficult.
The issue you’re really getting at is the unequal spread of technology and our current technological limitations. Minds should be maximally free to experience whatever they desire short of causing other minds suffering.
I think that this decision is taken by the mother, and no one else.
What else does it bring if I keep the one-week-old baby alive but suffering to not only himself but all people around him: parents, grandparents, annoyed neighbours, teachers in special schools, eventually indifferent docters?
If it’s guaranteed Hitler will do what he will do, will you kill infant Hitler when you travel back in time? The example in part 2 is just a milder Hitler.
Killing your unborn baby is still killing. If the child can grow up, live a live, see parents, have friends and laugh, then it is unethical to abort.
We part, we choice
If it’s ethical to abort just because you don’t want the kid (and it is), then it’s ethical to abort for any reason.
Also, it’s no one’s business why people choose to abort.
In my country it is legal to abort just because you don’t want the kid, but illegal to abort for a certain specific reason (the parents not wanting a girl). This is because people might abort daughters if they are poor and think that girls are less likely to get jobs.
I feel that the Down’s Syndrome case is similar. There are people with Down’s Syndrome who lead happy lives, and genetically ‘normal’ people who lead miserable lives. So of course a mother has the right to abort a foetus. But I fear that if we normalise aborting children on genetic grounds, that could lead to eugenics.
it’s no one’s business why people choose to abort.
This. The only answer to “why” is “fuck off”, and for so many reasons. It’d suck to agonize over the decision, and once it’s made to then be second-guessed by some rando.
I mean more like “is a life of suffering worth living and would a parent want that for their kid” rather than the ethics of abortion
Preventing incurable pain and suffering to a conscious being is ethical. There is dignity in both life and death.
It’s kinda besides the point. If a woman wants an abortion she should get an abortion. Downs syndrome or not, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t mean in a her body her choice kinda way, I mean is it more ethical to let them live their natural life knowing that they would possibly suffer immensely vs not letting them live a life at all
Personally I think having children as a whole is unethical 🤷♂️
So you’re asking should all prior with special needs be terminated so they don’t suffer? Should all poor people?
Kinda slippery slope there tbh…
I think that anyone who isn’t ready to be a parent should have that option not to. Special needs or not. Forced birth and zero support after is terrible.
I think it’s ethical to abort if your fetus is perfectly healthy.
