In some cases, they just don’t know. The invasive tests (amnio, CVS) can tell you for sure, but they carry a risk of miscarriage and are generally only done for high risk pregnancies. The non-invasive tests just give you odds. I have a 1 in 10,000 chance my baby has DS. It’s good odds, but now and then someone gets called on them.
Sometimes people end up in heartbreaking situations. Lets say you have a 1 in 300 risk, but it’s taken you years and thousands of dollars to conceive. Do you take the 1% risk of miscarriage to know for sure, or do you take your chances?
In other cases, the families are open to raising a DS child. By most accounts, Downs Syndrome children are generally happy, loving people who can bring a lot of joy into their families. Treatment has improved a lot in the past decades, and I thin the life expectancy is now 60.
My rude questions are also judgemental questions; if I hear someone has lung cancer, I want to ask them if they’re a smoker. If I hear someone hurt themselves badly on a motorcycle, I want to ask if they were wearing a helmet (or if they were doing something stupid when they got hurt).
I also frequently want to ask people if they got their driver’s licences by mail.
I think I’ve read that most couples (like, by far) choose to terminate when faced with that decision. I wonder how she feels about the couple who won something like $3 million in a “wrongful birth” lawsuit when their kid was born with Down Syndrome despite having gone through a CVS that came back normal.
There’s a big difference between being born with just a brain stem and DS. I work for experts in the ID field, and they agree that as a group people with DS are better off than any other group of people with intellectual disabilities, at least in regards with how much they can achieve in life. Most of them fall within the mild range, and they can read and write, have a job, live with a roommate instead of a group home etc.
But anyway, as for rude questions…when I hear that so-and-so lost 100 or 200 pounds, I’m not terribly impressed. I mean, I’m glad they did because it has to improve their quality of life, but I still want to know how they managed to let their weight get that out of hand, and what made them finally decide to do something about it. 10, maybe even 20 pounds, I guess that can creep up on you, but not triple digit amounts.
I don’t think that overcoming an addiction is anything heroic either. (grabs flameproof suit) Yes, I know addiction is a disease, but it’s a disease you do to yourself.
The reason I started smoking was stupid as hell: I was curious. I continued to be stupid as I continued to smoke.
I’d say the effort to quit can vary widely depending on the person. I had to try multiple times, with aids (patches). My father in law had a major lung infection that nearly killed him. He got to experience being intubated, as well as the embarrassment of being on oxygen for a while afterwards. He started smoking again as soon as he was home.
So yeah, we’re idiots, but addiction is no laughing matter. I’ve been smoke-free for two years and three months, and I feel like a survivor.
I’m sure those who have dealt in alcoholism would tell you something similar.
Obesity, to me is a somewhat different animal though. Some do suffer from eating disorders that could be construed as being “addicted to food”. I do believe there are many who do simply lack the willpower to give a damn, throttle their intake and get off their asses though.
This, like so many things in life, is rarely ever one or the other.
I’ve heard about people who had bariatric surgery, and replaced overeating with some other compusive behavior - gambling, hoarding, drinking (which often led to regaining some or all of the weight), etc. I also have a friend who’s worked in the substance abuse treatment field, and she said it’s not uncommon for people to stop drinking or using drugs, and some other compulsive behavior takes over; men and women are equally likely to become hypersexual or overly religious; women are more likely to develop eating disorders, and men are more likely to gamble compulsively.
I have also personally known people who deliberately became obese to get out of obligations, whether it was family responsibility, sex, or whatever.
Oh, I know, and I wasn’t trying to equate the two as much as just giving examples, in addition to the mermaid syndrome in the OP, of birth defects a couple can be aware of fairly early in a pregnancy.
I’ve never been faced with such difficult decisions as “Hey, your baby is lacking a critical anatomical structure” but I’m pretty confident I would terminate if I was given any indication that the child probably would not survive infancy. My last pregnancy had some perceived anomalies that seemed to indicate DS and, of course, there was a conversation at that time but terminating didn’t seem like a necessity to me and was never really discussed as an option. So many people do terminate though that I wonder at the rationale for people who don’t. For me, I wasn’t willing to undergo invasive testing and the quad screen came back with some reassurance so we took a, “Well, whatever happens…” approach.
