Independent of the current US jurisprudence on abortion, should women be allowed to abort a Down Syndrome fetus?
Given the current US jurisprudence, and going by stare decisis, would the courts uphold or strike down such a law?
Given the current make-up of the SCOTUS, would they strike down such a law?
From my persecutive:
Yes. I have no problem with abortion on demand (before viability) for any reason or no reason. If the woman wants to abort because the baby, when born, will have blue eyes, that’s her prerogative. We should not tell a woman how she must make the choice to abort or not as long as the fetus is pre-viability. Things get more complicated post-viability, and I don’t have a problem telling a woman she must carry a viable fetus to term unless there is some risk (beyond the normal risks of any pregnancy) to her life or health.
Strike down. The courts are quite clear that abortion up to a certain point is the decision of the mother. There are no restrictions placed on abortions up “T” point in time (which I believe is viability, or somewhere around 20 weeks +/-). Putting in place a “no abortion under this particular condition of a pre-viable fetus” rule would be breaking with the existing jurisprudence.
Strike down. Kennedy (and maybe Roberts) would be the swing vote, and I haven’t seen anything from Kennedy to indicate he would support a restriction on pre-viable fetuses.
If someone wishes to do this debate under the laws of a different country, feel free. I’m not as familiar with abortion law outside the US as inside, so I didn’t frame things more generally.
A woman should be able to abort for whatever reasons she wants. Full stop.
We as a society have to accept, that in very rare instances, some women will choose to abort for less than moral or ethical reasons. And that’s okay, because we are not the ones who have to live with those decisions on our conscience.
That said, I don’t think aborting because of DS makes one immoral or unethical.
Yes, women (and any adult of sound mind) should have total control of who and what gets to enter and/or remain inside their body, and should be able to evict them at any time and for any reason. I’ll note (as I have in other threads) that this implies the right to end a pregnancy at any time, even at 9 months, but does not necessarily the right to kill. Ending a pregnancy does not always require killing anyone or anything.
I’m generally against abortion (I’d rather we work to reduce the need).
I work with alot of wonderful people with downs.
Now after saying that I can see why a couple would not want to deal with all the issues with downs and might choose to abort. To me, this is between them, their unborn child, their doctor, and God.
Just like any abortion, it should be a woman’s choice. (Besides, Downs can be very mild, or very severe.)
And what’s to stop the law from deciding to restrict a woman from aborting for other possible birth defects? Read some stories out there about so-called “miracle babies”, which are anything but. We’re talking about babies that do nothing but seize, vomit, choke, gag, and gasp all day long.
This is only another attempt to restrict a woman’s right to choose. Period.
I heard that on the news, and I find it confusing. Down Syndrome is, AFAIK, a spontaneous mutation. You can’t irradiate it in the sense of irradiating a disease. You’ll have to continue monitoring and aborting in order to not have future occurrences. You can’t “cleanse the gene pool” of Down Syndrome… can you?
I’m strongly pro-life, and oppose nearly all abortions. That being said, this proposed law isn’t very logical. It is tantamount to saying that if a woman wants to abort a normal baby, that she should be free to do so, but if she wants to abort a baby with Down’s Syndrome, she can’t. How does that make any sense?
I am 100% against irradiating people with Down Syndrome.
But seriously, I don’t think they’re “eradicating” it the way we’ve almost eradicated small pox. I think they just mean that, through pre-natal screening and selective abortion, virtually no new children are being born that have Down Syndrome. Presumably, if these two practices stop, the number of children with DS will start increasing again.
Not to derail the thread, but the only logical conclusion I can read out of this is that if a woman wants to end her pregnancy (but doesn’t have the right to kill,) then what happens is some kind of surgical operation to remove the intact fetus alive from her uterus? (In which case, how is the pregnancy “ended”, any more than how childbirth “ends” pregnancy?) Because I am baffled and can’t see how you reconcile those two statements otherwise.
Looks like the tests for Down Syndrome take place well before the 25th week, which is about the point where it has enough of a human brain that I would consider it to be a person. So no, it should not be illegal to abort before then.
That is true. Although there have been some instances of men with Downs fathering children they are typically “mosaic” Downs, meaning not all cells in their body carry the defect. Women with Downs typically have half the fertility of women without the abnormality. And, needless to say, in people with this disorder there are issues about whether or not consent to sex can be given. Should a person with Downs manage to reproduce there is a 50/50 chance of them passing on a double-21 chromosome so it is heritable, but the vast majority of people with Downs are the result of spontaneous mutations, not something passed down from a prior generation. Even if you prevented every embryo with Downs from reaching viability you would have to continue to test and monitor forever because the mutation will keep occurring.
I trust this bill also provides government support for the children who they are forcing mothers to bear, and who will probably need additional care over what is ordinary.
Sure it does.
Maybe we can force the scum who voted for this bill to adopt the kids.
Yeah, I forgot to mention that - once again, the people voting for the birth of these children are not the people who have to pay for the extra costs. Maybe if they did, they’d be less eager to tell other people what to do.
Most people are against certain types of abortion (later term). Do you expect them to adopt the babies once they are born, too?
That argument comes up in almost every abortion debate, and I find it to be completed empty. If you think you shouldn’t kill someone, that doesn’t make you’re responsible for supporting that someone later on. Anyway, that’s a hijack of the topic, so I’ll let anyone else who wants have the last word. I won’t participate in that hijack beyond this one post.
I am sure that you support laws preventing mothers of newborn children from throwing them into dumpsters and leaving them to die. Since you support those laws, are you going to now adopt the child or pay the mother money?
