Ever seen a baby with alobar holoprosencephaly? (Warning: do NOT google unless you have a very strong stomach.)
Some parents insist on having kids with some very severe birth defects, where the kid does nothing but suffer 24/7/365. Look up Matthew Manuel Nel. This kid, who has been dubbed a “miracle” by his parents, suffers from holoprosencephaly, epilepsy, cleft lip, and diabetes. He does nothing but seize, choke, gag, and vomit. He can’t sleep more than an hour at a time, his temperature is unable to regulate, and he’s on a respirator. Imagine a life like that. A life where you do nothing but lie in pain all day, you constantly gasp for breath, you’re always seizing and vomiting, you can’t even sleep to get away from the pain.
But he’s a miracle. I know he’s their son, and I know they love him. But they’re torturing that poor thing.
This is the next step.
Quite frankly, if people give those reasons for having an abortion, they’re probably better off NOT being a parent.
There’s lots of reasons for getting an abortion that pro-choice people are, in general, okay with. “I don’t want a child,” is right at the top. “I can’t afford a child,” and “This child would have fatal birth defects if brought to term,” are also good ones. I’m also “okay” with the reasons you listed here, in the sense that I don’t think they’re grounds for denying someone access to an abortion.
I can’t find the text of the bill, but according to this article:
Still leaves open the question of how one determines why the doctor agreed to perform the abortion, but the women are not targeted by this bill. That seems to be the norm for such proposed laws.
It’s the norm for such laws because they’d have no support otherwise. But that’s not what the anti-abortion crowd has in mind. They believe abortion is murder and have no way to justify allowing women to be an accessory murder without suffering any consequences. They don’t need one either, because that’s not their intention.
No, it is. It’s not their current stated intention, but that’s a lie. There’s no moderate anti-abortion movement. Every one of these measures is intended as a step to making all abortions illegal, and charging women and their doctors with murder. Just listen to them, they don’t say “abortion is a minor fourth degree felony”, they say “abortion is murder”, and they mean it.
Many things are legal - and should remain so - that most of us would agree are morally wrong.
Aborting a fetus because you’re unhappy about its sex? Yeah, most of us wouldn’t think that was cool at all. But should a woman have the right to do so? Absolutely. A woman should have the right to abort before viability for any reason, or for no reason at all. It’s called ‘choice.’ Her choice.
But the rest of us have the right to our opinions about the choices other people make.
bolding mine
<nitpick from a geneticist>
Sometimes Down Syndrome is not the result of abnormal cell division in the present generation. Ring chromosomes and other genetic weirdness can occur in prior generations resulting in a heritable form of DS in which the cell division was normal in the present generation.
IMHO it would prove near impossible to actually prove the timing of the genetic event which caused Down Syndrome making the law, as written, unenforceable even if it were somehow constitutional - which its not.
</nitpick from a geneticist>
OK, but I’m not sure how that would apply to the law. The part you bolded was from an article about the bill, not from the bill itself. Or am I missing the point you’re trying to make?
I don’t agree with this at all. Reasons usually fall into one of two categories: “I do not want a baby (right now / ever)” and “There is something about this specific baby that I do not want.” While most everyone who is pro-choice is totally comfortable with the former reason, the latter one can cause some angst. By saying “this particular person should not come into existence”, it challenges our sense of the equal worth and dignity of all people.
As for me, I’d support the pro-choice perspective regardless of reason, but I would personally think much less of someone who aborted a fetus because of homosexuality or deafness or sex. I would be much more sympathetic to someone who aborted because of a severe genetic abnormality.
Isn’t this up to the parents? If I were a pregnant mother knowing my baby would have Downs I would at least like the option to abort and try again for a child without the syndrome.