After all every sperm is sacred.
Not the best example. Professor Hawking has added quite a lot to the pool of human knowledge. I’d consider that a meaningful contribution.
Interesting, though, how the perception of how one usefully contributes to human society has changed over time. Used to be someone who was simple or an idiot but was in decent physical condition was worth more in the eyes of society than someone who was sound of mind, but crippled in body. The more technologically advanced we get, the less physical impairments stand in the way of a person contributing back to society and the more mental disabilities do.
There is no “flaw”; it’s just that you can’t admit it’s applicability without admitting just how silly your anti-abortion views are.
The fact that other people talk about other disabilities DOES, however. And you don’t seem to me to be talking about Down’s Syndrome; you are oscillating between Down’s Syndrome, abortion and other disabilities in a rather inconsistent fashion, designed to support your anti-abortion stance. Such as :
I have no idea, nor do I care. And you are attempting to deflect my point : that the fetus - which is what I was talking about, and what you supposedly value so much as an anti-abortionist, has no mind. You have no good response to that, so you try to pretend the subject was Down’s syndrome.
In other words, you can’t properly answer my argument ( being completely wrong will do that ), so you produce a non-answer.
I know three families who are (or have) taken care of their special needs children. One of my friends has three kids, all hers, and all have varying degrees of developmental issues. One is never going to be more than about 5 years old, mentally. These aren’t wealthy people, but they’re not destitute, either. These people are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they abort, they’re playing the “perfect society” game, a la Hitler. If they don’t abort, they’re guilty of being irresponsible. I don’t see it as either. It is what it is. I’d venture to guess that most people who have amnio tests and decide to go through with the pregnancy are taking care of their children for the most part, with the help of special ed classes and vocational programs. Those who are surprised by the birth and who are emotionally or financially unable to care for them are more likely the ones who institutionalize the children.
You can say the same for the person who never amounts to more than a burger flipper or screw-inserter. There are plenty of lifetime minimum wage earners in society who never get past the one-foot-on-the-bottom-rung stage. That’s life. We all have different ideas regarding “objective value” to society. Someone has to be the CEO and someone has to do the grunt work. Most of us fall somewhere in between, and many of us do very little for society as a whole. It might not be much, but we are equipped to pick up the slack and do so for the very reason that “value” means different things to different people.
I’d like to see what the huge impact is on society that we would chastise the few people who knowingly choose to go full-term with an imperfect pregnancy.
Ah, but he’s completely disabled, he can barely move and certainly can’t physically take of himself.
What I was responding to was this:
That statement was not qualified as “mentally disabled”. Professor Hawking is a well known example of someone “severely” disabled who does manage to make a living.
Likewise, while I doubt anyone with Down’s will one day replace Professor Hawking as Lucasian Chair I know for a fact that they aren’t all drooling non-entities staring in a corner all day. The bagger at my local grocery store who has Downs is cheerful and she works hard - she does a better job than some of the “normal” people she works with. Is she fully independent? I have no idea, but she’s “contributing” as much as any other person who has the same job. If that’s not enough to justify her existence then how do you justify the existence of mentally normal people who also bag groceries for a living?
I think the OP punches a pseudo-strawman when she makes this just about DS. DS is a spectrum disability. Few people would advocate wholesale elimination of DS fetuses…though I can understand the belief that it would be irresponsible for a parent to knowingly give birth to said child without being financially and emotionally prepared for the challenges. Unfortunately, nature is rife with conditions that are eleventy-billion times worse than DS. What is the OPer’s stance on those situations?
For pity’s sake, who in this country actually pays for EVERYTHING for their children?
How many normal children receive financial aid to go to college?
We should discontinue those free lunch at school programs for poor children - if their parents can’t afford to feed them, let them starve!
For that matter - abolish public schools, parents should foot the entire bill for their children’s education and if they can’t afford private schools from kindergarten through college they shouldn’t reproduce!
Let’s get rid of unemployment - if adult children lose their jobs their parents should take care of them instead of burdening society.
Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but we all “pitch in” to some degree for pretty much every child as he or she grows up, with no guarantee society will get a return on its investment. Is someone with Downs more or less of a burden than, say, someone who is incarcerated for life at the age of 20? How about the cost of educating someone through college only to have them turn into a homeless alcoholic?
It is in district files that are available to the public through the proper channels. “Public record” does not always mean “available online.” Do a little happy dance and declare yourself victorious, if you like. In the end whether you believe the truth of what I work with on a daily basis still doesn’t matter. Putting district information on a public discussion board solely for the sake of convincing you about an inconsequential side argument in a larger inconsequential argument has no upside.
Whatever.
I only mentioned Downs in the OP. I have used other examples, mostly when someone else brought them up first, but I focused on Downs for a reason. That reason is because Downs people are clearly disabled, but not in the sense that their lives are full of suffering, and not in the sense where they are incapable of any contribution at all. The blogs I linked to were discussing Downs specifically, and I was interested to hear any additional argument for why a person with that type of disability doesn’t deserve to live. There’s clearly a difference between various disabilities, and I don’t see how it’s possible to lump them into one big pile under the word “disability” and apply ethics across the board to all of them. You keep talking about how it’s wrong to bring people into the world to suffer, but you haven’t explained how this applies to Downs people.
It doesn’t have a mind? Cite, please?
So you are saying there is no difference biologically between a sperm and a fetus?
Certainly no upside for you, but the rest of us would like to know how your little corner of the world relates to the rest of us. My guess is it is either a one-off kind of district or you are exaggerating the true burden it puts on society.
As I explained in the response to Der Trihs, I picked Downs on purpose because of the fact that most people with it are not severely disabled (and, of course, because Downs is in the public eye right now).
I mentioned above somewhere that I think that there are situations where it may be more justifiable to terminate a pregnancy. I can’t cover every possibility, of course, but I would say that a situation where the person is likely to be in extreme pain would be a good place to start. As far as mental deficiencies go, I think that if the person will be able to communicate with others at least to the level of a small child, it is wrong to consider them undeserving of a chance to live.
My guess is that people who are capable of working and don’t for whatever reason have a much greater impact.
I agree. With the advantage of amnio testing, the number of surprise DS babies is much lower than it was back in the day. The number of slacker people living in their mother’s basement is exponentially higher. While I wouldn’t proceed with a DS pregnancy myself, I think it’s incorrect (and socially dangerous) to suggest that the decision to go forward with one is anything more than a personal decision. I don’t look at the act of conception as a good enough reason in and of itself for going through with any pregnancy (for myself.) But I also wouldn’t consider making that choice for another woman, nor would I judge her, whatever her reason might be. I just think the “burden” argument is a non-issue. I can name a thousand things that we as a society do that are more harmful to the group than a lifetime of support to a handful of DS people is. I don’t think either choice is a statement about society. It is simply a small piece in our society’s complex structure. I feel no need to eliminate them from society, nor do I believe their existence amounts to cruelty or suffering.
And yet I haven’t seen you tackle what seems to be Ted Kennedy’s argument, at least from what we can read from the legislation he supported. While we may support choice, when choice is led by unenlightened attitudes toward Downs Syndrome leads to many of these pregnancies being aborted wholesale - that problem may be lessened by better information and counseling.
I don’t think anyone on this board would accuse Kennedy of being a pro-lifer - would you?
I’m going to take quotes from two different posts here:
Well, an egg that, if fertilized, might develop into a fetus and eventually a baby with Down’s syndrome is also “THERE”. A zygote doesn’t pop into existence via spontaneous generation. If you want to attribute special significance to the moment of conception then that’s your business, but it is NOT a moment where something suddenly exists when before there was nothing.
Sarahfeena, if you really believe that a fetus is a person then I don’t think you really can be interested in hearing arguments from most pro-choice people. Speaking for myself, I do not harbor some special hatred towards Down’s syndrome fetuses. I just don’t believe that any fetus is a person, or that any fetus has a “right to life” – at least not a right that outweighs a woman’s “right to choose”. I support the right of a woman to abort a perfectly healthy fetus, so why should I feel differently about a fetus that isn’t healthy?
Now, if we’re talking about choices I’d agree with rather than just choices I feel should be legal, then I only agree with the choice to have an abortion if there is a good reason for it. However, I don’t feel that anyone is in a better position to decide what counts as a “good reason” than the pregnant woman herself. If a pregnant woman feels that, in her situation, Down’s syndrome is enough of a reason to abort then she has that right. If she doesn’t feel it’s enough of a reason and would rather continue with the pregnancy, she has that right too.
I support the right of Sarah Palin to choose NOT have an abortion, even though this is a choice she’d deny me.
I don’t think I ever said something exists when before there was nothing, but rather that something new exists that didn’t before. That is, it’s inherently different from what existed before.
I don’t think this is fair. I have been hearing arguments from pro-choice people, and I believe I have been responding in a reasonable manner, according to my own opinions. I stated my POV in the OP, and stated what I wanted to know what other people think about it. Even pro-choice people have differing opinions regarding what constitutes a situation where abortion is justified. Additionally, there are apparently people who believe that it’s not only justified but ethically correct in this particular situation. I was interested in hearing what the arguments for and against this are.
As I said earlier, I think this reflects the underlying philosophy that pro-choice is based on. It’s not my personal philosophy, but I can appreciate the consistency and the sentiment behind it.
Pro-choice is exactly what it sounds like. For me, it is the right to carry or abort any fetus for any reason. I don’t consider a fetus a person so it doesn’t matter to me what the reason is; either to abort or to go full term. The effect either choice has on society at large (ethically or financially) is overridden by the woman’s right to control of her body her opinion regarding what is best for her. “Responsibility”, in these cases is solely up to the mother to determine.
I suppose someone could make an argument that if you “should” abort known DS fetuses because of their impact on society, you could also argue that “surprise” DS babies should be legally euthanized. I doubt anyone here wants to take that argument, but the logic would certainly carry over.
I certainly agree that a zygote is different from sperm or an unfertilized egg, but I don’t see a great moral distinction between eliminating one and eliminating the others. If you do, again, your business, but I don’t find “It’s more wrong to eliminate it now that it’s different” to be very persuasive.
*I’m sorry, that may have come across as harsher than I intended. What I meant was that if you believe a fetus is a person, it’s unlikely that an argument a pro-choice person could come up with would be compelling to you. Similarly, if someone does not believe a fetus is a person, they are not going to be persuaded by arguments that rest on the assumption that it is. I think the discussion you want to have is one in which both sides are doomed to be talking past each other, and I don’t see much point in that.
If you’re looking for people who specifically believe that women pregnant with fetuses that have genetic disorders should be forced to abort then I don’t think you’ll find many. It’s not a common position. To answer the questions with which you closed your OP, I do not see a great moral problem with a woman choosing to give birth to a disabled child that she is capable of caring for. This appears to be the case with Palin. I do not believe there is any “moral imperative” that would require a woman to carry even a healthy fetus to term, much less a disabled one.
However, I am inclined to say that a woman who wants and is capable of supporting a large family, who is willing and able to raise a disabled child, and who believes that adoption is the best solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies and that abortion shouldn’t even be a legal option, is a hypocrite if she doesn’t practice what she preaches. I’d have some respect for Palin if she’d adopted a baby with Down’s syndrome, but she doesn’t win any points from me for not doing something she considers murder.
I understand, but please realize that I wasn’t attempting to persuade anyone of that (it’s not really the point of this thread). What I was responding to was **Der Trihs’**assertion that if I believe that it’s morally wrong to abort a zygote, then I will naturally continue that to saying it’s morally wrong to kill sperm. This assertion ignores the fact that 1) I understand the biological difference between sperm and zygotes, and 2) I believe that that biological difference creates a moral difference. Whether or not you or he or anyone else agrees with me on that second point is irrelevant to my defense of my position. He is falsely attributing a postion to me that I do not hold.
What I think has become lost here a little bit is that I wasn’t intending this to be a pro-life vs. pro-choice argument necessarily. The bottom line seems to be that, you are right, most people do not agree with the bloggers I cited. Clearly, though, SOME people do agree with them , and interestingly, both you (pro-choice) and I (pro-life) oppose the idea that it’s always preferable to terminate a Downs pregnancy. In your first paragraph, here, you state that the discussion I want to have is one where we are talking past each other, and I assure you that’s not true. I am more than open to learning about and understanding the pro-choice and even the pro-abortion viewpoints, and more importantly, how they relate to this specific issue. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to state my own POV on the subject. Again, although I have a generally pro-life viewpoint, I don’t think it’s necessarily a black-and-white issue as far as when abortion might be justified. I am not going to hide my opinion that Downs is not a situation where it is automatically preferable to end the pregnancy than continue it. Others may disagree, and I wanted to hear why.
I understand, but I don’t think it could be avoided.
*Well, the bloggers you cited are apparently Ayn Rand fans, and I’d guess that they share Rand’s rejection of altruism as a virtue. The notion that Palin or any other woman should have a baby for the baby’s sake alone would thus be immoral to them. The only “Objectivist” reason to have a baby would be if you really wanted a baby. Even if Palin was delighted to have another kid, I think this rejection of altruism would also mean that taxpayers should not be expected to support services for other people’s disabled children. So Palin still made an immoral decision to take advantage of other people who will not be made happy by paying for her child’s special care and education. Worse still, she’s in favor of not only encouraging but actually forcing other women to continue with pregnancies that will result in even more disabled children that will require some level of state-sponsored assistance.
I’m far from the best person to explain Rand’s philosophy, but I think that’s the basics as it applies to this situation. I don’t know that all Objectivists would see things the same way as those bloggers, though. I could believe that there are also strong pro-life Objectivists who would consider it immoral to interfere with the fetus’s right to pursue its own self-interest in being born. But that would again come down to the question of whether a fetus counted as a person or was capable of being self-interested.
Another possible reason having nothing to do with Ayn Rand would be the belief that people with some disabilities actually would be better off never having been born. Even you have sympathy for this position, you just don’t consider Down’s syndrome to be a severe enough disability. But some people have probably asked themselves “Would I prefer being even mildly retarded to never having been born at all?” and decided the latter.