The "Disappearance" of Down Syndrome Kids

Great Debates
1

Linky to Andrew Sullivan here .

Andrew points out that 90% of unborn kids* with Down’s Syndrome are aborted. He notes (and I would not have thought of it) that a lot of people who are publicly opposed to abortion must be getting them. Good point.

He goes on to talk about a possible impending genocide of gay people once there is a test for homosexuality. Good point too.

But what about the main point? Is it morally right to abort someone* because the will have Down’s syndrome? Am I (the parent’s let’s say) doing this for my own connivence? A life with Down’s is full of suffering, but is not every life full of suffering?

"Genocide’ is the wrong word of course, but it might have to serve.

If it is wrong to kill people because of their religion, and so it is also wrong to kill them because of their sexuality, is not also wrong to kill them because they have Down’s?
*Excuse me, do not let these words throw you off-track. Insert ‘embryo’ or ‘fetus’ if you like. I cannot spell them this morning.

2

Could not find any evidence for this 90% figure.

3

Assuming it’s true, Down’s syndrome is a defect ( unlike being gay ), and humanity will be better off without it. As long as no one is coerced and no actual people with Down’s Syndrome are hurt, I see it as a good thing. IMHO, aborting a fetus with defects is a virtue.

Yes, but they aren’t being killed; a fetus isn’t a person.

4

Some Downs Syndrome children are higher functioning and healthier than others, and I don’t think they have any way to test for that yet. If it was me, faced with the choice to bring a child into the world who might have a vast number of health problems, a short life and never be able to live an independent life, I would have the abortion. I don’t think the comparision to gays applies. The whole argument hinges on when a embryo or fetus becomes a person, just like the rest of the abortion debate. Either it is a child from conception, and every life is sacred, or it is merely a potential person up to some point, like viability or consciousness. I happen to hold the latter view.

5

No living in the US, I would not know. I welcome information on the rate of Down’s Syndrome people in the US nowadays. I simply presumed AS was right.

Odd he has no problem with aborting DS people, but doing the same to Gay people would be wrong.

6

Why is having Down’s a defect? Is being too tall, to short or too fat a defect? (You know it sounds like I am trolling, but I am not.) Isn’t having all sorts of people part of the fun of being alive?

7

Being due to give birth at age 40, and being morally opposed to abortion, this is a subject I have thought a lot about lately.

I think it’s morally problematic to decide that someone else’s life is not worth living, based on a “defect.” Especially in a case like Down Syndrome, where I would dispute that the life is “full of suffering.” Some Downs people have health problems, but many do not, so basically what we are eliminating them for is…what? Because they aren’t as smart as the general population? Many Downs people live lives that, while they may not seem satisfying according to our standards, are not full of suffering at all…to the contrary, these folks can be just as happy with their lives as the rest of us are with ours. I think a much stronger case could be made for abortion if it is known that the condition truly will cause great pain to the individual, but for something like Downs, it does seem like genocide to me, to be quite frank. I don’t think any of us has the right to decide that another human is not “good enough” to live.

8

Excuse me, I have to go to work. Perhaps the immersion in the real world will make these issues clearer to me. In any case, talk amongst yourselves. I will be back in a few hours.

9

Let’s terminate pregnancies which will result in Down’s people before they actually become people.

Let’s not terminate pregnancies which will result in gay people before they actually become people.

There. I’m done. Phew. That was rough.

10

(bolding mine)

Cite that many do not?

Down’s Syndrome is not a synonym for developmental delay or retarded. Down’s Syndrome is a set of symptoms (aka, a “syndrome”), one of which is developmental delay. There are always other heath problems, although the degree of them varies. The average lifespan of a person with Down’s Syndrom is 55, due to heart defects, frequent infections, problems with vision and hearing and “other health problems”. cite If the only thing wrong is mental retardation, it ain’t Down’s Syndrome.

As with all medical decisions, I think it’s a matter left to the individual parents in consultation with their doctor.

11

All valid points…but to me, such health issues are simply not reason enough to terminate. Downs people might not live to be 55, they might live longer (true of all of us). They have health problems, but what I should have said is that the health problems are often not debilitating (true of many of us). I don’t buy the premise that the life is “full of suffering,” (based on my experience with 3 friends who have Down Syndrome siblings). It is my opinion that it is not right to decide whether that life is worth living before it even has a chance.

12

Yes.
Part of being pro-choice is acknowledging the individual woman’s right to make that choice, for any reason or no reason at all other than she doesn’t wish to continue the pregnancy. I don’t care if the fetus has Downs or is gay or is female or is left-handed (as I am) or has brown eyes (as I do) or if the mother lost a bet or she just wanted to know what the abortion process felt like or she flipped a coin and it came out tails.

13

That’s because it’s just an estimate.

[shrug]

14

I actually have a genetic syndrome that is pretty close to Down’s. I have NO beef whatsoever, with people who have theraputic abortions because the baby has died in utero, due to severe birth defects associated with the syndrome. That shouldn’t be stigmatized whatsoever. Hey, the docs need to get the baby out of there somehow! …and that is VERY common. Most pregnancies with chromosomal disorders do not survive gestation! That’s even with the more common ones like Turner’s!
I do think however that genetic counseling needs to be MUCH better improved.
Right now if you go to a genetic doc, for prenatal counseling they usually give you MAJOR gloom and doom about the condition. Most laypeople really don’t know all too much about disabilites and conditions and how genes interact with the body. Hell…most geneticsts don’t know all that much about that stuff either!
Matter of fact, I wasn’t even told I had my syndrome til I was fifteen! (had my first genetic test that showed something unusual when I was one)
Most people think “disabilty” and they picture someone with profound issues, who’s deaf, blind, gtube fed, foot braces, trached, and very medically complicated and fragile. While there are some people out there like that, the new thinking is that there might be a WHOLE bunch of people out there who are so mildly affected, they don’t even know they have a syndrome.
Like I’m hard of hearing, low muscle tone, foot problems, mild learning disability,
thyroid problems, dysmorphic features, bipolar disorder and probaly some other stuff I’m not remembering LOL. Hardly ANYONE thinks I’m severely handicapped, and they always express surprise that I have a syndrome. Everyone knows I am hard of hearing, but everyone is always “wow! I can’t believe you have so much weird things” (and I do! I can still hear my pediatric ENT, who was literally the best guy in the business, oooing and ahing over my ears :slight_smile: )

Down’s doesn’t always mean MR. It’s the most common genetic cause of MR…but most MR is idiopathic (no known cause) And I mean there’ve been cases of people with Down’s who have average and GENIUS LEVEL IQs!
And besides…low IQ doesn’t always translate as stupid. I know a lot more average IQ people who really fit the defintion of retarded…like all those people who don’t use their brains, even thou they have one!

15

Is it the “elimination of this particular class of people” that people are objecting to, or is it abortion? Suppose someone found some way to prevent Down’s syndrome before conception; some little pill the man or woman could take which would prevent the woman from getting pregnant with a baby with Down’s syndrome, and instead she would get pregnant with a baby without Down’s syndrome. Would those who are objecting still object then?

16

I’m afraid I can’t give much of a rational contribution to this topic, having lost my first baby to a fatal genetic defect. My one thing to say is that people often rationalize aborting a child with Down’s “to save the child from suffering,” trying to make it sound altruistic and noble. I wish more people would come out and just admit that they were scared to death of having a child with genetic problems and all that it entails. It seems to me dishonest to pretend that it was all for the baby’s sake.

It also seems to me to be totally bizarre that our society has apparently decided that handicapped people are not worthy of life, or something. But as I said, I’m not exactly unbiased. I cannot remember ever being more angry than the day I was asked if I wanted to join a support group for people who had aborted their children for these reasons, when all I wanted was to have my own imperfect baby back.

17

That’s not why abortion rights exist, though.

18

My family is heavily involved with ANFAS. The current name is more PC, but originally it meant “Navarrese association of families and friends of downies”.

Navarra is the only Spanish province where Down kids still get born more than once every two years (Navarra, population 1M, one or two Downies/year; Catalonia, pop 6M, one Downie every three years). Most of the ones I know well are adults, though, simply because I know a lot more adult people than kids. Asturias used to have the highest amount of Downies in the country: not a single one has been born since one year after abortion became legal.

The Downies I know include:
two downies who got married way before anybody thought it was nobody’s business to intrude whenever two unmarried, different-gender people wanted to get married to each other. Their two children. The whole family is prone to violence and tantrums. The mother has recently retired from the ANFAS-owned printing company; the father and the two “kids” work there.

A downie, male, who is #9 of 10 kids. Sweet guy, I’ve known him for something like 30 years and the only times I’ve seen him get angry are when he can’t come up with the right words. The other siblings are all normal. It’s a great family, very united.

A downie, male, who is a local celeb with the church. He loves music, specially Christmas carols because he gets to play the zambomba (a particularly noisy instrument). During the Christmas season he’ll go to every single mass in the parish, because there’s carols in all of them. He loves the kids; the kids love him.

A downie, female, who is a lawyer. Euh? Yeah, a lawyer. What, you never heard the word lawyer before? Laaaaaaw-yer. In Spain, law school isn’t grad school, you don’t have to take a major and then law; law is directly your major. She graduated high school at 19 (not with her age group, but better than many normals I know) and then got her law degree through the UNED (long distance public university). She chose the UNED over presential classes because she was tired of being a poster child: she doesn’t mind being one most of the time but the UNED meant that she’d get graded by people who had never seen her and who would measure her against the same standards as every other students. So, both other people and herself know that she didn’t get it any easier for being a Downie. She works for ANFAS, mostly helping other associates (they’re not only Downies any more) with things like renting an apartment, signing up for courses, opening and managing bank accounts, getting emancipated, etc. The first time she went to a meeting, she almost had to close the “normal” banker’s mouths by hand - nowadays everybody knows her, of course. Her family and mine used to live in the same building; her eldest sister was two years older than me (died from being given an aspirin just after giving birth), second is one year older than me, third my age, then this one who is three years younger than me, and right after her the boy. Her Mom likes to say that “in this household we’d be able to estimulate a freaking brick, and she had a good brain to start.”

They have medical problems, true. So does my mother.

They often have impulse-control problems, true. So does every kid.

This last one is exceptional, true. But to me, she kind of turns the whole thing into a case of… “if a man had syphilis, and he’d given it to his wife, and they already had 9 kids, some of which had been born blind… would you abort the next one?” I’m sure I don’t have the question exactly right, but I’m sure y’all have heard it before. If anybody hasn’t, the kid in question did not get aborted, he got completely deaf when he was old and his firstname was Ludwig. Well, in this case, her name is Elena.

Abortion rights don’t exist “to eliminate uncomfortable people”, but that’s some times the end result. Heck, every woman who aborts because the pregnancy was unplanned is getting rid of an uncomfortable person… just it’s uncomfortable by reason of timing and not of genetics. I have been in the situation of having company-ordained medical insurance which covered no gyne procedure except abortions. That doesn’t lead to people not having sex… it leads to abortions.

19

This is a bit of an urban legend.

20

Something. It’s not like we’re shooting actual handicapped people; in fact our society goes to a fair amount of effort to help them. Not as much as we should, but nowhere near considering them unworthy of life.

Aborting a defective fetus simply isn’t the same as considering a person to be unworthy of life; there’s no person there to consider unworthy. And, frankly, it’s better to have children without defects that it is to have them with defects.