[QUOTE=GLWasteful]
Not just “when” but “how”. I think that potential parents should be fully informed that children and adults with Down Syndrome run the gamut from profoundly retarded and unable to care for themselves to all but undetectable. Not just that the child will never be able to count change.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps I should have phrased that as “under what circumstances medical professionals should advise on”, but it’s a good point on what information the medical professionals should be expected to cover.
If the doc has just told someone that their potential child would have Downs, then that doc had better let the parent(s) know what disabilities that diagnosis might imply. There’s a medical obligation there, I think.
I don’t think there’s a medical obligation if the doc has just told the parent(s) that their child might turn out gay, or male, or blue-eyed, or whatever. “Your child might be teased if he is [blue-eyed, gay]” is not a medical issue. “Your child may have [severe developmental disabilities]” is a medical issue.
That there is the slippery slope that Sullivan would have been better off addressing.
[QUOTE=FRDE]
The Romans did not classify a child as a ‘person’ until it had eaten meat.
[/QUOTE]
That is, to the best of my knowledge, untrue. A child was, if you want to put it this way even though the Romans didn’t, accepted as a person/member of the household when the paterfamilias (the father, head of the household) formally accepted the child into his potestas/manus, by a ritualized hand gesture. But that’s neither here nor there.
I’ve also noticed people speaking of ‘eliminating’ Down’s Syndrome through abortion - this is a bit off, I think. Certainly if everyone forever always aborted Down’s babies, this would be the case. But it’s not a hereditary disorder, as it results from defective meiosis. This means that it will always be present, at least in fetuses, no matter how much we abort.
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
But it’s not a hereditary disorder, as it results from defective meiosis. This means that it will always be present, at least in fetuses, no matter how much we abort.
[/QUOTE]
But if it never manifests in an actual person, that doesn’t matter. It might exist in a technical sense, but it won’t be inflicted on any actual people, which is what matters.
The sad thing is that the DS detection rate is not terribly accurate, and yet people make choices based on “percentages”, where false positives are common as well as false negatives. Link.
As a business owner of a day program for people with devopmental disabilities, I have over the last 15 years conversed with, supervised, paid (yes, they can work too!), joked with, and have befriended many people with Down Syndrome. Yes, they can lead productive lives and morally, they should not be terminated as fetuses based on imperfect testing methods available, which can skew the decision-making process of the parents. Hopefully the doctors properly inform the expecting parents of the fallibility of these tests.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
We are missing a point here. Right now, in the US and most western countries, people are free to abort any pregnancy for any reason. I am not against this, but it needs to be pointed out.
You can abort a female (or male) fetus for no other reason than you already have a male or female child and wanted one of the other sex. This already happens a great deal in China because of the one-child policy, almost entirely in favour of males.
If it were possible to tell what colour a child’s eyes would be, you could decide you want to eliminate a blue-eyed fetus because the parents and the other kids in the family are brown-eyed (this is genetically very possible) and you want the whole family to have the same colour eyes.
So how can we tell a person they may not terminate their pregnancy if they are carrying a DS fetus or a potential gay or lesbian?
The point is not whether being gay is a disability or a defect. I am gay and I do not consider it so.
[/quote]
Yes, women have the right to abort a fetus for any reason. But when these laws were passed, wasn’t the question mainly, “I either do, or do not want to have a pregnancy taking place inside my body?”
Of course there are other reasons. Rape, for instance.
But now we have increasingly specific tests, which give women more information to use when deciding not “do I want to be pregnant or not” but rather, “maybe I want to be pregnant, but only if…”
But do women, or parents in general, have a constitutionally guaranteed right to newly available information which will be used as the basis for deciding “maybe I want to be pregnant, but only if…?”
As a society, maybe we need to sit down and revisit the issue in light of new medical and scientific breakthroughs. Perhaps we need to decide on a case by case basis which test results a parent has a legitimate right to know in making their decision to abort or not, and which test results are not to be included in the decision making process but rather, revealed after the child is born. Like whether the child is likely gay or not.
I’m pro-choice. I also believe abortion is a shitty form of birth control. I also think abortion is a really, really shitty form of designer baby making.
For now, I think parents do have a right to design their babies. Light skin, green eyes, blond hair, tall, male, etc, etc. But if you really want to design your baby you should design it before it becomes an implanted fetus.
True, and for now the discussion of aborting gay babies is nothing more than a thought exercise.
Also, attraction to one’s own sex may not even be the determiner of homosexuality. It could be more of a “strong attraction to males” or a “strong attraction to females.”
So some families have a “strong attraction to males” predisposition gene which may turn out to be impossible to determine when and in which child it will express itself. Abort all the boys and have only girls?
They are not a ‘who’ until rather a long time after birth.
The Romans did not classify a child as a ‘person’ until it had eaten meat.
[/QUOTE]
So, are you suggesting that it would be okay for parents to drown their newborn children?
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
As a society, maybe we need to sit down and revisit the issue in light of new medical and scientific breakthroughs. Perhaps we need to decide on a case by case basis which test results a parent has a legitimate right to know in making their decision to abort or not, and which test results are not to be included in the decision making process but rather, revealed after the child is born. Like whether the child is likely gay or not.
[/quote]
I really don’t like the idea of the government dictating what people can and can’t know about their own pregnancies. That’s about as intrusive as banning abortion.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I admit feeling initially disconcerted by the idea of aborting gay fetuses, but after I thought about it, I couldn’t really find anything wrong with it. So fewer gay people are born. So what? Even if NO gay people are ever born again, so what?
[/QUOTE]
Someone started a thread on exactly this topic a little while ago.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
I really don’t like the idea of the government dictating what people can and can’t know about their own pregnancies. That’s about as intrusive as banning abortion.
[/QUOTE]
I concur. It’s nanny-state at its worst; denying someone information from their own medical file. Further, it’s pointless since if a test exists, there will always be someone willing to pay for the results and always someone happy to supply them.
It’s not enough to support a right only in times when exercise of that right makes you comfortable. If you’re willing to curtail that right when a situation gets too icky for you, then you never really supported the right in the first place.
First of all, thank you Tomanddeb!
My karyotype CLEARLY indicates that I’m missing material. It was obvious over 25 years ago. If my parents had had me prenatally dx, they would have been told that ALL kids with my syndrome are extremely profoundly MR. (like persistant vegatative state)
I definitly support theraputic abortion…BUT, it should be on an informed choice thing. A lot of parents think “Oh I can’t take care of a special needs kid”
Most if not all parents aren’t well informed about the enormous spectrum of special needs. They just get the “gloom and doom” scenerio. or are misinformed about what being special needs means.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Why produce a damaged child when you can produce a healthy one ? And as pointed out, it’s not a person when you abort it.
Why not ? Eliminate them all. It’s not much different than eliminating smallpox.
[/QUOTE]
damaged child? How exactly do you determine that their lives are somehoe lesser than that of “normal” people?
What about redheads? should those be eliminated too? Ordinary brown eyes? Do you really want a world of identical “perfect” clones? Are you perfect by your standard?
I am all creeped out again. Somehow AS’s off-the-cuff estimation of 90% abortions of Down Syndrome fetuses was just theoretical. A 33% + rate for the UK somehow seems all too real.
But as I said, there is no solution but to raise our children to make the best decision they can when faced with this situation.
(Perhaps I am just easily creeped out in the mornings.)
After losing her second and third children to physical deformities, my cousin has adopted three Downs Syndrome children. They are mostly healthy, and are very happy kids. However, there is very little chance they will be able to live on their own. I worry about what will happen to them when my cousin and her husband are gone.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
damaged child? How exactly do you determine that their lives are somehoe lesser than that of “normal” people?
[/quote]
Because they are less capable, and less healthy.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
What about redheads? should those be eliminated too? Ordinary brown eyes?
[/quote]
Of course not; neither is a defect or even close. False examples.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
Do you really want a world of identical “perfect” clones? Are you perfect by your standard?
[/QUOTE]
Healthy and identical are hardly the same thing; not even close. And of course I don’t match my own standards, but that doesn’t matter since my parents had no means of detecting my imperfections pre-birth, and no means of correcting them afterward. In fact my brother would have been mentally retarded, except my parents had the medical treatments to prevent that particular version. Should they have just shrugged their shoulders and let it happen ?
[QUOTE=Deaf Geek]
The only thing that makes it a “defect” is the presense of mental retardation.
[/QUOTE]
That’s more than enough, and as others have pointed out there are more problems than just that.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Further, it’s pointless since if a test exists, there will always be someone willing to pay for the results and always someone happy to supply them.
[/QUOTE]
Well, there are always doctors willing to prescribe whatever drug you want, but that isn’t our guiding light as to whether we should legalize certain drugs or not.
Sooner or later, you’ll be able to get a doctor to clone you. Doesn’t mean as a society we have to say that’s okay, just because you can afford a doctor who’ll do it.
Table 1: Down syndrome cases diagnosed in 2003* by
time of diagnoses and outcome
No. %
Prenatal Termination of pregnancy 466 33
Live Birth 28 2
Still Birth / Miscarriage 13 1
Unknown outcome† 324 23
Postnatal Live Birth 570 40
Still Birth 14 1
Total 1415 100
I have not found similar reporting for the U.S., although I suspect that if the Brits, a less “religious” society with better access to some forms of medical care are only terminating 33% of Down Syndrome pregnancies, 90% might just be a tad high for estimates in the U.S.
(Even if we arbitrarily throw most of the “unknown outcome” pregancy tests into the termination category, we still only get to around 50%.)
[/QUOTE]
Read the table again. Out of the total Down Syndrome cases found (59% prenatal, 41% postnatal), 33% were prenatal and got aborted. Out of the total of Down Syndrome cases found pre-natally, 55% were aborted within the system and there’s another 39% for which the reporters don’t know what happened.