Eugenics By Abortion - Is perfection an entitlement?

Kacey

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I am posting this because of another thread (Bravery That Puts the Best of Us to Shame) which caused me to recall several news stories I had read about another side of abortion - here are a few excerpts:

Eugenics By Abortion - Is perfection an entitlement?
In Britain, after the 24th week of pregnancy -- "viability," when the child presumably can live outside the womb -- an abortion is permitted only when "there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped." But in 2001 an unborn 28-week-old child was aborted because new techniques for detecting fetal abnormalities indicated that the child had a cleft lip and palate.
<snip>
In Britain, more babies with Down syndrome are aborted than are allowed to be born. In America, more than 80 percent of the babies diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome are aborted. This is dismaying to, among others, the American Association of People with Disabilities, whose premise is that "disability is a natural part of the human experience."
The AAPD worries that increasingly sophisticated prenatal genetic testing technologies will mean that parents who are told their expected babies are less than perfect "will experience pressures to terminate their pregnancies from medical professionals and insurers." The worry is not groundless.


Earlier down test raises ethics debate
But earlier detection is stoking an ethics debate among those who fear it’s another opportunity for abortion and a step closer to genetic engineering, where only perfect babies are selected to survive.
“There’s no sense in having the test if they’re not thinking of terminating the pregnancy,” said Dr. Christine Comstock, director of fetal imaging at Beaumont Hospital and the principal site investigator on the study. “But it also provides women with early accurate information they need if they do decide to keep the baby.”
<snip>
About 90 percent of women who receive a positive test for Down syndrome get an abortion, said Dr. Ray Bahado-Singh of Wayne State University’s Department of Maternal Fetal Medicine. The syndrome is the most frequent genetic cause of mental retardation, one that is more likely when women bear children later in life.
“The principal purpose of screening is precise prediction of disease,” Singh said. “Ideally, screening should allow us to identify issues early enough so intervention can be performed.”


Down Syndrome Now Detectable in 1st Trimester: Earlier Diagnosis Allows More Time for Decisions
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which issues influential recommendations for prenatal screening, will update its advice to reflect the findings, officials said.
Word of the study triggered criticism from opponents of abortion, however, as well as from those who object to its use to prevent the birth of children with Down syndrome.
<snip>

"What's the goal here? Is it to rid our society of Down babies? If that is the goal, I really have to question the civility of that," Rudd said. "The overwhelming number of people with Down will tell you their life is good."
Randall K. O'Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee said in an e-mail, "These tests appear to be used only to select babies for abortion, including as many as 5 percent who may not even have Down's Syndrome. . . . Killing a child with Down's Syndrome is not the solution to Down's Syndrome."

Ending the life of a child is not (or at least should not) be an easy decision. As I stated in the above-referenced thread, I know more severely disabled children than most, due to my profession as a special education teacher. I know parents who agonized over the decision to have - or to go to extraordinary medical lengths to save - severely disabled children. I know children who cannot move, cannot speak, cannot eat, who come to school not to learn, but for to provide much-needed respite care for their families, who cannot get babysitters for children with the capabilities of infants and the bodies of teenagers. I know a large number of less-disabled children - the vast majority of those who qualify for special education services - who have disabilities ranging from minor speech disfluencies (i.e. stuttering) to learning disabilities mild, moderate, and/or severe, who have physical disabilities ranging from ADHD to cerebral palsy to missing limbs, who have emotional problems that could be organic, situational, or both, who have congenital or genetic differences that set them apart, to a greater or lesser degree, from their peers - the list goes on.

The question posed by the articles above is one of ethics: do these children deserve to live if their lives can be prevented. In being able to screen for various disabilities, and choose to end a pregnancy based on the determination of such disabilities, where do we draw the line? At children who will not survive birth, who are aborted for the sake of the mother? At children who have severe genetic diseases, such as Tay-Sachs, who will not survive more than a few years, and much of that time in pain? At children who have organic forms of retardation, such as Down's Syndrome or Trisomy 18? At children born to drug- or alcohol-addicted mothers? Who decides? And how?
 

BrandiJo

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I can't say i know for sure what i would do. Honestly i would like to think i could save my child some suffering and end it early, but stopping a pregnancy has always been such a passionate issue as well. I support the womans right to choose for herself but i don't think it is something i could ever do. Maybe if i knew 100% with out a doubt that my child would die a painful death after birth .... but where to draw the line i mean a week after birth a year 10 years? I pray i never have to know or make that choice myself.
 

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