Part 2: what if you found out their diagnosis 1 week after birth
Abortion is fine no matter what, but in particular for this case yes; Down’s syndrome isn’t the almond eyed happy somewhat simple child that Facebook memes make it out to be. They can have awful congenital heart disease, they have a much larger chance of getting leukemia, and they age seemingly twice as fast, a Down’s syndrome person in their forties is incredibly frail. They’re happy enough people and can often enjoy a good quality of life, there’s a guy who is a bartender in Buffalo at a Mexican restaurant who makes amazing drinks, for one, and there’s nothing wrong with having a child with Down’s if you want, but if you find out you are pregnant with a baby with Down’s you really should see medical genetics and have a fetal echo and maternal fetal medicine and ensure you make a decision that works for you. There are Down’s syndrome babies who never leave the hospital because of the comorbidities.
This is a decision made by the pregnant person, informed by her/their doctor. I can also see her/their family having some input in informing the pregnant person’s decision, to the extent that they are not being coerced by their family.
As far as outside agents, such as ourselves, are involved, pregnancy is a medical issue. This is the only responsible way for society to handle these questions. Society is able to provide support for parents, esp those who are caretakers of children with severe disabilities, and we can improve education and access to contraceptives. But it is irresponsible and unethical to become involved in the medical decisions of others under any circumstances.
If we really care about unborn children we should care doubly about born children and the families who take on the responsibility of ensuring those disabled individuals are able to experience love and joy. Trying to collapse ethics and morals into pure individual choice is a scam.
Killing your unborn baby is still killing. If the child can grow up, live a live, see parents, have friends and laugh, then it is unethical to abort.
If it’s ethical to abort just because you don’t want the kid (and it is), then it’s ethical to abort for any reason.
Also, it’s no one’s business why people choose to abort.
it’s no one’s business why people choose to abort.
This. The only answer to “why” is “fuck off”, and for so many reasons. It’d suck to agonize over the decision, and once it’s made to then be second-guessed by some rando.
I mean more like “is a life of suffering worth living and would a parent want that for their kid” rather than the ethics of abortion
Preventing incurable pain and suffering to a conscious being is ethical. There is dignity in both life and death.
In my country it is legal to abort just because you don’t want the kid, but illegal to abort for a certain specific reason (the parents not wanting a girl). This is because people might abort daughters if they are poor and think that girls are less likely to get jobs.
I feel that the Down’s Syndrome case is similar. There are people with Down’s Syndrome who lead happy lives, and genetically ‘normal’ people who lead miserable lives. So of course a mother has the right to abort a foetus. But I fear that if we normalise aborting children on genetic grounds, that could lead to eugenics.
It’s kinda besides the point. If a woman wants an abortion she should get an abortion. Downs syndrome or not, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t mean in a her body her choice kinda way, I mean is it more ethical to let them live their natural life knowing that they would possibly suffer immensely vs not letting them live a life at all
Personally I think having children as a whole is unethical 🤷♂️
I think it’s ethical to abort if your fetus is perfectly healthy.
I don’t know about the ethics, but forcing people to carry to term a baby with a significant developmental disability is unconscionable to me. It is very likely to ruin their marriage, finances, sanity, life, but the people that manage to do it are saints.
Can’t really say for part 1 but for part 2 it’s definitely not abortion anymore after birth so that is unethical in my opinion.
As fucked up as it sounds, if it’s early enough that there isn’t any chance of it being considered alive, I’d let the family decide whether or not to do it on their own because not every family is capable of that type of constant care and/or affording the bill to pay someone to help.
As for a week after birth, as fucked up as it sounds, if you truly cannot afford the constant care, then probably putting them up for adoption to a family that can afford the care is better, IMO, than not being able to afford to care for said child and having potentially seeing them die from lack of care you cannot afford.
Sometimes you need to make hard decisions to keep afloat financially.
Have you guys spent much time around people with Down’s syndrome? It’s typically not a uniform “life of suffering” like what many comments seem to be assuming.
It’s fair enough to try to imagine how you would feel if you had a certain disability, but never assume you’re right about that, you might be surprised. Especially with intellectual differences, I don’t think you can really know what it would be like to be that person.
Without doubt.
Part 2: nope. Get used to changing babies.
Doctor wouldn’t know how severe.
Down syndrome is regular DNA but one extra copy that interferes randomly with the building of the body.
Every kid is different.
The doctor told us the fetus might have issues based on growth. We didn’t care.
My son was born with down syndrome. The doctor we had said he may not talk much, may not move much, etc.
He will talk your ear off. He graduated highschool with a modified plan. Got the Phys Ed award in the regular grade 12 program. He reads, writes, excels at video editing and PowerPoint creation, excellent at figuring out technical stuff to a degree. Highly social and works partime.
His birth showed me that acedemics aren’t as important as enjoying life for what it is.
This is wonderful and I’m glad he’s doing so well.
I think it’s ethical to abort any baby. It’s parasitic on the host, if you don’t consent to the idea how is it any worse than getting a flu vaccine
If you don’t think you can provide a better life for your kid than state care could I see putting it up for adoption to be ethically mandatory
Part 1: Yeet
Part 2: Looks like I’m down with the sickness.
I remember discussing this in an undergrad biomedical ethics class. Pls don’t ask us to do ur homework lmao
Jury was still out by the end of class discussion btw. This one was complicated lol
I had business ethics so it was boring questions like “should we advertise to kids” or “do cigarette manufacturers have souls”. But ya this seems to be pretty divisive so far.
Yeah it really splits the crowd. There were three case studies from the course but I can’t find my offering’s outline and I forget the third case study. The first one was: “A woman signs a form saying that if she gets dementia she wants euthanasia in the late/developed stages of the illness. Later, she gets there, but this ‘version’ of her has a really high quality of life and is quite contented. Do you follow through?”
In between there were discussions of frameworks like Aristotelian/Kantian/utilitarian ethics. There were also some medical specific stuff, like the biopsychosocial model of disability. Pretty neat overall, though tbh I wish I took an ethics class more relevant to my current academic pursuits (math)
