What Is the Lesson Here?

[orionrioniononn]

Edit:

In America, I need to know:
Where is the place for people like me,
who feel it is important for a civilized society to make abortion safe and available for those who need it
and who also believe that the ending of a pregnancy,
however it happens,
also releases a tiny spirit into the air?

~ Marie Myung-Ok Lee, the author of Somebody's Daughter: A

Comments

[penguinista]

I read an article about this today as well, and while I have some issues with your opinions on abortion, I at least appreciate that you are legally liberal toward the subject, since I don't take kindly to boys legislating on subjects they'll never have to deal with (I wouldn't take kindly to women legislating on prostates, either). But to offer another perspective: I was talking to a friend the other day who had a brother with Down's, and her mother had both of her subsequent children tested during pregnancy. Not with the intention of aborting, but so that she would be emotionally prepared for whatever the outcome was going to be.

However, even if a woman was going to make the decision to abort, in this country that is legal, and the question arises: how would a woman who decides to abort a baby with a genetic disorder raise that baby if she kept it? Because she probably wouldn't give it up for adoption, and she also probably wouldn't be equipped to handle it. Just a thought.

From a cold, genetics-driven point of view, such an abortion is almost a return to the status-quo, to an evolutionary time when people with genetic disorders had severely shortened lifespans and therefore could not pass those disorders on. I am NOT advocating abortion in these cases, just mentioning an argument that has been raised. It is an incredibly personal decision, motivated for a million reasons, and I see nothing wrong the advent of an early detection test, if for no other reason to help people like the woman I mentioned above who simply want to be emotionally prepared for what they face.

The implications for other, significantly more debilitating and painful disorders are an essay in and of themselves.

Also, please forgive me is this is incomprehensible or does not make my point. It is late and I am sleepy.

[orionrioniononn]

I definitely agree with early warnings (as well as the inverse, "relief from anxiety"), which is why I had said that these were "laudable ends," but my fear is that this is not the initial intent of these tests. What really gets my knickers in a twist with this issue is the idea you raise in your statement, "From a cold, genetics-driven point of view, such an abortion is almost a return to the status-quo, to an evolutionary time when people with genetic disorders had severely shortened lifespans and therefore could not pass those disorders on," that matches the idea I am questioning in mine, in my last paragraph, "How can we teach the acceptance of life for itself in all its imperfections if we keep trying to prevent it?" I feel like this need for "normalcy," for "healthy babies," is so contradictory to the fact of life: variations exist, sometimes they suck, sometimes they don't. Why can't we just accept that people are different and live with their differences, even if these differences make lives harder? Perhaps the only normalcy in life is that life has its differences.

As for your question about what the mother, and/or the father, will do with a baby with Down syndrome, I'm not sure if you have other meanings or implications (e.g., a poor mother, a single mother, a poor, single mother, etc.), but I would assume that she/they would do the same thing that she/they would do for a baby without Down syndrome -- love it and provide for it as best as possible.

This next part is sort of a tangent, a whole other point of discussion that I thought of because you mention it briefly.

I do disagree with your feeling that because someone is not capable of something (i.e., giving birth, having prostate cancer), that deprives someone of the right to make a decision on it. Simply because it is a sex-specific situation does not mean it affects only that person; it seems to me that people are generally only OK with opinions when they are allowed within a range: In this case, you feel that I'm allowed to have an opinion on legal abortion because I'm OK with it legally. But I feel that anyone should be allowed to have an opinion and make a decision on it, whether or not they are actually that thing.

Take this example: Gays don't tell straight people that they can't advocate for gay rights because they're not gay. But gays DO tell them that they can't oppose gay rights because they're not gay. It feels like Hobbes's choice; as long as you support me, then you're allowed to make a choice regardless of your own individual "leanings," but if you don't support me and are of my "opposite," then you're not allowed to make a choice.

[penguinista]

Quick clarification on the "allowed to have an opinion" bit: I support everyone's right to have an opinion on all issues, whether they are affected or not. It's legislating on issues for which they have no basis for comparison that makes me nervous. Regardless, I would say legislating *against* rights makes me nervous in any case, which is why the gay rights thing is an awkward comparison: I have a problem with anyone (no matter what their experience base) casually legislating to take away rights. But I don't think that my feelings about men and abortion are as black and white as you state: I think everyone should be able to express their opinions, I think legislation needs to be carefully considered, especially by people for whom it is an academic or emotional, rather than personal, subject; and I make the same arguments regardless of whether someone is male or female and agrees or disagrees with me.

Also, although I don't really want to get into this right now, you will be hard pressed to find any sect of any basis of humanity that actually, genuinely teaches love and acceptance of every "variation" of humanity...but that's a whole 'nother argument.

Finally, to clarify my comment about the people who would chose to abort a genetically disordered fetus: I was referring to people who would otherwise have wanted a child and raised it reasonably well; if they find out they have a disordered fetus and want to abort it, I feel that makes a statement about their feelings toward their child or disordered children in general, and that those feelings would probably impact the raising of the child.

I am trying to keep my arguments around abortion out of this as much as possible, since this is a special circumstance, but the idea of creating laws which allow conditional abortions makes my skin crawl a little bit, for a lot of reasons.