We’re Not Gonna Be Fucking Suck This Year!!

2. The above is not my stance! I politically believe that the government should not have the power to regulate abortion, and I morally believe that it is acceptable, because I consider a fetus morally distinct from a human. Therefore, I consider abortion to be “choosing not to create a life” rather than “choosing to end a life.”

3. If you are pro-choice but anti-abortion, I believe it is totally rational to be against abortions due to a diagnosis of Trisomy 21/Down syndrome! If I thought a fetus was morally equivalent to a baby, I would also be against abortion due to Down syndrome, just as I would be against killing a newborn baby discovered to have Down syndrome. I don't consider the "pro choice but anti abortion" camp to be a useful group to argue with--as long as they are supportive of people's legal right to choose, their personal moral compass is irrelevant to me, and I think their internal logic wrt this issue is consistent.

4. If, however, you fall into my camp (abortion is both a political right and morally neutral/acceptable), there are important arguments to be had about the ethics of abortion a fetus found to have Trisomy 21. One reason this is a meaningful debate is that accusations of eugenics and ableism are used to fuel pro-life rhetoric ("abortion shouldn't be legal because it is a eugenicist tool to exterminate disabled people, even when they could live full and happy lives with their disability if they were not aborted" etc). While it is vital to defend abortion regardless of the perceived "moral character" of the rationale, it is also useful to push back against arguments negatively moralizing abortions such as these, because it is difficult to hold the cognitively dissonant view of "pro choice but anti abortion," and so arguments negatively moralizing abortion are effective at pushing people towards more anti-choice positions (e.g. abortion should be illegal after a certain number of weeks, to prevent abortions due to diagnosed disabilities).

With all this established, let's talk about why I believe it can be morally acceptable or even appropriate to terminate a wanted pregnancy simply due to a diagnosis of Trisomy 21.

My first, and most simple argument, is that if you do not want to have a disabled child, you should not knowingly bring a disabled child into this world. If you don't want to raise a disabled child, I don't want a disabled child to be raised by you. Children deserve to come into homes in which they are loved wholly and unconditionally; they are not a "lesson" to be thrust upon someone to force them to overcome their ableism. Even though many parents coerced into keeping a pregnancy that they wanted to terminate due to not wanted a disabled child will discover that they love their child fiercely and unconditionally once that child is born, why take that chance? I feel similarly about sex-selective abortions: the solution to this problem is not to force families to raise unwanted daughters, but to dismantle a culture of patriarchy. A child brought into a home that doesn't want them will suffer needlessly, even if their parents learn to love and accept them as they are. If, as I believe, abortion is not ending a life but the choice not to create life, it is better for a life not to be created than for one to be created only to be brought into a home dissatisfied with its existence.

Secondly, and I imagine more controversially, If you believe you cannot care for a disabled child, you should not knowingly bring a disabled child into this world. The public perception of people with Down syndrome is a largely sanitized one; it is difficult for many people to understand the range and complexity of disability associated with Down syndrome. I think some people imagine Down syndrome as a fairly simple, one-note disability: facial dysmorphism, mild intellectual disability, mild speech delay, highly social. The idea of ending a wanted pregnancy over something like this does sound ludicrous, and obviously steeped in an ableist disdain for the intellectually disabled. This is a really incomplete picture of the potential complications associated with Down syndrome, however, and one that presents any potential struggles a person with Down syndrome might have as largely "fixable" through a social model of disability lens (love them, accept them, provide them with a moderately adapted environment, and boom! They can live a relatively "normal" life without much suffering on their part or yours). The social model is a useful one for developmental disabilities (and not just mild variants!), but it does not (and was never meant to) apply to all features of disability--you cannot accommodate away, for example, an increased risk of childhood leukemia.

The reality is that Down syndrome comes with a variety of co-occuring health conditions (frequent heart problems, increased risk of neurodegenerative disorders later in life, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, and many others) that can cause harm and disruption to the life of a person with Down syndrome even in the most accommodating environment, and may place intense emotional and financial strain on parents. This is not just a question of "is a life with a mild intellectual disability worth living" (obviously yes, and anybody who would say otherwise has something deeply wrong with them), although that's how many people seem to frame it; it is a question of "are you prepared to take on a child dealing with any number of as-yet unknowable, potentially life-threatening medical conditions." It's also not just a question of "would this person's life have meaning and value, with all of these potential complications" (again, obviously yes), it's a question of your ability to provide care, and to potentially witness your child suffering while you are powerless to help. Having more severe disabilities does not diminish a person's meaning and value, but it does change the mental calculus about one's ability to care for that person:

Are you are capable of caring for a child that will likely require supervision by multiple medical specialists, intensive physical and occupational therapy to learn basic ADLs, who may require multiple surgeries from a very young age, and who may require round-the-clock care for the rest of their life? Are you prepared to raise a child who may be unable to communicate with you, to tell you when they're scared or in pain, to express their preferences or ask for what they want? Are you prepared to spend the rest of your life worrying about what will happen to your child after you die or lose the ability to care for them yourself? If you feel that you cannot afford (financially, emotionally, socially, etc) to raise a child with complex needs, the responsible choice is to choose not to do so.

Obviously, any child may be born with or develop a disability at any point in their life. You can never guarantee you will have a non-disabled child, and you should go into parenthood with the understanding that you are taking on a responsibility of care for a child who may have any number of unforeseeable needs or challenges. The truth of the matter, however, is that most people are playing the odds and betting on having a typically or mostly-typically developing child. If we asked people only to have children if and when they were fully prepared to care for a severely disabled child, almost nobody would ever have children, and even some of those who did would find themselves surprised by how much they struggled. The vast majority of people who have children, including those who have disabled children, do not have the resources to care for a disabled child alone, which is why we need robust social services to support caregivers and give disabled people full, meaningful lives. In an imperfect, inaccessible world, people are doing their best to be responsible caregivers and parents, which should include accurate assessments of if they can responsibly knowingly bring a disabled child into their care, in situations where they do have at least some of that information before bringing that child into the world.

I would always prefer that a fetus be aborted rather than a child be born to parents that resent it for not being "normal," or for requiring support from them that a typically developing child would not need. I would always prefer that a fetus be aborted rather than a child be brought into a family that cannot afford the child's heart medication, or that cannot afford to arrange care for that person after their caregivers' death, leading to them being placed in an underfunded, overcrowded long term care facility where their needs will not be met. I would always prefer that a fetus be aborted rather than an already existing child be neglected because all of their parents time and energy is spent caring for their sibling.

I hope anybody who actually read this big long ramble reads it in good faith & gives me the benefit of the doubt where I may have misspoken. I'm sure my terminology is imperfect; I do not use descriptions of severe disability as a value judgement, only as an effort to describe the extent of the disabling effect on a person's life.

one of the hallmarks of a kingism is that when a character is being Horny On Main (or In Maine), they can never do it in a normal way. they have to come up with a sequence of words that nobody has ever said before in the history of the english language. here's another example:

She glowed; she shimmered; she burned with raw magic. It hurt. Every part of her screamed for cold and dark to put out the fire. She couldn't hold it. She would burst like a rotten fruit.