This is literally pro-life rhetoric. You are anti-choice.
This is one of those spots where I'm not sure you can say anything and win. Because:
On one hand, selecting for disability and disorder absolutely is eugenics and should not be encouraged.
On the other hand, we already select for some disabilities and disorders in order to protect the kids who would have them! Tay-Sachs is the obvious example; we do not want these children to die horribly so we try to make sure they're not conceived in the first place.
On the other hand, a potential parent selecting for disability is concerning because not all disabilities show up in the womb, and some are acquired. Do we want to encourage people to become parents if they're already wanting to walk away from any difficulty?
On the other hand, there are disabilities and there are disabilities. What if a potential parent is like "listen, ADHD I can handle, but the disability you're talking about is so severe I don't think I could handle it"? Is that eugenics, or recognizing one's own limits?
On the other hand, if we could ask the fetus "here's what you'll deal with; do you want to live?" would it say yes or no? Some quadriplegics love living. Some amputees who lost part of a leg will say they wish they'd died instead. Every disabled person will have a different answer, including two who have near-identical disabilities and life circumstances. Hell, I'm disabled and whether I'm saying "it doesn't bother me" or "I wish I was anyone else" comes down to the day.
On the other hand, does it make a difference if the answer to "why do you want an abortion" is "I don't want a baby" or "I don't want a baby I perceive as defective"? Do we judge one but not the other? Why?
I could go on like this for hours. I don't think OP is right and I also don't think they're wrong. I'm not sure there is a "right" answer. I definitely don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer. Life is THE most annoying bitch on earth that way sometimes. And insofar as there is an answer, I actually think it lies with creating support, not restricting abortion. Would you still say "abort" if you had an extra $10k a year? What about someone to watch the kiddo on Saturdays so you could have some decompression time? Is there a load-bearing straw we can remove to spare the camel's back, or is the camel simply not capable of hauling this particular shipment of straw?
Sometimes there are no good answers.
Women are allowed to abort for literally any reason. There is literally no scenario where anyone should force a woman to carry a fetus to term if she doesn't want it. That's the correct answer.
Also, eugenics is definitionally a population-level thing. An individual woman can not do eugenics.
Exactly. Forcing women to become brood mares for any reason - even left-wing approved reasons - would be eugenics because it would come with the force of the state behind it.
I agree that a personal choice is not eugenics, and that a woman should never be BANNED from having an abortion.
however, I think P-B’s point applies better to think of it as a moral choice. Is it UNETHICAL to abort a fetus just because it has a disability? And I have…honestly, no idea. I have been thinking about this for days and I can’t come up with a good answer.
Do you think it's more ethical to abort an able-bodied fetus than a disabled fetus?
I think you misunderstood.
The question is “is it ethical for someone who would not have an abortion if their fetus was able-bodied (and able-minded) to have an abortion because they learn that the fetus will be disabled”
But I'm asking you, why do you think it's okay to get an abortion when the fetus is able-bodied but suddenly twist into a pretzel when it's a disabled fetus? You're creating a scenario in your head where you can force the woman to serve as an incubator and justify it as "punishing" her for being "ableist."
Pro-choice is an all-or-nothing scenario. Either the woman has complete bodily autonomy or she doesn't.
It’s not that it’s okay when abled and not okay when disabled.
the issue is “having the abortion BECAUSE the baby is disabled.” Having an abortion because you learn the baby is going to be abled also could be problematic.
And to be clear, the woman still has the right to choose, it’s just that we are allowed to talk about which choices are more ethical than others (like how saying that it is more ethical to give money to charity does not mean that someone does not have the RIGHT to do whatever they want with their money)
additionally, Im not saying it’s ableist. Im saying there is an argument to be made that it might be, and it’s worth discussing
Trying to guilt a woman out of an abortion because she admitted she would not be able to raise a Downs baby isn't ethical tho.
This is exactly one ethical reason for an abortion: if a woman is pregnant and does not want to be. Why she doesn’t want to be is no one’s business but hers.
Hi, biomedical scientist here with a personal history of China’s One Child Policy and who had to learn about eugenics in university,
Classic eugenics was the opposite of choice and reproductive rights. Regardless of if eugenics started as a societal movement, it quickly moved to the hands of government.
A lot of eugenics discussions talk about forced sterilizations and murder of people the government deemed undesirable but it also came with governmental pressure for “the successful” to breed. Preventing certain pregnant people from carrying desired pregnancies to term and preventing other pregnant people from terminating undesired pregnancies went hand in hand with eugenics.
China sees a similar issue of a disregard for reproductive autonomy. The One Child Policy led to forced IUDs, sterilizations, and abortions for decades. Due to a daughter needing to take care of her in-laws, boys were valued a lot more in China to varying degrees. Now that the population is gender-imbalanced and aging, the Chinese government went the complete other way while still intruding on reproductive autonomy.
In my view, eugenics is the exact opposite of reproductive autonomy based on the desire to “improve the population.” It is a population-level phenomenon not an individual phenomenon. I want to become a parent someday. However, there are many conditions that I don’t feel I am equipped to handle in children even with all the money in the world. I am have multiple disabilities, one of which is a hereditary disability (Hypermobility syndrome). My disability leads to chronic pain and fatigue combined with mental health issues that can become severe. If I knew what gene specifically caused my disability*, I could choose to select only embryos without this gene. This would not be eugenics. There are over people with the same conditions that feel differently. If I were to enforce my choice for everyone, that would be eugenics. There are people who claim that simply choosing to engage in pre-selection is new eugenics. These people that talk about “new eugenics” often don’t live with certain conditions just as I don’t live with other conditions. The disabled community is heterogeneous and varies dependent on the disability and the individual.
We can talk about genetic inequality as a problem, but this is completely separate from abortion right. It is also not eugenics.
Why would you want to harm a disabled child by having them born to parents who can’t or won’t care for them? There’s already a problem with disabled people getting murdered by their caregivers.
No one should be forced to carry a pregnancy that they’re not ready for. It is nobody’s business on why someone terminated a pregnancy. It was the ethical decision for the individual. Restricting abortion for any reason even for “protecting disabled children” is like trying to prevent divorce: ineffective and unethical.
* Lots of traits like autism and hair color are polygenic requiring environmental triggers and currently beyond our editing capabilities.
you have largely convinced me. However, one point still remains unclear. If a parent has a fetus who has a disability, and they do not wish to care for a child with that disability, is it worse (in your opinion) to abort it, or to wait for it to be born and then give it uo for adoption.
because I think it is obviously preferable to have an abortion rather than bear a child you don’t want, but it seems like other people here disagree?
For me, the latter although both are significantly more ethical than keeping a disabled child you don’t want to care for and abusing/neglecting them.
Adoption worked for me, but it’s still a major rip. Being an adoptee means I am ground zero for genetic information. I know nothing about who came before. I have no bio family history, no bio traditions. I am incredibly lucky to know my actual birthday. Most international Chinese adoptees have estimated birthdays. People have called my mom a kidnapper (she’s not) because we aren’t the same race. They’ve asked why she didn’t adopt an American baby. There are other adoptees who were incredibly harmed by adoption and don’t want anything to do with it.
Birthing the child brings another life into the world that now has to a face a significant change that is often traumatic. An abortion does not bring another life in the world. In the US, adoption runs on foster care if relatives are not found, which is rife with its own abuses and difficulties. During the One Child Policy in China, adoption became lucrative for the Chinese government via orphanages. Otherwise, desired children were sent to these orphanages or left nearby (my case) to have an improved chance of survival. Disabled children are even harder to adopt our because they require more care.-
If you know you don’t want a child: abortion > adoption > keeping the child you know you don’t want. Failing to provide for a disabled child’s needs is neglect.
For other people, they may see abortion and adoption differently and that should be their choice. End of story.
