petitesouris wrote:
first of all, what exactly do you mean by "eugenic abortions". it all depends on the context.
there is no point of giving birth to a child with down syndrome or something like that because not only is it wrong to bring someone into the world if they are only going to suffer, but doing something like that would be a burden on society.
there is also the possibility that a child would be born with a terminal illness like HIV or cystic fibrosis. in that case, whether or not it is ethical to give birth to a child who is likely to have a very short, painful life, is debateable.
what does bother me is the possibility that parents are only going to abort for convenience (since one can always give a child up for adoption instead of aborting him or her), or even worse, that parents are only going to want to give birth to perfect children.
there is genetic research on autism, so that the genes for autism could be annihilated, which bothers me because there are still high functioning autistic people, who may be really smart and contribute a lot to society. yet apparently, even if you are in the high functioning range of the spectrum, in people's eyes you are no different from the cases that are depicted in the media.
not to simplify a very complicated issue, but i think abortion should only be legal if a) the child would be mentally disabled and b) the mother was raped and giving birth is a danger to her health.
i dislike the idea of killing fetuses, yet for example, there was one case where a 12 year old girl was raped by her abusive father and became pregnant with twins. not only were the twins likely to have genetic defects because of incest, but the girl most likely would have died from giving birth to twins, which means that both the mother and the children would have died. if i remember correctly, she had an abortion and the pope ended up excommunicating her.
I must say, I've met people with down syndrome, from what I've seen they can and do live happy lives when they are accepted for who they are the same as us on the Spectrum.
In Ireland, it is illegal to abort a child. Women wanting to abort a child usually travel to England or another European country to abort a child. Our legislation, as it stands is that "The life of the unborn is protected unless the life of the Mother is at risk".
To the OP, laws wouldn't stop abortion, it would simply revert to women using older methods, where women died as often as not. Why do you view parents as selfish if they judge themselves to not be good possible parents? I'm guessing that you are quite young.
But something else, if laws like that were to be put in place, how long do you think it would take until things like scratching your nose or passing gas would be part of draconian laws? It's clear to me that you don't understand a lot about life yet. I respect the life of the unborn but I also respect another persons right to choose, it is their life.
A big thing for me is, a person has the right to choose the direction of their lives path. If a person chooses to end a pregnancy, they will either be subject to similar pain as misscarrage or will not feel anything about it (not the usual emotional response) but don't judge another person until you understand their exact situation even then be tentitive because you are not them.
17 Apr 2010, 4:22 pm
