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The country isn't going around finding people with Down Syndrome and killing them.
It is giving pregnant women the choice to terminate their pregnancies if they find the fetus has Downs, and the vast majority of them are making this choice.
I would have made the same choice.
Do you believe women shouldn't have that choice? Is it only about Downs? Under what conditions do you think a woman should be allowed to terminate her pregnancy?
As long as it's not a government's choice...
I believe it takes two to tango.
People who wish to take care of the "sweetest" defective children, either their own or adopted, should not be stopped. Down Syndrome is not hereditary, not a genetic misprint in the DNA, only a chance occurrence that affects reportedly 1 in every 1000 children. Iceland is not monstrous but enlightened to give women the knowledge and freedom to decide about their own lives. Remember, it's not mandatory to abort, nor mandatory to go full-term. Isn't that what individual rights and freedom mean?
There's nothing new in this article.
What ever happened to finding out Why this happens...is it incompatible RH factors, incompatible heritages?...is there something we can do besides doing even more harm? Education maybe? duh!
As far as I am concerned and have observed, down syndrome kids have the ability to produce and create more value than the average government worker!..
Hows that for telling it like it IS!
I have an uncle (13 years older than me) who has Down's Syndrome. He has held a job as a stocking clerk in the same grocery store for more than 30 years - even despite the store changing ownership. Those affected with Down's Syndrome are probably not going to be winning Nobel Prizes and they do require supervision their entire lives, but the notion that they should be summarily executed in this fashion is symptom of grave moral deficiencies in the Icelandic culture and laws.
Jan
(I put the points back on because I agreed with 3/4 of your post.)
We should allow early-stage abortions if the genome of the fetus has the wrong hair color or lacks musical talent or did not inherit the wings I added to my genome last year. I regard this as a good thing, not a bad thing.
You are correct: The starting place on this slippery slope, however, is simply to eliminate negative characteristics. Do you care if your child has Down's Syndrome? No? Well then, go ahead and have a beautiful and sweet Down's Syndrome child. Do you care if your child has spina bifida? Trisomy 18? If not, then go ahead and have a child who may be born crippled or severely mentally handicapped.
Reproductive choices, like other aspects of the individual, do not (should not) default to the decision of the crowd. If I am 100% white, but I want my child to be 100% African black, and we can introduce those genes into the fetus, then that is my choice - someone else should not be able to make me do this...or prevent it.
So, you ask, where does society's parameters come into play? Right now, society is almost entirely in agreement that a late-term termination of pregnancy, when the fetus would be able to live independently, is not allowed. I agree with that, as I think it is a reasonable rule-of-thumb; I think that 90% of our current society would agree on that. Anything else is the decision of the parents.
Gattica is an entirely different question, as it deals with what you do with the knowledge of someone's statistical genetic nature without regard for their actual accomplishment. Gattica is comparable to pre-judicially not allowing women to take math because women are statistically less math adept than men. This invalidates the actuality of the individual: the most talented person with math that I have ever met is a woman.
Jan
Blacks are genetically more inclined to sickle-cell anemia and several other diseases. Your logic morally justifies their genocide because these are negative characteristics. Do you really want to go there? That is the result of both acknowledging and accepting a slippery slope moral proposition. What is more, once one is on the slope, one can't even see the precarious nature of one's own position. It's like a snowboarding course - it just goes downhill once you jump on.
"So, you ask, where does society's parameters come into play?"
On the contrary, I don't ask society anything. I like the line from "Men in Black": "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Society is full of morons: listening to them for guidance on morality is subjecting one's self to their group stupidity and mob mentality. Remember there are a lot of people who think government should run healthcare, control industry, and restrict firearm ownership. Mob rule got Socrates executed and scorned the heliocentric model of the solar system.
Reality doesn't care how many deluded people there are out there. Appealing to the masses as a debate tactic loses you points in my book. Reality is completely and unalterably indifferent to the foibles and intellectual failure of man.
"Gattica is an entirely different question, as it deals with what you do with the knowledge of someone's statistical genetic nature without regard for their actual accomplishment."
Let's see. Someone is determining someone else's fate (quite literally) based not on anything that person has done but rather on innate characteristics they can not change and a hypothetical future. Hmmmm.... Yup, I guess that's totally different. [/sarcasm]
My apologies for trying to put words in your mouth re abortion parameters. Often, the next question in such a discussion is whether allowing early term abortions requires acceptance of later term abortions as well. I was trying 'not to go there' but apparently had the opposite effect.
Jan
(Liked your MiB quote.)
We have demonstrated we can produce an inordinate number of humans. We have enough. The ones we make don't need to start off defective.
Additional population is pretty clearly an example of involuntary servitude by the present population, and subject to some market cost.
I was traveling once and while waiting at the Orange County airport a woman who was a nurse sat down next to me, we exchanged pleasantries and she began talking about the importance of a woman's right to choose and went on to say that after children were born their brains are still forming and being connected so they really aren't sentient until they are 5 years old so the right to terminate a life should extend to that age not just be limited to unborn children because what if the child wasn't turning out right and you could foresee some problems? I got up and moved away from her. The right to control or dispense of another life always comes from the collectivists. I am certain my life would be terminated at this point (I am 68) because I would be viewed as a menace to society and happiness because of my Objectivist views and desire to be able to live by those precepts.
Children are an incredible responsibility. If you don't want that responsibility get fixed. Don't make the child pay the price of a life because it is inconvenient for you.
Humanity just refuses to stop shoving itself down the toilet hole...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterme...
This from an old dino who watched Holocaust on TV during the 70s, saw Schindler's List and a lot of movies like that plus History Chanel stuff on the subject.
That being all I can do.
Sheesh! Christian me is not even considered a full-fledged objectivist here in the Gulch.
"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. Me old dino read that a long time ago.
In China.....that bastion of godless communism, they select for sex so much that they have an oversupply of males! Sometimes they perform "Retroactive abortions" on girls...it is called "Bathing the baby". That is the baby takes a bath and sadly drowns.
Ayn Rand was in favor of a woman's right to have an abortion. However, she said, "One may
quarrel about the later [or" latter", I don't remember which she said] stages of a pregnan-
cy, but the essential issue concerns only the first
three months."
a ton of potential. His parents would say he is the best thing in their lives.
The "encouragement" to terminate a pregnancy
because of Downs Syndrome or just encouragement to abort is sad.
Olafsdottir responded, "We don't look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication... preventing suffering for the child and for the family. And I think that is more right than seeing it as a murder -- that's so black and white. Life isn't black and white. Life is grey."
Life is black and white not grey! You are either dead or alive.
"We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication... preventing suffering for the child and for the family"
What a crock of $H1T, with that philosophy all humans should be aborted due to possible suffering and complications.
I am not anti-abortion.
I am an advocate for using your brain.
If you are smart enough to know where the man puts his thing in you, you should be smart enough to use birth control to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.
Sounds to me like you're putting the onus on the woman.
I believe in preventing rather than reacting if possible. Responsibility for your actions , male or
Female is equal. I phrased it as I did because a man can't have an abortion.
I would not restrict a woman from aborting. I also don't like encouragement or pressure to abort from PP services. I will admit to loving life and
the possibilities that go with it.
That we as a society should eliminate downs fetuses is not the society that I want to be part of.
When I read the second half of the article, I do not think CBS is cheering it. It shows a picture of a healthy child with Down's near a quote from her mother asking "What kind of society do you want to live in?"
I am in Iceland next week for the first time. I think of them as a kind people who like mythology about elves and speak a language similar to a precursor of English from a 1000 years ago. This thing about Down's is an interesting, sad fact to learn.
I would not interfere with her ability to choose to abort, but I wouldnt really think much of her if she did it for the eye color.