The elder of my half-brothers is almost seventeen years old. He’s busy studying physics and chemistry for A-level, playing around with a BBC microcomputer he salvaged from somewhere, and saving up his Education Maintenance Allowance in the hopes of one day being able to afford a Landrover.
He owes his existence to an abortion our mother had some fourteen months before he was born.
She chose to end her pregnancy around the halfway point when she learned that the fetus had Downs syndrome. My half-brother was conceived on what would have been the due date had she chosen to continue the earlier pregnancy. If she hadn’t had access to abortion, if she’d had to carry the fetus to term and give birth, there is no way my half-brother could have been conceived.
My half-brother is a walking refutation of the Feminists For Life contention that “abortion pits women against their children”. Let us accept for the moment the pro-life formulation and agree to describe the fetus as one of my mother’s daughters. This (potential) daughter is pitted, not against her mother but against her (potential) brother. Abortion allowed my mother to decide which of her potential children she wanted to carry into actuality.
If she had not been allowed to make that decision, I would have a half-sister instead of a half-brother – not such a great difference. But my mother would have, instead of a son she bore by choice, a daughter she bore because she had no choice – an immense difference. It’s not just my brother who owes a debt of gratitude to the abortion that allowed her to have a child she felt she could raise: the whole family is better off because of it.
Pro-lifers like to accuse pro-choicers of thinking that disabled people, or children conceived by rape, have no right to exist. (A better summary of the pro-choice view would be that no fetus has a right to exist – they exist by the goodwill of their mothers, and will do so until they develop the ability to live independantly of women’s bodies.) But by saying my mother had no right to an abortion – no right to choose which of her potential children she wanted to give birth to – pro-lifers are saying my half-brother has no right to exist.
Wow. Well written and profound – thank you for sharing!
i’m pro choice, but i have to say it’s a little repugnant to me to think that you feel your “whole family is better off” because you didn’t have a disabled sister. i realize caring for a child who is disabled is difficult for parents, especially depending on their circumstances. but still, it seems a bit coldhearted to say, “thank God my half-sister doesn’t exist, because she had Down’s Syndrome.”
having a mixed-race baby can also be difficult for parents. i doubt you would take very kindly to someone saying “thank god my mother aborted my half-black half-sister…her being interracial would’ve been so hard for my family.”
as i said, i’m pro-choice. but i have to say from my view, what pro-lifers are saying is not that your half-brother has no right to exist, but that your half-sister did, too.
there are SO many better arguments against the pro-life philosophy…this one you’ve laid out here seems counterproductive to me.
i have to say it’s a little repugnant to me to think that you feel your “whole family is better off” because you didn’t have a disabled sister.
Not because she would have been disabled, but because she wouldn’t have been wanted (by my mother).
If she’d opted for abortion in week 8 because she couldn’t cope with being pregnant at the same time as her marriage was falling apart, that would be her choice and no-one would argue with my saying it was good that she got to choose. But because she had an abortion later, because of the amnio results, her choice is somehow less of a good thing?
//Not because she would have been disabled, but because she wouldn’t have been wanted (by my mother).//
this i can appreciate. and i can also appreciate your argument here:
//A better summary of the pro-choice view would be that no fetus has a right to exist – they exist by the goodwill of their mothers, and will do so until they develop the ability to live independantly of womens’ bodies.//
//If she’d opted for abortion in week 8 because she couldn’t cope with being pregnant at the same time as her marriage was falling apart, that would be her choice and no-one would argue with my saying it was good that she got to choose. But because she had an abortion later, because of the amnio results, her choice is somehow less of a good thing? //
i am trying to tread lightly here as this is a very personal story. however, it’s being told in the context of backing a political argument. and what i’m trying to say is, i don’t feel it works. because the conceit here is that pro-lifers are trying to say your half-brother doesn’t have a right to exist by saying your mother didn’t have the right to abort your half-sister, and that is obviously not what pro-lifers actually believe. so the argument, in my opinion, fails–which is not to mean that i believe *any* pro-choice viewpoint is illogical, i want to be clear.
as for your question, i’m sorry, but i have to agree with what bean said above.
My mother also had an abortion because she had a tetragenic disease (rubella) when she was pregnant. I was the child conceived three months after the abortion.
My mother did not choose to have the abortion because she didn’t “want” a disabled child, but because she had not only her own welbeing, but that of my father and brothers’ as well. It is incredibly expensive and emotionally draining to raise a child with a handicap under the best of circumstances. Add to that the fact that my parents’ marriage was always rocky and that my grandmother was dying of breast cancer at the time and my mother was going through tremendous stress. The best medical science of the time believed there was little possibility the child would survive, let alone be normal, and in my mother’s eyes, having an abortion was less traumatic than watching her newborn baby suffer and die.
Perhaps more than when anti-abortion people do it, it bothers me when pro-choice people second guess a woman’s reasons for an abortion. Those reasons are complicated, rarely cut and dried, and always the woman’s in question. Second guessing them shows a tremendous lack of respect for the ability of women to make choices, so when pro-choice people do it, the hypocrisy of it bothers me more.
Second guessing [these difficult abortion decisions] shows a tremendous lack of respect for the ability of women to make choices
Do you apply this standard to second-guessing of other decisions that women (and men) make?
Or is this a special “abortion-only” disrespect?
‘Cause I second-guess people’s difficult decisions all the time, and they second-guess mine. We call it feedback and review. I wasn’t aware that it was intrinsically disrespectful.
Second-guessing people’s decisions is often a tricky business, because the second-guesser doesn’t have all the information the decision-maker is using. Abortion especially, but I’m sure you can think of other situations where this would be equally true.
Robert:
Argue about whatever you like. But if you argue from the POV of one who would take away my chance to make a future decision if he could, I’m not going to view your input the way I’d view, say, Nick’s, odunu’s, or bean’s.
Women (and men) have a right to choose smoking over non-smoking, hate speech over tolerance, and suicide over survival. The fact someone can do something, and should be permitted to make a choice about it, doesn’t mean other people are obligated to stand back and say nothing. I’m tired of some people treating abortion as a sacred cow; as if, somehow, criticizing one person’s decision to abort is an attack against all women and against the freedom to choose.
Freedom of choice isn’t the same as freedom from criticism ““ it doesn’t mean freedom from thought or freedom from having to gauge the effect of an action, either.
You started your post by talking about your brother, and how he has all this great stuff going for him. You then contrasted that, in a round-about way, with how things would have been different ““ and worse ““ if your sister had been a part of the family instead. You even went so far as to indicate her existence would have been a threat to his, and so eliminating her based on a single characteristic is a good thing because it paved the way for the birth of a non-disabled child.
But this isn’t about disability rights, you say; it’s about a woman’s right to choose to devalue the potential of someone with a disability to the point where se chose to abort and try again.
Rather than joining together for a common goal, I guess one marginalized group can still be counted upon to assert its rights at the expense of another:
See here.
Monkey Testicle, you wrote:
It’s interesting: this phrasing identifies the fetus Nick’s mother chose to abort with a fully formed disabled individual, which may not be what you meant, but it comes awfully close to sounding like anti-choice logic. It seems to me, though, that the situation could also be about a woman’s right to make a decision based on whether, in her assessment, she has what it takes, whether the condition of her life is such that she could commit herself to raising a child with a disability.
It’s interesting: this phrasing identifies the fetus Nick’s mother chose to abort with a fully formed disabled individual, which may not be what you meant, but it comes awfully close to sounding like anti-choice logic.
A fetus does not have the same moral standing as the woman who carries it, but Kiddie is arguing that a non-entity ““ this brother wasn’t a gleam in his mother’s eye when the abortion took place ““ has just as much right (if not more) to exist as the disabled fetus that was already growing within her.
The author’s argument hinges on a belief that it was right of her mother to terminate a pregnancy which would result in a disabled fetus that already existed, because this biological process was taking up time better spent conceiving and nurturing the growth of a non-disabled fetus that did not exist.
Kiddie then compared her brother with the sister that would have existed in his place and determined her family was better off with the latter. That is a statement about fully formed people with disabilities.
It seems to me, though, that the situation could also be about a woman’s right to make a decision based on whether, in her assessment, she has what it takes, whether the condition of her life is such that she could commit herself to raising a child with a disability.
If she chooses to end a pregnancy because she doesn’t feel she can care for the resulting child ““ disabled or not ““ then it’s her prerogative. In fact, a woman has a right to end a pregnancy no matter what her reason. But that doesn’t render the woman immune to having her decision questioned; any more than, by virtue of his using the freedom of speech, a man can be made immune to criticism for what he says.
Having the right to do something doesn’t mean you have a parallel right to air your totally outrageous reason without expectation of criticism.
The post above is about how a woman chose to abort a fetus because she wanted a different kind of child. The author is arguing that pro-lifers who slam this decision are actually saying her brother didn’t have a right to exist; her sister was, after all, taking up space better occupied someone else. At that point, it isn’t about abortion but rather the value society places on nurturing a disabled child as opposed to a non-disabled one.
Not all disabilities and situations are the same.
Exactly. So while it’s a great thing to advocate for disability rights and for getting rid of the idea that women ought to abort imperfect fetuses, let’s also get rid of the idea that mommies need to show their disability-rights credentials by pretending that no matter what their own situation is like or how severely a disabled child would impact their families, it’s a bad choice to abort because of a disability, full stop.
If you want to “criticize” a particular woman’s decision to abort, you are asserting that you think that woman should have gestated and borne a child when, for what I will stipulate for the sake of argument are bad reasons, she did not wish to. No, there is not, in fact, any way to do this without coming out of it an asshole.
I’m tired of some people treating abortion as a sacred cow; as if, somehow, criticizing one person’s decision to abort is an attack against all women and against the freedom to choose.
I wonder how you’d react if someone decided that you were treating disabled people as a “sacred cow,” because they were “tired” of hearing about the rights of the disabled. Don’t suppose you’d find that offensive.
Kiddie then compared her brother with the sister that would have existed in his place and determined her family was better off with the latter. That is a statement about fully formed people with disabilities.
No, it is not. The last two paragraphs did not say that, nor did they say anything that can be read as close to that.
The hypothetical family with a half-sister instead of a half-brother is a family in which her mother was forced to give birth against her will. A family in which her mother freely chose to bear a daughter is your hypothetical, not the one Kiddle offered.
Although I am disabled, and in general favor of disability rights, it gets carried too far. Somewhere we have to stop believing that anything containing human DNA is sacred. If you aren’t in the middle of the situation, IMHO you should not be criticizing another’s choices. Especially when they don’t affect you directly. I make an exception to this general rule only for smoking because tobacco smoke will have me in an asthma attack pronto.
Eventually we will have to see that fetuses are just that, and that a lump of human DNA and cells that has no consciousness, like Terri Schiavo, is not something that we MUST strive to save. This arguement gets me going because it is an arguement that could only occur in a rich country. We can make choices to keep or abort babies because we are relativley rich in this world. In other places mothers have babies, and hope they won’t die in their first few years of starvation, lack of sanitation, or just dehydration from diarrhea. Likewise, Terri Schiavo would have died about 15 years earlier because there wouldn’t have been the technology to feed her thru a tube. For that matter, having an eating disorder, which put her in a persistent vegetative state in the first place, is a disease of the rich, a disease where we have a choice to eat or not, to throw it up or retain it. If you are poor, you have no choice.
We are coming into a time when I believe the standards of living will decline around the world, especially in this country, and we will have to make choices we won’t like. I don’t mean to emulate the Nazi’s, but just maybe when we have children flunking all the NCLB tests, it is not a good use of money to “educate” the most profoundly developmentally disabled until they are 21. Choices. Maintaining feeding tubes in the severly demented. Choices. We will always have to make choices about how many we can carry on our backs, always have. That’s why elders have been put out on ice floes, or wandered away from the tribe to die. We always have to make these choices. I think it is wrong to criticize a woman who made a choice not to burden the tribe with a child she didn’t think she could care for.
The hypothetical family with a half-sister instead of a half-brother is a family in which her mother was forced to give birth against her will.
Yes, but the reasom she didn’t want the daughter was solely because the potential daughter was disabled whereas the potential son was not. I’m 100% pro-choice, and I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I were in that situation, but I can see how it angers disability activists that potential children are considered unwanted because of their disabilities. What they want to do is not force women into keeping unwanted pregnancies, but examine the social expectations that currently make potential disabled children unwanted.
A parallel that comes to mind, although of course it’s not a perfect analogy, is the common abortions of female fetuses in countries like India, because girls are considered less desirable than boys. Yes, it’s any individual woman’s right to make that choice, but wouldn’t you also want to change the underlying society that uvalues boys more than girls along with defending any given woman’s right to abort her potential girl?
It’s a long-term/ short-term thing in regards to India (in my mind). Yes, we should work until a day where females are valued just as much as males. But until that day comes up, I don’t see how forcing a women to use her body against her will is really valuing women.
Antigone, that’s exactly what I’m saying (and I’m not sure how you misunderstood my comment to mean that I oppose abortion rights in any circumstance, but I’ll try to clarify).
We should work to change the social forces that devalue girls in India, while maintaining a woman’s right to control her own body. Restricting abortion is not the answer, but neither is saying “oh, it’s a woman’s choice if she wants to abort a girl fetus” and doing nothing.
Similarly, we should work to change social forces that devalue the disabled in America/other countries while maintaining a woman’s right to abort her pregnancy for whatever reason she sees fit. Yes, it should be a woman’s choice to abort a disabled fetus if she wants to–but choices like that should be examined and put into the context of society-wide discrimination against the disabled. When so many women abort fetuses solely because they are disabled, just as when so many Indian women abort fetuses solely because they’re female, that says something about the position of dthat group in society.
There are plenty of ways to be bigoted against the disabled. But even after getting past all of those, I think there are still ways in which non-disabled people *are* more worthwhile. There are exceptions, but anecdotes don’t disprove the trends. And just because a given disabled person can be an extremely valued and loved person, and perhaps more worthwhile than many abled people, doesn’t mean that their disability isn’t still a net negative. (And even if their disability isn’t a net negative, I imagine it is for most disabled people.) For instance, a person who has a greatly lessened mobility is a less worthwhile person than the same person with normal mobility. While their worth is still positive (by a lot), and while they’re treated much worse in many situations than they deserve, it doesn’t change the fact. And futher, I think one can support efforts to “change social forces that devalue the disabled” while holding this view. There are plenty of unfounded prejudices in society that make life much harder for the disabled than it would be otherwise, and plenty of ways society undervalues the disabled.
And futher, I don’t think that any individual in society should be in a position to judge the worth of another person except where they have a valid interest in that worth. Anything more is bigotry. So it’s best to think of a person’s worth as largely unknowable, and potentially large, even if they’re disabled.
But I think the only way that you can say that the disabled aren’t less worthwhile is to say that every person is equally worthwhile. And to me, that is just silly.
So, I think what Monkey Testicle’s disapproval comes down to is saying that it’s wrong for a mother to abort a child because she thinks the child will be less worthwhile to her than she’s prepared to accept, given the costs of raising that particular child. And I don’t think that’s supportable. That’s a big part of all abortion decisions, I would think.
I think there are still ways in which non-disabled people *are* more worthwhile.
I wonder what Hellen Keller would have had to say about that.
I used to volunteer in an orphanage in S America where very poor families would leave their disabled babies. I couldn’t judge them, because I had seen how desparately poor these families are, how they were hanging on with their fingernails and how they just didn’t have the resources to spare that they would have needed to raise a disabled baby.
I don’t how this would translate to the practice of leaving daughters in Asian countries, although I suspect that raising a daughter isn’t as taxing on a poor family as raising a disabled child is, even in the most misogynist cultures.
Personally, I don’t judge parents who decide not to go ahead with a pregancy of a disabled fetus. The outrage of a disabled activist is well taken, but I have always considered abortion a practical decision that a woman makes taking into account her own wellbeing and that of her present and future children. I suspect that a lot of childless people who would willingly raise a disabled baby would think twice if they already had other children who would be affected. NIck Kiddles point is that abortion, even if it’s ugly or immoral as some believe, is beneficial to women and the children they choose to have. It’s also beneficial to those girl babies in China, who will stop being adopted if there is ever a glut of unwanted kids in this country.
different people have different comfort levels and ability-to-care-for levels for different disabilities. i am a disabled wheelchair user due to severe arthritis that i’ve had since childhood and inoperable (well, operable, but too much risk of total paralysis to do so) ruptured discs in my spine. my wife helps me a great deal, but i am still able to do much on my own. including taking care of our kids.
i’ve been around variously disabled people most of my life. blind, hearing impaired, wheelchair users, etc. but the disability i have never personally been able to deal with well is down’s syndrome. i recognize that this is a personal fault of mine, but nothing is likely to change it. knowing several down’s syndrome cousins has never changed it. so when we got pregnant, both my wife and i decided that if it were discovered that the child were down’s syndrom, we would not carry to term. other disabilities were discussed and we decided that unless the disability were extremely profound requiring more than our ability to care for given my own disability, we would carry to term.
now i understand that in many cases down’s syndrome is not a profound disability. and i know all the arguments that d-s people can go on to lead productive happy lives. and i’m very glad that they do and i am apalled that they would ever be discriminated against. but that is different than being able to successfully care for such a child.
so i guess i’m a terrible person to have made this choice with my wife. but i think it would’ve been worse for the child to be raised in a family that didn’t want it but was forced to keep it because someone else was deciding which disability was profound enough to qualify for a guilt-free abortion.
it all comes down to not criticizing a woman’s (or family’s) reproductive choice — for whatever reason. this means accepting that some people will abort for reasons or at gestational times that are icky to you personally. but when one person starts saying that a pregnancy shouldn’t be terminated on the basis of disability, then it’s a proverbial slippery slope to legal busybody-ness.
had my wife disagreed with me and had our child been d-s, i would’ve totally supported her decision to carry to term. my involvement with her and/or the child might have been different than it is in our current family, or it might not (hard to say 100% on hypothetical questions). fortunately for us, we didn’t have to make that decision as we were in agreement on the potential outcome and choices.
as a disabled person, i don’t see anything wrong with someone deciding to terminate a pregnancy based on any disability. i’m not even against abortions based on baby gender or whatever. i trust that the woman (and whoever else she choses to involve in her decision) will make the decision that is right for her at the time. i trust that she will not make the decision capriciously, and that only she is able to make that decision.
You know how parents say being a parent is the hardest job in the world?
I’ve decided it’s not, and being the caretaker to someone sick and/or with mental issues is really what THJITW is.
My aunt went through a similar situation- she debated aborting her third (“oops”) child because the kid might have had cystic fibrosis. She already had two kids and a husband who’d already lost a sibling to the disease, and were the child to have had CF, she didn’t want to take on that massive burden of care in addition to what she already had. (Luckily, the kid is just a carrier.)
Caretaking is incredibly difficult, especially with someone who will need to be taken care of their entire life from birth. Yeah, it sucks to say “You’re going to be disabled, you’re not worthy, I’m going to abort you,” but the mother also has to decide whether or not she AND her already existing family can handle taking on that burden with little or no other support, for the rest of her life. (Not to mention not having more kids because the latest one takes up so much time and effort and care.) And if that burden can’t be handled, everyone may be better off with an abortion.
Does anyone remember a NYT article a while back about pro-lifers who, when faced with the reality of having a severely disabled child, decided to abort. Most of them said they just didn’t want to burden their existing children.
In my husband’s family, a close up view of his sister’s care of a very disabled son made my husband say early on in our pregnancy that he would want to abort if we were faced with the same thing. And this from a man who dearly loves his nephew. Fortunately, we never had to face the choice.
For the record, this statement:
I think there are still ways in which non-disabled people *are* more worthwhile.
is one I find repugnant. This is not my argument.
Sparklegirl, pregnant women can be criticized for any kind of bigotry, just like anyone else. Criticizing their bigotry is fine with me; criticizing their abortions isn’t. Just as it’s fair to criticize a woman for being biased against, say, white people, but not fair to demand that she have sex with a white man to prove her tolerance. It doesn’t matter how just the cause of tolerance or acceptance is – it’s not ok to ask a woman (and it’s always a woman) to donate the intimate use of her body in service to it. And since a pregnant woman has precisely two choices, childbirth and abortion, it seems disingenuous in the extreme to claim that criticizing an abortion is not advocating childbirth.
The thing about analogies is this: children who are gay, female, black, or who have mild to moderate disabilities all have something in common that children with some severe disabilities do not: no matter how much hardship they face groing up, no matter what prejudice they encounter, when they’re 18 or 21-ish, they can all move out of the house and take care of themselves – or if they can’t, it’s their own responsibility to figure it out. But if a child is sufficiently mentally disabled, that early period of dependance never ends.
If you know that when you die, your child will be completely screwed, not having that child is a good and compassionate choice. My mother would have had an abortion if tests had detected Down’s Syndrome, and a damn good thing – she was 45 when she was pregnant, and nearly 30 years later, I can’t think of anything more cruel than for her to have to continue to be a caretaker right up until the day she needs one of her own.
If you want to judge women for not wanting to bear severely disabled children, you’ll have to judge every single person who doesn’t devote their life to caring for the severely disabled the same way, because we’re doing exactly the same thing. Why are pregnant women special? What do they owe their nonexistent children that everyone else doesn’t owe the already-existing disabled?
And sorry, Sparklegirl, for sounding as though everything I wrote was an argument against your points, which I mostly find reasonable; I meant to make it clear that they were more general comments.
PDF: There are plenty of ways to be bigoted against the disabled. But even after getting past all of those, I think there are still ways in which non-disabled people *are* more worthwhile.
But you don’t see yourself as a bigot.
There are exceptions, but anecdotes don’t disprove the trends.
You haven’t defined the term disability, and yet you’re already talking about anecdotes versus trends on how worthwhile disabled people are. Before I even engage in this kind of discussion, I want to know how you measure “worth” and what you categorize as “disability.”
Even if we’re talking specifically about people with Down’s Syndrome, a good argument can be made for their economic worth to the manufacturing and service industries. I work at an organization that serves people with developmental disabilities, and you won’t find better janitors or assembly line workers anywhere. “They” don’t get bored easily, and they usually don’t deviate from set routine.
Most of the labor pool here shows up on time every day. Some of them need extra direction in completing their tasks, but I don’t see any of them stretching their coffee breaks.
If you’re measuring their worth in a purely economic sense ““ and that’s totally repugnant, by the way ““ you’re underestimating both their financial contributions to an employer and their buying power as consumers.
And just because a given disabled person can be an extremely valued and loved person, and perhaps more worthwhile than many abled people, doesn’t mean that their disability isn’t still a net negative.
Being short,
fat, black,
‘ugly‘,
or female are also net negatives if you’re determining worth based solely on economic output.
I think most people, whether they’re pro-choice or not, would consider it shallow of a woman who wants children to abort a specific fetus merely because the resulting child would, for example, be shorter than average.
(And even if their disability isn’t a net negative, I imagine it is for most disabled people.)
You imagine it is? You mean you’ve never, y’know, asked someone with a disability? Color me surprised.
For instance, a person who has a greatly lessened mobility is a less worthwhile person than the same person with normal mobility. While their worth is still positive (by a lot), and while they’re treated much worse in many situations than they deserve, it doesn’t change the fact.
You’re paternalistic concern for the little people is truly touching.
And futher, I think one can support efforts to “change social forces that devalue the disabled” while holding this view.
No, actually one cannot hold both views; this is an all or nothing kind of situation. Either you think disabled people have the same intrinsic worth, or you don’t. If you don’t, you’re in no position to fight discrimination against the disabled. In fact, you’re a major part of the problem.
There are plenty of unfounded prejudices in society that make life much harder for the disabled than it would be otherwise, and plenty of ways society undervalues the disabled.
How could you even write that with a straight face? News flash: You’re part of that society.
And futher, I don’t think that any individual in society should be in a position to judge the worth of another person except where they have a valid interest in that worth.
But you judge that disabled people are worth less than able-bodied people. What’s your personal stake in tallying the worth of an entire underclass?
So it’s best to think of a person’s worth as largely unknowable, and potentially large, even if they’re disabled.
You’re willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they may have worth, even if they’re disabled? That is so kind and generous and…and totally stupid.
But I think the only way that you can say that the disabled aren’t less worthwhile is to say that every person is equally worthwhile. And to me, that is just silly.
You think you’re in the position to determine whether someone else’s view is silly?
So, I think what Monkey Testicle’s disapproval comes down to is saying that it’s wrong for a mother to abort a child because she thinks the child will be less worthwhile to her than she’s prepared to accept, given the costs of raising that particular child. And I don’t think that’s supportable. That’s a big part of all abortion decisions, I would think.
Oh brother.
No offense taken, Sophonisba–it sounds like we’re saying pretty much the same thing. And it’s a good point you made about some disabled people needing caretaking for their whole lives.
Is it just pregnant women who choose abortion who are free from any examination or all women, in general…or maybe all people? Is it ever OK to critique certain choices? Or is it just the choice of abortion that is off limits?
Bean, as far as I can tell, saying that someone should not have had a particular abortion is equivalent to saying that she should have borne a child. Since those are a pregnant woman’s only two choices, and all. Is there a third possibility I’m missing here?
I cannot imagine a situation in which giving birth is something I should tell someone to do. If you are saying that you can, please expand.
the idea of aborting fetuses who happen to be disabled (note: not individual women, but just in a general sense)
This I don’t understand. Abortion doesn’t happen unless individual women choose to make it happen. If you want to say that women shouldn’t feel pressured to abort, or that people in general shouldn’t be prejudiced against the disabled, go nuts – I’m entirely with you. But there isn’t any situation in which I can agree that women should not have had the abortions they had, unless they didn’t want to have them.
And that paragraph right above? That is examination. Examination doesn’t just equal judging the goodness of other women’s abortions. I like to think I’ve been examining, thinking critically, in all my posts in this thread.
A child with Down Syndrome is in immensely greater need of time, energy and money from the caregiver. This need will not end. To compare Down Syndrome to cosmetic details like height is dishonest.
sophonisba wrote:
Well, isn’t it possible that anti-disabled attitudes in society might affect society’s ability to support the mother’s choice to have the Downs (or other disabled) baby ? What if the mother who knew her baby was going to be disabled also knew that she (and her partner, if there was one in the picture) wouldn’t have to live in constant fear of having inadequate (or nonexistant) support for her decision ? (I mean material support, obviously. Not just some Bushian platitudes about God’s love or whatever.) Isn’t it possible that if a more supportive environment, she would feel free to say not only that she wanted the baby, but that she felt equal to the task of raising him/her ?
Even if we’re talking specifically about people with Down’s Syndrome, a good argument can be made for their economic worth to the manufacturing and service industries.
Overall, probably, but not everyone with Down syndrome is the same. My relative can’t speak, dress, or even feed himself. There weren’t any prenatal tests for Down at the time of his birth. The choices then were whether to take care of the person in the family or send them to a “home.”
It’s always acceptable to express opinions about such choices; it’s not always reasonable to pass laws about them.
Well, isn’t it possible that anti-disabled attitudes in society might affect society’s ability to support the mother’s choice to have the Downs (or other disabled) baby ?
NO, what makes it difficult to have a severely mentally or physically disabled baby is the fact that you’ll be caring for this person, physically, mentally and emotionally, until the day you die.
Until the day you die, you will spoon feed your child, three times a day..
Until the day you die, you will change the diapers on a spastic, thrashing, 160 pound adult.
Until the day you die, you will watch your mentally retarded, non-verbal child to ensure his needs are met and he is not in pain.
Until the day you die, you will provide the kind of 24/7 365 day a year care that non-disabled kids only need for the first 3 years of their lives.
Until the day you die, all your money, all your time, all your energy and all your love — and a good deal of your own lifespan — will be poured into your child’s care.
And on the day you die the last thought you’ll have will be ‘who will look after him now?’
Sorry: it takes a BIG leap to accept raising a child with that level of dependence. My mom has MS, has had it since I was born, and has been wheelchair bound and absolutely dependent (she has marginal use of her hands, and needs to be fed, toileted, and assisted) for 20 years. Mom is MENTALLY just fine, thanks, smart and funny, and she can speak, think and communicate. Even so, the process of caring for her is exhausting (my dad does, not me: many thanks to both of them, who stoutly refuse to let me be a nurse).
I watch the mentally and more severely physically disabled people in the programs she goes to, and I know, absolutely and totally, that were I pregnant with a child with Down’s Synrome or spinal bifeda or anything of the kind, I’d have an abortion or, if I was forbidden to do so, commit suicide. No joke. I’d rather be dead than be in the position such parents are in: it would be infinitely preferable.
I think you don’t actually GET how hard it is, and how expensive it is, to care for someone with a severe disablitiy until you see what it entails. Yes, people can and do choose to accept such burdens, but no-one should ever be forced to do so.
Except, jrochest, that I wasn’t saying that anyone should be forced to do anything. I was wondering aloud if a woman might be more likely to consider a disabled fetus worth carrying to term if she knew for a fact that she wouldn’t be the child’s sole or primary support throughout his/her life.
Not only don’t I “GET” how tough it is to raise a disabled child by yourself, I don’t “GET” wanting kids at all. So there’s not so much at stake for me reading bean’s posts as there might be for the woman next to me. If that’s too much detachment for you, feel free to disregard my opinions. That’s all they are. One woman’s opinion.
I’ve often read articles that laud the hell out of social programs in Europe that, compared to the U.S., lavish mothers with material help when they are pregnant. As a CF feminist, some part of this gets on my nerves and makes me wonder how easy it is to pursue a career as a CF woman in a country where people are ready and able to reward you for being a mother. But mostly, I think that the Euro attitude toward pregnant women is admirable, because it seems much more consistent than what we have here;A lot of lip service to the saintly bearing of the future Mom, coupled with an airy waving away of the idea that we’re at all collectively responsible for what she has to do and how she has to live.
Not only don’t I “GET” how tough it is to raise a disabled child by yourself, I don’t “GET” wanting kids at all. So there’s not so much at stake for me reading bean’s posts as there might be for the woman next to me. If that’s too much detachment for you, feel free to disregard my opinions. That’s all they are. One woman’s opinion.
Sorry for tossing around the all caps like that: I looked at it after I’d posted it and thought, “heck, should have edited that last paragraph”.
And the ‘you’ personal pronoun wasn’t smart either: I wasn’t actually yelling at anyone in particular: I should have said “people” or “one”.
It’s a monumental burden to pick up, that’s all — and caregivers, while helpful, aren’t the perfect solution either. Mom has 6 hours of homecare help a day, and that helps a lot. But she still can ‘t be left alone — it’s not really safe — and that’s doubly true of someone with a low mental age, who needs to be watched 24/7. So Dad can’t work, or go out shopping, or sleep deeply, even — you have to wake up if the other person calls, which they usually do, a couple of times a night.
Seriously. I see people trying to examine an issue.
As do I, but let’ s be honest about the fact that when we judge reasons for abortions, we are judging women who have those reasons for aborting. And sure, let’s criticize people who say “the disabled aren’t human” or anything similar.
But the problem is assuming that any woman who aborts a disabled fetus must be doing so because she believes myths about the disabled, or because she sees them as subhuman, is a mistake.
where people are ready and able to reward you for being a mother
Don’t worry–it seems that many countries which have lavish maternity benefits also have the attitude that there’s not much point in hiring or promoting women, who will just quit when they get knocked up.
This is actually a conversation that Matt and I had in depth a few times prior to the ultra-sound with both pregnancies. We came to the conclusion that for us, we are not the types of people who would sight unseen be so bonded to an unborn that we would choose to have them regardless of any obvious problems. Now, ask us today if either of our children ended up with a disability would we wish we had aborted? Nope, but at the same time, we feel no shame in saying that we’d gladly hedge our bets in odds of a child that will more than likely be fully functional and developed.
That said, we both have had enough conversations to come to the conclusion that we are to an extent pro-eugenics. If I could be changed to ensure I wouldn’t end up with diabetes (lots of type 1 and type 2 diabetes in my family on both sides), without any side effects or problems, I’d be all for it. If there was some way to offer the same to my daughters, I’d be all for that too. I’d be okay with a variety of eugenic oriented changes, and I suspect that Matt would be in favor of even more than I. I’m sure many feel judgemental of our beliefs in this regard, and not so favorably, but in all honesty, that’s why I’m in favor of choice. I don’t agree with plenty of reasons that others would abort (in so much as I wouldn’t abort for that reason myself), but I wouldn’t take away that right from them. Sex is a good example of that.
So if you view your own criticism as simple venting and not a lean towards limiting choice, fair enough, but do remember that you’re in essence leaning towards the side that says it’s okay to value the pregnancy and fetus more than the pregnant woman, and that women ought to feel shame in exercising their right to choice.
And sure, let’s criticize people who say “the disabled aren’t human” or anything similar.
Why?
Robert, I hope you’re not being serious…
Deadly serious, sparklegirl.
I believe that the disabled are human. I also believe that fetuses are human. That’s an obviously coherent position.
There are those who believe that the disabled are somehow less-than human, and that fetuses are also less-than human. That, too, is an obviously coherent position.
Believing that the disabled are fully human but that fetuses are not is not obviously coherent. That doesn’t mean that the case can’t be made – it’s like being pro-choice and anti-death penalty, or anti-choice and pro-death penalty. It’s possible, it’s just not obviously consistent on the face of things.
I would be interested in seeing an exposition of the positional logic from someone/someones who believe that fetuses ‘taint people but that the profoundly disabled are. Thus, the question –
Why?
I would be interested in seeing an exposition of the positional logic from someone/someones who believe that fetuses ‘taint people but that the profoundly disabled are. Thus, the question –
Why?
Disabled people don’t live in someone’s uterus.
Gosh, that was so easy you could have done it yourself, Robert, if you had a shred of dignity or integrity.
Many disabled people are utterly dependent upon others to survive, sophonisba. What’s more, the dependency of the disabled is often lifelong, rather than being less than one solar cycle in duration. If you want to make an essentialist argument about uteruses, ok, but I don’t think such an argument is particularly interesting or relevant. It’s the functional dependency that seems most operative in these individual’s lives.
If you genuinely believe that someone’s decency or integrity are intimately bound to their political view, that’s your prerogative, but it is a position that I view with the utmost pity. Human decency does not know a faction.
Before the 24th-28th week, a fetus lacks a cerebral cortex.
Therefore, a fetus (pre 24-28 weeks) lacks even the shadow of an ability to have any subjective experience, any thought, any emotion.
People – including the disabled – have those capacities.
I’m uncomfortable with the way Nick is framing this argument. It’s reasonable to point out there are many people in the world, including Nick’s half-brother, who owe their existence to abortion. That’s a useful counter to the pro-life argument that people who might otherwise have existed never get a chance to be born, because of abortion. I have no problem with valuing actual people (Nick’s half-brother) over hypothetical people who might have existed if history had been different (Nick’s half-sister). Where I do have a problem is with the assumption that Nick’s half-brother is more worthy, not because he is real rather than hypothetical, but because he is able-bodied rather than disabled.
I am not saying that Nick is an ablist bigot, nor that her pro-choice mother was acting in a bigoted way when she made her choice to abort. (There are people in the comments thread I’m not even going to engage, because I’ll get too angry, but moronic comments are not the problem with the original post.) There is a reasonable pro-choice position which says: no woman should be forced to give birth to, much less care for, a child she doesn’t want. And yes, a disabled child may be harder work to care for, and there is social stigma against disabled people, and these things may be factors in a woman’s decision. But a consistent pro-choice person would not accept forcing women to sacrifice their bodies and then their lives for a “healthy” foetus and the child it becomes either.
A pro-choice case which slides into “abortion is good because disabled people are undesirable” is one I find extremely disturbing. And I’m seeing a lot of arguments tending in that direction here, and have encountered far more extreme versions elsewhere where abortion is being discussed. It’s that kind of position which makes me reluctant to identify as pro-choice.
There are significant differences between being dependent on other people, Robert, and being part of another person’s body. Ignoring all the (huge) practical differences, many folks would argue that there’s a philosophical difference, because saying that a part of Joan Smith’s body is actually an independent person calls Joan’s individuality and personhood into question in a way that saying “Joan has a disabled mother whom she takes care of” does not.
Although I can see that argument, I don’t agree with it. Imagine a pair of conjoined twins, in which one brother lacks heart, kidneys, etc, and so is entirely dependent on his twin brother for blood circulation, and is in effect part of his brother biologically. If the dependent brother was able to think independently (that is, had a independent brain, including a cortex and higher brain functions), then I’d say it was a person.
Don’t get me wrong; the fact that a fetus is part of a woman’s body is essential to understanding why enforced childbirth is wrong, wrong, wrong. But I don’t agree that, in and of itself, the fact that two bodies are biologically joined proves much about personhood either way – not even if one body is clearly predominant.
A pro-choice case which slides into “abortion is good because disabled people are undesirable” is one I find extremely disturbing.
I think you’re really reaching to find that argument being made. I earnestly believe you are confusing it with the more genuine argument being made – ‘Some people choose to terminate pregnancies in the case of potential disabilities’. That same argument is in essence an argument that assumes understanding from everyone that ‘choice’ doesn’t mean the same thing or doesn’t produce the same results in every woman. People are just squeaming now because of the notion that some people abort because they don’t want that ‘sort’ of child, rather than just not wanting a child in general.
Exactly, Kim. My mother’s choice about aborting that fetus wasn’t made solely because it might be disabled, but because of a very real and significant chance that the baby would die in its first year. She was very emotionally fragile her entire life, and my family of birth was also very fragile. She had the abortion because she was concerned (rightly) that the added stresses of having that particular baby would be more than she or the family structure could handle.
As a person who has worked with people with disabilities of various sorts much of my adult life (karma? possibly), I can assure you that having a person in the family with a significant disability is a significant issue and must be thought out carefully. Many, many people with significant disability (if my memory serves me, well over half, and certainly my anecdotal experience bears this out) are physically and/or emotionally abused throughout childhood. Their families are often poverty stricken, sometimes directly as a result of the costs of the disability, and the emotional toll of caring for someone with a developmental disability can be devastating for some people.
This does not in any way mean I don’t think people with disabilities have value. They most certainly do. In fact, some of the greatest “life lesson” teachers I have ever known have had significant disabilities of some sort. However, I don’t think it’s appropriate, particularly not for people who are pro-choice, to second guess a woman’s decision to abort based on her assessment of her situation as untenable regardless of whether or not the decision is based on her beliefs about her ability to cope with a child with a disability. From my experience, if a woman believes that about herself, she’s probably right.
Amp wrote:
Another way of saying this is that it is only metaphorically that a fetus can be considered fully endowed with the status of a human being that those of us who are born possess by virtue of having been born. I have written a long and rambling post about this here that is not really germane to this conversation, but Robert raises the question of the logic of metaphorical thinking when he says
Those positions are “obviously coherent” only in a metaphorical sense, and it is important to point this out not merely for purposes of philosophical interest, but also because it has very practical implications for this discussion. Bean and Alsis make the strong point that the question of whether and under what circumstances a woman might choose to abort a fetus that would be born disabled needs to be focused not on any individual woman’s choice in isolation, but rather that it needs to be connected to larger questions about social policy. The kind of metaphorical coherence that Robert would impose, however, obscures those larger issues by suggesting that what we need to talk about is whether a woman who chooses to abort a fetus that would be born disabled is actually someone who thinks that disabled people are less than human.
And just to be clear: I am not saying that an individual woman’s choice cannot and should not be subjected to critical scrutiny; I am saying that reducing such scrutiny to the kinds of metaphorical arguments that Robert is making is a problem because it obscures the larger issues.
jrochest, don’t sweat the capital letters. I was just having a bit of fun. Yeah, an old college buddy of mine is caring for his elderly parents and an older brother with Downs right now. I don’t envy him. Thank NOTA that his folks at least had some money saved for his brother’s care.
Mythago, yeah. I brought that very point up because I remember a poster or two from Norway or Germany on another board once who expressed simultaneous frustration and pride at the fact that they were feminists in such pro-mother cultures. I think that’s kind of how I’d feel, too. At any rate, a willfully CF woman is going to be looked at askance by an awful lot of people no matter what culture she’s in. I’m guessing that I could live with it, considering some of the other benefits. ;) (It’s an interesting subject in itself, but I don’t want to drift the thread any further.)
For all I know, my mother did not choose abortion specifically because of the amnio result. Perhaps the amnio result was just the final straw, perhaps it gave her the chance to walk away at a late stage from a pregnancy that had turned her life upside down. I don’t see any reason for concluding she sees disabled people as lesser, especially in view of the care she’s given to her two children who turned out with disabilities that can’t be screened for prenatally.
I didn’t intend to present the issue as contrasting a disabled child with an able-bodied child: I only wanted to say, as Individ-ewe-al says, that the actual has more value than the potential. I offered the detail that she chose abortion after the amnio result because I wanted to present the whole story, not to make any point about the rightness or wrongness of abortion on the grounds of fetal abnormality. (For myself, I’m uncomfortable with it, but choice is choice. The ideal is a world where there is no greater pressure to abort when the fetus is disabled, not a world where a woman’s decision has to satisfy anyone but herself.)
I know that this is a somewhat radical position, but I think it’s breathtakingly irresponsible not to abort a disabled fetus.
For those in the anti-abortion camp, who apparently believe for some reason that a fetus is a thinking, feeling individual, I suppose it’s understandable. But if you believe, as I do, and as I think most pro-choicers do, that a fetus doesn’t think, and doesn’t have the capacity for self-awareness or conception of the future—that it essentially doesn’t count in an ethical sense—then to carry a disabled fetus to term is like creating a disabled baby.
This isn’t about whether or not a disabled child would be an unbearable burden, or whether or not it would be as “worthwhile” as a regular child. It’s not about the rights of the disabled. And it’s not about whether or not raising a disabled child makes you feel good about yourself. It’s about whether or not it’s okay to create a child who, no matter how tolerant and enlightened the people around him are, will never be able to live a normal life, and who may face a lifetime of health problems and/or a serious risk of premature death.
If you were undergoing in vitro fertilization, and one of the embryos had trisomy 21, I’d hope you’d specifically ask the doctor not to implant that one. Why is it any different with a fetus?
Or, suppose hypothetically that we had the technology to build a baby piece by piece. What decent person, having made a mistake that would seriously impact the baby’s quality of life, wouldn’t scrap the whole project and start over? Why is it any different with a fetus?
Brandon, I don’t think it’s a radical position. I think it’s the logical outcome of a certain set of starting-point beliefs, which aren’t themselves all that radical, either.
I know that this is a somewhat radical position, but I think it’s breathtakingly irresponsible not to abort a disabled fetus.
It’s not radical, merely dumb. There’s an awful lot that falls under ‘disabled’–you seem to think that all disabilities are severe, debilitating and prematurely fatal.
Brandon:
I wonder about how you define disability, and I mean this as a sincere and not a baiting question. I don’t know where I would draw the line in terms of a child I had helped to conceive, and I am glad I have never been confronted with that question in my personal life, but it seems to me that there is a tremendous range of conditions that get gathered under the umbrella label “disability” and for you to make the sweeping assertion you have made suggests to me that perhaps you have given thought to where you would draw the line. So I am curious.
Richard, under Brandon’s rubric, why draw the line at all? Just decide what exact product specifications you’re looking for, and reject everything that doesn’t measure up. After all, you’re creating this life and you’ll have to interact with it – it might as well be done correctly. Wrong eye color, no problem. Looks like she’ll have allergies? Snip, snip. Wrong sex, not an issue. Wrong race, no worries. Kill it and start over. After all, it’s just an extension of your own body – and you can do whatever you like with your own body. Life is just another commodity.
Richard, under Brandon’s rubric, why draw the line at all?
Brandon isn’t merely suggesting that it’s OK to custom-tailor your future offspring; he’s saying that if you find out your future offspring isn’t “normal”, you have a moral obligation to abort.
As for your “snip snip” hypothetical, by the time we figure out genetics to that degree, you won’t be killing anything other than unfertilized cells. Merely engineer the egg and throw it in with similarly engineered sperm.
I know that this is a somewhat radical position, but I think it’s breathtakingly irresponsible not to abort a disabled fetus.
The concept of “disability” has nothing to do with lacking traits that optimize performance of daily activities. Disability is a social construct based upon the average. If everyone were three feet tall, for example, a six-footer would be considered disabled ““ even if this taller individual were capable of greater feats of strength.
If we were quadrupeds and a bipedal child were born, this would be a disability in that we’ve constructed absolutely everything in our society to function best for individuals who walk on all fours. Bipedalia is superior in that it allows us to use our hands when walking, but in this scenario, it could still be a barrier to performing daily tasks in the usual way.
We have constructed out world to accommodate people who can walk. People who get around using their hands to wheel chairs are considered disabled.
A disability can be anything that, in deviating from the norm, creates a barrier to performing common tasks in the customary manner.
So, what you’re saying is that it’s breathtakingly irresponsible to bear a child who will have to use adaptive strategies to accomplish daily tasks.
For those in the anti-abortion camp, who apparently believe for some reason that a fetus is a thinking, feeling individual, I suppose it’s understandable.
The pro-life stance isn’t about whether the fetus thinks or feels; it’s about where we draw the line between permitting the destruction of a potential individual, and criminalizing that destruction.
At what point does a fetus become ‘alive’ enough to merit moral consideration? When it’s grown enough within the womb to exist outside its mother? When it’s born? When the resulting child no longer requires nursing and diaper changing?
But if you believe, as I do, and as I think most pro-choicers do, that a fetus doesn’t think, and doesn’t have the capacity for self-awareness or conception of the future ““ that it essentially doesn’t count in an ethical sense ““ then to carry a disabled fetus to term is like creating a disabled baby.
Exactly. And what’s so bad about that?
This isn’t about whether or not a disabled child would be an unbearable burden, or whether or not it would be as “worthwhile” as a regular child. It’s not about the rights of the disabled.
Not at all. It’s just about how carrying a disabled fetus will lead to the birth of a disabled baby ““ and that’s baaaad.
And it’s not about whether or not raising a disabled child makes you feel good about yourself.
Oh yeah, because parents who knowingly have children with disabilities are so enamored of the social stigma attached to this choice that they can do naught but feel good about themselves. That dog don’t hunt.
It’s about whether or not it’s okay to create a child who, no matter how tolerant and enlightened the people around him are, will never be able to live a normal life
Your argument is boiling a disabled individual down to a single characteristic. Notice how you said it doesn’t matter how tolerant or enlightened the people around him are; you said nothing about his own character or attributes.
A normal life, you say. What exactly is that? Is that a mortgage and two cars and 2.5 kids and a white picket fence? Is it life on the streets or in a tenement? Is it existing as a bar fly or a slot jockey? Is it incarceration? How about hating your job – is it that? Is it debt? That’s really common in the West ““ crippling debt. So many people owe so much that debt is considered quite normal.
I honestly think my point will be lost on you if for no other reason than that you already have a strong opinion, but I defy you to define ‘normal.’ And I further challenge you to explain why ‘normal’ is so superior to ‘different.’
…and who may face a lifetime of health problems and/or a serious risk of premature death.
You’re not talking about poor health versus wellness, or long life versus a short one. The dichotomy you’re offering is (a predisposition to) long life, or obliteration; wellness, or obliteration.
If you were arguing for the benefits of gene therapy or other medical interventions that could save the fetus while curing the disability, I’d be all for it. But you’re talking about destroying an otherwise wanted being based on a single characteristic ““ a characteristic you assign so much weight that it would render non-existence preferable to life.
I’d like to point out how that’s a statement about disabled adults, too.
If you were undergoing in vitro fertilization, and one of the embryos had trisomy 21, I’d hope you’d specifically ask the doctor not to implant that one. Why is it any different with a fetus?
I don’t know what I’d do in that situation. I think the process of artificial selection engenders a commercial mentality towards our own offspring. Like cars, they’re products we buy. We can send them back to the void if we don’t like them, or sue if disabled child is born when a doctor could have prevented that birth through disclosure.
Such acts cheapen all individuals ““ not just potential individuals, but everyone. Whether you like it or not, when you argue that bearing a disabled infant is bad, whereas bearing an average child is at least morally neutral, you are saying something about the worth of disabled adults: You are saying that this one characteristic ““ a single aspect of their lives ““ is so deleterious that you believe they would rather not exist. Or do you even care what they’d rather?
Or, suppose hypothetically that we had the technology to build a baby piece by piece. What decent person, having made a mistake that would seriously impact the baby’s quality of life, wouldn’t scrap the whole project and start over?
I wouldn’t have treated procreation as some sort of science project in the first place. We’re not talking about shopping for housewares as Wal-Mart; we’re talking about the creation of a being that we plan to love and nurture until it’s old enough to live by itself.
The message we’d send out actual children is that, sure, they’re smart and funny and we love them quirks and all, but we would have denied them existence despite all their qualities if we’d found they were a defective product.
Don’t be surprised when those children grow up to treat their enfeebled parents in the same way.
After all, if worth is based solely on producing more than we consume, what are old people worth? They’ve lived their time as useful members of society; now they have an obligation to free up resources for stronger people who can continue their work.
And why not? If the argument against producing a disabled child is that he can’t live a “normal” life, or that he’ll have health problems, what’s stopping our society from deeming abnormality a reason for obliteration outside the womb?
Pro-lifers like to accuse pro-choicers of thinking that disabled people, or children conceived by rape, have no right to exist.
Again, you exaggerate. I’ve never heard any pro-lifer say anything that would elude to the fact that they think this of a pro-choicer. You’re making us look like we’re reaching for straws.
And when I say us, I mean pro-choicers.
Given a choice to have a kid with characteristics I like or characteristics I don’t, I’d prefer the kid with characteristics I like. All else being equal, I’d act to pursue my preferences. This is what I understand to be the thrust of Brandon’s remarks.
Sure, the idea of “disability” is a social construct. Joe cannot walk, cannot read without glasses, cannot drive because his licence has been suspended, and cannot fly by flapping his arms; the choice to label some of these attributes a “disability” but not others is pretty arbitrary. Nevertheless, all else being equal, given the choice between having a kid that could walk or a kid that couldn’t walk, I’d pick the kid that could walk. Given a choice between the kid that needed glasses and the kid that didn’t, I’d pick the kid that didn’t. Given a choice between a kid that did have my preference of gender, height, weight, hair color, skin color, sexual orientation and taste in music, or a kid that didn’t, I’d prefer the kid that did.
No, I don’t think any potential human being deserves to be doomed to oblivion for being nearsighted of fond of rap. Well, not nearsighted, anyway. But as we’ve discussed in other threads, many of us wouldn’t be here today if our parents hadn’t aborted an earlier fetus. The next potential fetus didn’t deserve to be doomed to oblivion simply because mom and dad decided NOT to have an abortion, but that’s the way it goes. “Deserts” got nuthin’ to do with it. In sum, I don’t believe that it is useful to empathize with a fetus. I believe in analyzing the situation from the perspective of the mom, the dad, and society at large.
So I share the view that, all else being equal, I’d prefer to have a fetus that I had reason to believe conformed to my preferences rather than a fetus that I had reason to believe did not conform. But all else may not be equal.
Abortions are not free. They cost money. They cost time. They cost emotional energy. They cost opportunity. I have never been older than I am today, and my capacity to sire another baby, let alone another healthy baby, cannot be presumed. Nor it is obvious to me that adoption is a perfect substitute for procreation. Under my circumstances, I might well choose to keep a damaged fetus rather than abandon it.
Also, there may be social costs to selective abortion. As some countries (China?) are learning, the collective impact of individual choices to abort female fetuses can lead to social problems later on. Who knows what social benefits happen to be genetically linked with nearsightedness? Maybe the fact that humans naturally produce kids with Downs Syndrome is just an accident. Or maybe kids with Downs Syndrome will be more resistant to bird flu, making Downs Syndrome a very adaptive trait in the future. Who can say? So while I do not share the popular anxiety about “designer babies,” I do not know enough to be able to say that the practice would be harmless.
This is what I understand to be the thrust of Brandon’s remarks
I don’t think you read them carefully, then. Brandon didn’t merely say that you had a moral right to abort a disabled fetus; he stated that it’s “breathtakingly irresponsible” if you don’t.
Alsis is right … if we, as a society … were more willing to value all people regardless of ability or disability, if we were willing to provide more of a safety net for all sorts of situations, there most definitely are women out there who really would feel that there was more of a “choice” out there other than just abortion or trying to deal with the extra “burdens” of raising a child with disabilities.
How?
Children with severe disabilities will always be a greater burden to parents than those without, all other things being equal. Social safety nets can lessen the burden, but the burden will always be there.
Also, bean, I find it a little disingenuous that you’re talking about wanting to “examine the issue” but that you’re definitely not judging women when it seems to me that you are. Saying that X reason for having an abortion is wrong means that a woman should not have an abortion if her reason is X. And as sophonisba said, saying a woman should not have an abortion automatically implies that she ought to have given birth, and that is something I cannot support. Giving birth is a far cry from shaving your legs. And yes, I do think certain decisions should not be judged by those who are not directly involved, and that childbirth is one of those decisions.
I can tell that you (meaning feminists who are also disability rights activists, not “you” personally) mean to argue that we should restructure our society so that women don’t feel pressured to abort. And I can certainly agree with that. But when you (again, general you) talk about this decision solely in terms of “devaluing” the disabled, it makes it sound like hordes of evil selfish women are aborting their babies because they feel like the disabled are subhuman, as opposed to because of the practical realities of their lives. (Yes, the practical realities of their lives exist in part because society doesn’t value the disabled. But that’s not the women’s fault.) I know you probably don’t mean to say that, but that’s what it sounds like. Especially when you don’t specify exactly who is doing the “devaluing”–is it mostly the individual woman? Or does the bulk of the blame fall on her society? Because without specifying, it sounds like you’re blaming the active agent in the situation–the woman. And I can’t get behind that.
I also don’t think abortion should be framed, especially by pro-choicers, in any way that doesn’t acknowledge and respect the issues of bodily autonomy and free choice. Which means I can’t respect the framing of this discussion solely from a disability rights viewpoint, because it ignores what in my opinion is the most important aspect of the issue.
Ampersand, I must correct you. Most of the disabled can have subjective experiences. It is when you extend that to “people” like Terri Schiavo, who are working off of their reptilian brain, that this debate runs into error. We have to draw the line somewhere. If a “person” has no consciousness, I don’t think they are “human” any longer just because they have human DNA. To me, humanity is consciousness.
Not only am I disabled, as a nurse I cared for many profoundly disabled individuals, individuals that had a mental age of about 6 months, individuals who were in a persistent vegetative state, etc. They were not at home, burdening a family. They were in a nursing home, burdening society as a whole. It is very costly to care for these individuals, and I think it is a sad that these people get very expensive care when there are children running around without even basic health care, children who may be the next Nobel Prize winner in Medicine.
Something that may not be evident in the original post is that perhaps not only did the child have Down’s Syndrome, an ultrasound may have revealed many of the physical problems that D-S individuals have, such as heart problems, stomach problems, imperforate anus, and many others, that would indicate to the woman that the fetus wouldn’t live very long after birth, and that their life would be painful. Pain is the bain of my existence. I would not bear a child that would have a short, painful, life.
I dig into my archives for this. I’m a woman who chose to have 2 children and then chose an abortion too! What if my mother had made the same choice? (Yes, she did elect to have an abortion too- but NOT with me) Is it in any way significant? I wonder…
http://uthinksour.blogspot.com/2005/12/third-and-laaast-is.html
Wow, Bean, if you don’t want to be part of the ‘pro-choice movement’ will that make you part of the ‘pro choices that I approve of movement without affiliating politically in a way that actually increases freedom for women’ movement?
Honestly, if you replace the word pro-choice in your post with the word feminist you could easily have been posting as a mild mra troll.
You’ve conflated a lot of different arguments. On this thread, only *one* person has suggested that it is better to abort fetuses with disabilities than to carry them to term. Many others have argued that only the woman in question can decide for her whether it is better to abort her fetus than to carry it to term.
A woman doesn’t owe her fetus anything, whether it’s disabled or not.
You’re not disagreeing with me at all. With all due respect, I think you may have misread what I wrote.
I am confused about something: Why does subjecting someone’s choice, any choice, to critical examination mean that you are saying that person should have made the opposite choice, which is what I hear a couple of the people who are critical of bean saying? To say that it is worth questioning why a woman chooses to abort a fetus with a disability in light of social attitudes/policies/etc. towards people with disabilities…which is what I hear bean saying ought to be done…is not, by definition, to say that woman should not have made the choice that she did, when she did, given who she was at the time she made it.
It may be a matter of questioning what her values were when she made the choice; it may be a matter, in terms of her personal growth, of her making a different choice the second time around (if there is a second time around), or even making the same choice but from a firmer grounding in her own values. And it also might be the case that this kind of critical examination might lead an individual woman to wish she hadn’t made the choice she made.
But to ask the question bean asks is not, by definition, also to assert that the woman in question should have given birth to the fetus she was carrying. She makes a very good point, though I am saying it here slightly differently than she did: a pro-choice movement that is not equally concerned with making it possible for women to choose not to have abortions, including–perhaps especially including–women who are carrying fetuses with disabilities, is a movement that has fallen into the trap set by anti-choice rhetoric which portrays the pro-choice position as being, really, about abortion, not choice.
bean wrote:
That’s a bit much for me. A nation is an artificial, subjective construct in a way that a reproducing woman’s body is not.
I’m happy to ask questions or listen to them in a supportive environment. In an unsupportive environment, not so much. Agenda matters. I know that Amp and bean wouldn’t push the law to stop any woman’s abortion, no matter how they felt about it personally. Too many other people in this country seem to be willing to be hide behind their misgivings about certain types of abortion in order to stay outside the discussion entirely. They want somebody else to make the decisions and pronouncements they themselves would like to make if they only had enough courage to speak up.
I’m less concerned about what people call themselves than I am about what they do or don’t do when legal abortion itself is on the line.
When it comes to disabled rights, Iam still learning. I’ll leave it at that.
the widespread belief that it is better to abort a fetus with disabilities
Of course it’s important to discuss this belief. As well as the lack of support for children with disabilities and their families. The problem is that women are so constantly put under the microsope about every single decision they make with regard to their families that there’s bleed between “Let’s talk about how negative attitudes toward the disabled impact women’s choices” and “Prove that you didn’t abort because you’re an ableist bigot, you baby-murdering bitch.”
I suppose I don’t even need to get into the assumption that women facing these choices couldn’t possibly, themselves, be disabled, or have any clue about the realities of living with a disabled child.
Respectful of Otters appears to be DOA, but when it was active Rebecca made a thoughtful post about the issue, from the perspective of a disabled person.
I do understand why the disabled feel threatened when someone decides it would be better to terminate a pregnancy destined to produce a disabled person. There is the very real issue that in many cases the disabled must depend upon the goodness of other human beings in ways that other adults, even children, don’t. The whole subject of disability rights is a wild card when placed next to other “rights” based analysis, which, basically, says that all people should have equivalent opportunities and rights. In the case of the disabled (recognizing that the term covers a very broad range of physical, emotional, and developmental conditions), what is necessary to provide equal opportunity are resources beyond what are given to the “abled”, in some cases, many additional resources, and of course, in many cases those resources are not “provided” by the public at all — they come, if at all, from whatever is available within the context of a single family unit, through the sacrifice of time and money, sometimes at the expense of other children, not to mention spousal and extended familial relationships. And in some cases, it doesn’t matter how much you throw at a problem — it’s just too deep seated to correct or overcome, and must simply be tended to and foreborn, hopefully with love and kindness.
Here’s a disability rights quandary: In order to assimilate the deaf into society, deaf people have advocated the right to serve on juries. In order to accommodate this right, the court system pays the sign language interpreter more than it does the defendant’s publicly appointed attorney.
Here’s another: Do you pay for music lessons for your non-disabled child or do you get extra tutoring or a better wheelchair or art therapy for your disabled child?
Can you blame people for not wanting to enter this drama?
I have no doubt that some parents who decide to abort are actively prejudiced against people with disabilities. This is no surprise, when you consider that many of those who call themselves pro-life hold out the option for abortion in cases of rape, incest and “profound” defect (whatever that means).
I also have no doubt that there are many parents who might abort a DS pg who would nonetheless make wonderful parents of a DS child (or a child with some other defect) that they didn’t anticipate. That’s why, among other reasons, I think it’s wrong to leap to the conclusion that women who terminate for reasons of DS are “anti-disability.” In many cases, people are and can be better than they ever imagined, but however hard I try, I just cannot blame a pregnant woman and her partner who are often forced to decide what to do in the absence of a lot of key information (that is, extent of disability, availability of resources) for preferring to skip the potential for ongoing dilemmas and uncertain future bearing a DS pg child might bring.
And can’t you make arguments like this around all the other reasons a woman might feel disincentive to carry a pregnancy to term? Slut-shaming, single-mother shaming, classism, racism, lack of support in general, “the mommy track”? Most of these grounds for deeper analysis of have been similarly warped to impugn women’s choices. How is transparent social ableism and the attendant burden on individual caretakers qualitatively different from these problems?
I see this whole debate pitting women opting for abortion against disability rights as same old same old when it comes to debating abortion generally: the assumption that women should be better than society chooses to be, and to sacrifice self and life when it comes children and family.
I don’t see any big push by those who are either pro-choice or pro-life to make the way easier let alone easiest for the disabled. Fighting this fight one pregnant woman at a time leads me to believe that the agenda has more to do with abortion rights than disability rights.
Yes. I don’t see anyone disagreeing that those who “argue in favor of aborting fetuses with disabilities” are judging those with disabilities. They are. But I suspect you would put me in the category of “those who argue in favor of aborting fetuses with disabilities,” which is incorrect, since that’s not what I’m arguing at all. I also suspect you’re conflating those who abort fetuses with disabilities with those who argue in favor of aborting fetuses with disabilities as an objective good.
Richard said:
I’m not sure why this is unclear, Richard. If you say women should not abort solely because her fetus is disabled, you are saying she should have given birth, because there are only two options in this scenario.
And as for the grand old saying of “freedom of choice doesn’t imply freedom from criticism”—1)I think childbirth is one of those issues where nobody better criticize anyone else unless they’re intimately aware of most of the details of the situation, and even then it’s dicey; 2) criticizing women is criticizing the wrong people. If we’ve got a society that collectively devalues the disabled, then why pick on women–themselves a devalued and oppressed group–for not donating their bodies to change this?
piny said:
And can’t you make arguments like this around all the other reasons a woman might feel disincentive to carry a pregnancy to term? Slut-shaming, single-mother shaming, classism, racism, lack of support in general, “the mommy track”? Most of these grounds for deeper analysis of have been similarly warped to impugn women’s choices. How is transparent social ableism and the attendant burden on individual caretakers qualitatively different from these problems?
The difference I see here is that in discussing the problems you name above, most pro-choice lefties don’t blame the woman. That is, if a woman aborts because she wants to avoid the “mommy track” or because of lack of support, most pro-choice lefties will say “That’s too bad. Poor her.” Or something along those lines. Bring up abortion of disabled fetuses, though, and there will be woman-blamers even among those who are ordinarily pro-choice and feminist-sympathetic.
Barbara said:
Exactly! Thank you.
I don’t know bean or anyone else on this thread. I don’t know what they do in terms of disabled activism, whether their main focus is the abortion of disabled fetuses or not. What I do know is that, in my experience, so many of these fiery arguments about disability rights start coming out of the woodwork during discussions of abortion. That’s very telling.
That sure looks like an example of conflating to me. Because I’ve never said raising the question is equal to wanting laws that would forbid abortions due to disability. As for part 1, you have maintained your right to criticize women who abort for this reason, saying that “freedom to choose doesn’t mean freedom from criticism.” Unless “criticize” and “blame” are concepts that are light-years apart in your vocabulary, I don’t see where I’ve misinterpreted you.
I, and others, have said that in examining the larger issue, people very often do–intentionally or not–imply that women who abort are to blame, and that criticizing a reason for aborting is criticizing the person who makes the decision for that reason. Furthermore, I have questioned why focusing on pregnant women is a good choice for disability rights activists. Why criticize pregnant women when there are more powerful people out there to criticize, who have a much stronger impact on disability rights?
I understand perfectly why (say) someone like me having criticism or inquiry into the motives behind a woman’s abortion, or an inquiry into one general motive, would be viewed suspiciously and probably rejected as just another pro-life attack.
I don’t understand even a little bit why someone like bean, with feminism cred out the yin yang, gets the same reaction.
If you have an idea that’s discussed in the Inner Sanctum, even if the goyim don’t get a vote, that’s still an idea. But an idea that can be discussed nowhere isn’t an idea, it’s a superstition or a fetish.
Robert:
You seem to have a really funny idea of what discussion means…
I would have thought it meant: “to talk about or discuss an idea.” Which is pretty much what we’re doing here.
You seem to think it means: “agree with everything that someone you generally respect says.”
Here is the issue I see, and perhaps it’s an issue of semantics, but bean wrote the following:
“Criticizing abortion for certain reasons is not the same as criticizing women who choose to have those abortions. Just like criticizing the system that causes more women than men to take time off of from their careers to raise children is criticizing individual women who make that choice. Just like criticizing the institution of marriage is criticizing people who choose to get married. Just like criticizing the military industrial complex is not the same as criticizing the individuals who serve this country.”
There is a distinction betweeen the first example in this string and the parallels: criticizing “abortions” is not parallel to criticizing “the system,” an “institution,” or a “complex”, which are clearly distinct from the individuals operating according to or crushed by or caught up in any of these three; abortions, unlike systems, complexes and instiutions, are individual acts inextricably linked to the women who choose to have them, which is why “criticizing abortions for certain reasons” appears to me to be no different from “criticizing women who choose to have abortions for certain reasons.”
I know that I probably disagree with many women about the morality of their choices regarding abortion, marriage, and what have you. I might even criticize them from time to time, but as I said above, this particular juxtaposition of disability and abortion rights strikes me as grossly unfair, whether intended or not, by its implication that pregnant women are or should be the linchpin of altruism and morality in a society that barely cares about the sick and disabled.
I think it’s telling, too, but probably for different reasons than you do. I don’t think most people who produce or read feminist blogs care very much about disability issues. I don’t think they consider them real feminist issues. I don’t think they feel any responsibility to do anything about disability issues, other than pay them the most cursory lip-service. Therefore, the only time it’s possible to get a heated debate, or even a non-heated discussion, started about disability on a feminist blog is when it intersects with an issue that most feminists care about, such as abortion.
To be fair, Sally, I don’t think that’s just a problem with feminism. I’m sure that there were plenty of Right Wing Christian “sunshine activists” for the disabled who came and went with Terry Schiavo, for instance.
To be fair as well, I don’t see that any blog has the obligation to raise every issue from every perspective. There are many feminist blogs that don’t really raise GL or transgender issues except peripherally, for instance, but this one makes it a focus. And not everyone necessarily sees the intersection between feminism and GL/transgendered people, at least not all the time in every way.
I love coming into a discussion and seeing that Bean (and sparklegirl) have already said what I would have liked to contribute. It’s very refreshing.
It’s difficult not to respond to several of the other comments people have made here as to personal attacks, like Silverstar’s “burdening the tribe” bit. Look – having kids is risky business. There’s no guarentee that a child born with Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) will be anywhere close to being “profoundly developmentally disabled” just as there’s no guarentee that a child born without Trisomy 21 will be profoundly gifted. Or will stay that way. Not all disabilities can be detected prenatally. Not all disabilities exist from the time a child is born. And, for heaven’s sake, not all disabilities are a burden on society.
pdf23ds , my daughter is neither a “net negative” nor an anecdote.
It’s worth pointing out, yet again, that this discussion began by talking about an apparently wanted pregnancy that was aborted after it became clear that the fetus had Trisomy 21. This is a very different scenario than one in which a pregnancy started or became a not-wanted pregnancy for any reason other than a perception that the child might have a disability.
For the record, my daughter is a healthy little girl with Down syndrome and (apparently) normal intelligence.
IIRC, the record for IQ in a person with Down syndrome is 110–higher than the average. DS can cause a wide range of problems and people with DS can lead anything from an essentially normal life (though probably with a mildlly shortened lifespan and somewhat decreased intelligence compared to what they might have had otherwise) to severe physical problems and profound mental retardation leading to death in early childhood. That’s one reason why it is important to leave the decision of what to do in the case of a prenatal diagnosis of DS to the parents, particularly the mother, rather than the state. There’s no way of saying in advance how bad the damage from the extra chromosome will be and no one else has the right to decide whether to take the risk or not.
Right. Conservatives almost always pursue policy agendas which are terrrible for disabled people. But it’s hardly surprising that conservatives, who are all about preserving the status quo and upholding current power and status hierarchies, want to preserve a status quo that isn’t good for disabled people. Feminists are supposed to be about challenging those hierarchies. That’s why I’m a feminist, not a conservative. I generally expect better of feminists than of conservatives.
Fair enough. But I was responding to Lanoire’s implication that the reason that disability is generally invisible on feminist blogs is because people who claim to care about disability are really just stealth anti-abortion activists. And I really believe that’s both wrong and insulting.
NICK: I didn’t intend to present the issue as contrasting a disabled child with an able-bodied child: I only wanted to say, as Individ-ewe-al says, that the actual has more value than the potential. I offered the detail that she chose abortion after the amnio result because I wanted to present the whole story, not to make any point about the rightness or wrongness of abortion on the grounds of fetal abnormality.
I apologize. I took it that way but, interestingly, my husband didn’t. He figured your argument meant exactly what you’re saying it meant.
LANOIRE: I also don’t think abortion should be framed, especially by pro-choicers, in any way that doesn’t acknowledge and respect the issues of bodily autonomy and free choice. Which means I can’t respect the framing of this discussion solely from a disability rights viewpoint, because it ignores what in my opinion is the most important aspect of the issue.
The law forbids taking illicit drugs, despite personal choice. The law has, in times past, called people to a draft who were against war. The law forbids selling your own organs, and places regulations on your ability to give them away. The law can cause people to be imprisoned against their wills, either for crimes or for mental illness. The law in most places forbids prostitution, or the purchase of sex. The law can recommend capital punishment. All of these are infringements on autonomy, and all of them are legal.
Abortion is about a woman’s right to privacy, and not her physical autonomy.
Secondly, I believe it is perfectly legitimate to “frame” this discussion in terms of disability rights. Disability rights are no less important than the right to privacy; since abortion and disability do intersect sometimes, they can be discussed together sometimes.
Feminism and disability rights are intricately linked, as far as I’m concerned. Women and people with disabilities are still seen by some as having characteristics inferior to the socially dominant group. I think it’s fair, and entirely proper, to discuss abortion in the context of disability rights, without having to specify the caveat that it’s still a woman’s choice.
I don’t know bean or anyone else on this thread. I don’t know what they do in terms of disabled activism, whether their main focus is the abortion of disabled fetuses or not. What I do know is that, in my experience, so many of these fiery arguments about disability rights start coming out of the woodwork during discussions of abortion. That’s very telling.
That’s exactly right. You don’t know what I do in terms of disability rights. I’ll give you a clue, however: My stance on the morality of selective abortion is part of a larger disability rights agenda.
…”freedom to choose doesn’t mean freedom from criticism.” Unless “criticize” and “blame” are concepts that are light-years apart in your vocabulary, I don’t see where I’ve misinterpreted you.
I’m the one Bean quoted when she said the freedom to choose does not imply freedom from criticism. Would you have preferred I used the phrase “examine critically”? Or are the social pressures leading to a choice about abortion beyond critical examination?
You can criticize a choice without blaming the individual for it. I don’t blame women who choose to abort because of fetal anomalies, but I do criticize that particular choice in a broader sense. I also criticize people who laud that choice as proper.
Telling a woman her choice to abort was right is as odious to me as telling her the decision was wrong is to you.
I have questioned why focusing on pregnant women is a good choice for disability rights activists.
And I would question why a woman’s right to privacy should take primacy over disability rights. Disability activists should be permitted to deal with any subject discussed in the public sphere without fearing they’ll be criticized for taking attention from more important things ““ which, I think, is exactly what this argument is boiling down to.
Criticizing abortion for certain reasons is not the same as criticizing women who choose to have those abortions.
Oh, c’mon. If I say “Choice X is morally wrong,” the logical implication is that people who make choice X are doing something morally wrong.
And can’t you make arguments like this around all the other reasons a woman might feel disincentive to carry a pregnancy to term?
Of course. It’s the difference between pointing out that women may feel pressured to abort because they can’t afford a child, and saying that finances are a litmus test as to whether a woman should be allowed to abort.
To clarify what I posted earlier, I am pro-choice, including in pregnancies where the fetus is diagnosed with Trisomy 21. A longer explanation of my position is here. But I am wary of those who say that they know that they can’t handle a child with a disability, because even with amniocentesis, there’s no guarantee of a healthy, smart, beautiful baby.
Dianne said:
The IQ range for people with Down syndrome is roughly a one standard deviation shift of the typical IQ bell curve. So it’s as likely that a person with DS will have intelligence in the normal range as it is that a person with DS will be severely developmentally disabled (preferred term for adults, children are considered developmentally delayed, not disabled).
There’s so much misunderstanding about this – so many people in this thread and elsewhere seem to believe that having Down syndrome means that a person will be moderately to severely mentally retarded (actual dianosis).
I believe that it’s hugely important to:
1) Provide support systems for people with disabilities and their families, including reliable access to medical and therapeutic care – which we do have in my red state, despite the Republican governor’s attempts to eliminate the programs and reduce funding, and
2) Educate people about what it really means to have a disability like Down syndrome. It could be that it’s not as bad as (general) you’re thinking it is. Many women are making choices based in ignorance and fear.
3) Expose people to our stories, to our loved ones, in such a way as to eventually convince them that people with disabilities aren’t just drains on society, eyesores to make us uncomfortable, worst case scenarios “living” lives without value. And this is true of people who are far more seriously affected by their disabilities than my daughter is by hers.
Right now I’m focused on my first and second goals; I think number 3 is a long way away from here and now.
SarahLynn, that’s all to the good. It might also interest you to know that the great pro-choice state of California leads the way in giving counseling and information to couples expecting a DS baby.
I wonder what that entails.
My understanding is that California provides counseling for couples who have received a prenatal diagnosis, and information about disabilities and resources. My understanding is that it was intended to facilitiate informed decision making and that it’s really not stacking the deck in favor of termination, which is what I assume you might be suspecting.
bean wrote:
Do what you like. Those folks can do what they like. They will anyway. When somebody wants to shop a more alluring and effective encapsulation of the philosophy you espouse than “pro-choice,” I’ll take a look at it for sure. In the meantime, it’s what we’ve got, and I’ll stick with it. And in a culture where as many people skip out on voting as vote, I tend to lean heavily toward the notion that there are multiple reasons that most citizens sit out even cursory participation in political movements– But I tend to place misgivings about supposed pro-choice fanaticism down near the bottom of the list. Because I really don’t think that there’s any such thing as a pro-choice fanatic. It’s a contradiction in terms. Perhaps there are grown men and women who can’t tell the difference between A) Wanting to leave hard decisions to individual women and not the state B) Wanting to analyze those decisions in context of a larger society (which is what I feel folks like you and Sarahlynn are doing and C) Mandatory, compulsory abortion as a component of state-run/sanctioned eugenics. If so, I really don’t think those folks would be much use to any organized movement for any type of human rights.
That’s my elitist snot moment for today. Carry on. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
Sally wrote:
Well, a lot of folks who clamored about Schiavo certainly fit that description. But you’re right. That wouldn’t exactly fit the average disabled person or disabled activist. Thanks for the clarification.
Speaking of clarification, I’m sorry if I made it sound in my previous post as if I didn’t know that the U.S. has indeed more than dabbled in eugenics through our sordid history. I do know, and it’s not something to be proud of. I suspect that at least some of the fury around the issue of a woman choosing to abort a disabled fetus but not a healthy fetus is about the fact that in an ableist society, the market is essentially driving a view that heavily encourages eugenic thought. And I don’t really know what to do about that apart from things I’ve brought up in a thousand other posts. No need in going into them all again.
Barbara, that’s cool. Thanks for the info.
SarahLynn, you might be interested in this link: http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/another_subject/
The dad of a DS boy who has a lot of really insightful things to say about disability rights, the issue of eradication of disabilities, and so on.
I said:Pro-lifers like to accuse pro-choicers of thinking that disabled people, or children conceived by rape, have no right to exist.
Christi Nielson said: Again, you exaggerate. I’ve never heard any pro-lifer say anything that would elude to the fact that they think this of a pro-choicer. You’re making us look like we’re reaching for straws.
Feminists For Life said, or at least strongly implied, that pro-choice means believing that certain people (depicted as full-grown adults) had no right to exist.