Response on BBC AQ tonight to Dawkins fuckwittery

Fusby. I'm not sure what RD is advocating either but it does look like a form of eugenics albeit dressed up (when pressed) in concern for families.

I would really like to know what other conditions detectable in the foetus RD considers warrant a moral obligation to abort.

Agree with so many posters that it is a personal decision for the mother to make.

I haven't actually heard RD speak on the subject - is he advocating a form of eugenics, trying to prevent families from suffering, or just anti-choice?

The trouble is the public generally just see one face of Downs Syndrome - the bone portrayed on TV, happy, smiling and friendly.

They dont see the ones with severe behaviour difficulties, language and communication difficulties, ASD, hearing problems, heart problems, defects of the digestive system. They don't see the families in and out of hospitals for years, desperate for respite/support, worrying about education.

Unfortunately the media is appalling at presenting disability whether in fact or fiction, so unless someone is directly involved, its hard to know what you would do. I know someone who worked with adults with DS, and when she found out the baby she was carrying had it, she went ahead, with full knowledge of what might come. He hasn't been the easiest child, but his family have been realistic and coped very well. Not everybody does, and there isn't always enough support - this goes for children and young people with any disability.

I don't believe it is up to Richard Dawkins to make a pronouncement and not expect to get flamed, any more than I would want to hear someone say no-one should abort a child they know to be disabled. It is a personal decision for that mother to make, with advice and support from professionals and family members if she wants it.

Thanks for explaining the meaning of NT. I find such a term confusing. How is it measured? Where are the boundaries between typical and atypical? What conditions fall outside the boundaries? Does the presence of such conditions mean there is a moral obligation to abort according to RD? Is there ever such a thing as typical in the human condition? What happens when such conditions develop after birth and into adulthood, are these individuals more valuable?

Sometimes it seems that to RD everything is so black and white, rooted in 'scientific fact' and it is this feeling of certainty that gives him the right to pontificate and preach to others.

I have seen in my own family the pressures that arise when caring for a special needs child but would not dream of telling another family what they should or should not do.

"This is not solely about a women's choice. It's about a couples choice."

This is not true though is it, really. The bottom line is for the woman to decide, no-one else can or should have an equal "say" in whether she should have an abortion or continue with a pregnancy.

I agree with you OP and have noticed on the other thread about RD's latest proclamation and with a lot of pro-life people that various abortion conversations are entirely centred around the "rights" or otherwise of a foetus and the rights of the woman housing it barely get a look in.

RD has also said a load of other stuff around abortion that I won't get into here but he doesn't sound like a pro-choice person really.

Cut a long story short he seems to enjoy putting his "moral questions" and "logical" solutions out there by using highly emotive scenarios which predominantly affect women. He is a man. I think it stinks.

True, I'm thinking especially of Duchenne MD and Freedrick's (sp) ataxia, things that often totally disable older teens and young adults just as they see their friends spread their wings.

DD and I have long debates about CF because treatments have improved so much in her DFs life time.

This is not about our own personal opinions or decisions, this is about somebody else telling all and sundry what they 'ought' to do

A life limiting genetic condition is such a broad category. It can mean like my friend who was born with heart problems, having an operation as a child and taking medication, but working full time with a life expectancy of 50. Or it can mean a very short lifetime of pain and medical interventions.

The moral argument about is it fair on the child, depends on the disability.

I couldn't bring a child into the world knowing it had a life limiting genetic condition and the intellectual ability to google it's prognosis.

But, this is my personal position, unlike mr. Dawkins I don't feel any right to lecture anyone else.

This is not solely about a women's choice. It's about a couples choice.

DH and I agreed to have AN tests and to abort any child found to have a significant disability, before we TTC.

I don't believe this you only get the children you can cope with crap, we would be useless.

I think there has to be real information about what having a severely disabled child means.

A friend has a severely disabled adult sister. Her sister is happy and has a good life. Her and her brother both say that caring for her put an incredible strain on the family and meant that they were overlooked as children. And now as adults they are having to make sure their elderly parents are cared for, and organise and manage carers for their sister.

The sheer practicalities of looking after a physically and learning disabled adult with serious medical problems, are immense.

IMO throwing DS (or any other disability) in to the debate is just a red-herring.
It IS (or should be) about choice and not about whether or not one life is more 'valuable' than another FFS.

None of us know how our pregnancies turn out, plenty of foetuses with a normal karyotype are not NT or are ill or have accidents or acquire CP at birth - maybe we should just terminate all pregnancies and be done with all the pesky risks of a less than perfect family life!

Oh, this makes me angry.

I agree that people have no idea what it's like to look after a baby and then a child and they have even less of a clue what it's like with added challenges and when the child in question has limitations that will never get better.

Sorry, I am a bit incoherent, but yes, OP, I agree with you, it is about choice and not picking out conditions not worthy of life. The Nazis

Sorry, cross-posted with many people!
Actually I think the opposite is true about how people perceive ds. We certainly had a far more 'negative' view of our daughter's diagnosis when we were first told about it than we do now, a year later, having met and communicated with many families with children of all ages whose lives have, yes, been changed but no, certainly not destroyed, by ds. I guess in the media we tend to hear about the best and worse case scenarios and not much about the day to day reality, which most of the time is - in my experience- not that different to the reality of life with my other (NT) children.

NT = neurotypical (I think!)
Thinking about it, by this reasoning, it would also be immoral not to abort if, for example, a serious heart condition/bowel disorder/kidney problem/cleft palate etc etc was identified through pre-natal scans, even in an otherwise 'NT' foetus, as these conditions all pose the risk of additional burden on the NHS and potential pain and suffering for families. I don't see many people arguing that point. Again, the right to choose this course should always be protected, but as I said before, a woman also has a right to unbiased information to help make that decision. And a right not to be challenged as bring 'immoral' if they choose to go ahead with the pregnancy.

My understanding of it is that RD was answering a question posed by a woman on Twitter. She said that she didn't know what she would do if she discovered she was pregnant with a child with DS. His response was simply abort it and try again, it would be immoral to bring it into the world if you had the choice. He then went on to imply that people having children with DS reduce the sum total of happiness in the world.

It is not people with disabilities who reduce the sum total of happiness in the world, it's people who make their lives miserable that do.

I think that because Dawkins' comment was used to frame the question, that influenced the focus of the replies. So if you're responding to a comment that basically says people with Downs syndrome's lives have no value, then the responses to that are inevitably going to focus on the value of individual lives. I don't think it says anything insidious per se about people's views on women's right to choose, and I am normally first to start worrying about threats to women's autonomy.

I do admire Dawkins very much for his earlier work as an evolutionary biologist, but he needs to stop doing moral philosophy in public, because he reveals himself as utterly loathsome whenever he does it.

However ... I DO think that the public in general are poorly informed about just how bad medical and developmental problems and learning difficulties in conditions like Downs can be. And about the impact that that can have on whole families. I think the increased visibility (which in itself is a good thing) of people with Downs who can lead semi-independent, functioning lives has given people the impression that Downs and other neurodevelopmental disorders are much milder than they can be. The worst case scenarios really are very bad, and they are not at all visible to most people.

Oh, and I was being sarcastic about RD being a good chap for not including children with ASD in his eugenics plan. He's not.

Women should, at all times, have the choice to do as they please with their bodies during pregnancy. If they wish to abort when they discover they have a child with DS, then they should be able to abort, if they so choose. However, from experience, there is a lot of pressure on women to abort if their child does have DS, and it's that pressure that needs to stop. It is not immoral to bring a much wanted and loved child into the world. What is immoral is forcing women to give birth to children who are not wanted.

Apple, Mumzy means neuro-typical by NT.

So not my DS then.

Although it's nice to see that RD did make an exception for children with ASD, apparently Mumzy and her team wouldn't?

Mumzy-what do you mean by NT?

I totally get what you mean by the pressure on the families of SN children and the pressure on society and the NHS too. I am not sure though that this means there is a moral duty to abort DS children. For a man who is considered to be so clever Dawkins has been extremely inept in putting his point across.

But Mumzy, the medical professionals' experience is based on the worst case scenarios in most instances, as they wouldn't have much contact with those people, with minimal or easily treatable medical problems who are - with the support of their families - living happy, and, as adults, relatively independent lives. I know my experience is limited to having a very young child with ds but this is also the view of Down's Syndrome groups who have a far greater breadth of knowledge and experience. Your view is a very negative one and I would argue not the 'norm' for most families with children with additional needs.

Sorry I meant Elaine C Smith

I think the difference between the medical professionals and lay publics opinion in this matter is highly influenced by the fact that we as medics see thousands of disabled children and their families during the course of our working lives whereas the lay public may have the experience of one or two cases of interacting or living with children with disabilities such as Susan E Smith on the AQs panel.
We witness the anguish, the physical pain, the family breakdowns, the endless appointments, the frequent A&E visits, the mental health issues, the poverty, when we have nothing further to offer medically and families have to struggle on.

I agree it's absolutely the woman's right to choose whether she wants to have the baby but the difference to your life between having a NT child and a child with SN is so vast that some families will be destroyed by it.

Ugh I despise that man. I really, truly loathe him, and that is not a sensation I'm accustomed to or comfortable with.

Immoral my motherfucking ass. No one has the right to shame a woman for refusing to abort, and that is what he has done.

He sickens me. And people who think like him on this issue. What a slippery fucking slope.

But Mumzy, many many children born with ds will not have a serious medical conditions or even be considered to have a serious disability, and the majority won't spend more time in hospital than at home. Yes, there is the unpredictability of not knowing whether this could be the case - although some issues such as serious heart conditions can usually be picked up on scans - and yes, caring for a child with additional needs of course brings some additional challenges. If a woman for whatever reason does not want to add this element of unpredictability to their family dynamic then of course she should have the right to make that decision with no moral judgement applied. But I feel really strongly that women in that situation also have a right to access balanced information to base that decision on, whereas often the views given by medical professionals (and as shared so tactfully by RD) are based on outdated and 'worst case' experiences.
That said, OP I also agree that the emphasis should be placed on 'choice' rather than 'life' in the counter arguments to RD, otherwise they are all too easily dismissed as populist and uninformed.