To believe that Britain promotes eugenics.

[WriterofDreams]

I am aware this is going to be highly controversial and could upset some people but it's an issue that genuinely concerns me and I'm not just shit-stirring. I do expect to get flamed, but any reasonable argument or debate is very welcome.

I come from Ireland where abortion is illegal. I am fully aware that many Irish women go abroad for abortions so I'm not saying look how great we are we don't abort. However, until I moved to the UK I never heard of the practice of people testing their baby for anomalies and then aborting them if there was something wrong. It genuinely shocked me that a couple who tried to have a baby, went through the sometimes stressful process of ttc, got the longed-for bfp and then lived with the expectation of a baby for many weeks could then go and kill that baby because it had Down Syndrome or some other (non-lifethreatening) genetic condition. I have looked it up on a number of sites and extreme though it may appear I can't get past the feeling that this basically hidden eugenics.

What do you think?

Under what circumstances could 2shoes eradicate her daughter's CP without eradicating her daughter Trillian?

trillin i think most have the tests most people really don't expect there to be anything wrong.

also, some people will choose to have the testing because they already have a DS/ other testable condition child.

It's not a question of valuing them fgs writer. You're a poster btw who doesn't answer the difficult questions. It's not a momentary nail your colours to the mast decision 'do you value disabled people in society or don't you?' tick yes or no, because the child will be born in to YOUR FAMILY FIRST and foremost.

Valium I already told you in an earlier post that I am not going to respond to your posts. I didn't want to reiterate that but you continue to post to me so I assume you've forgotten or you didn't read my earlier post. You can keep posting if you like but you are wasting your time if think I will respond.

Trillian it just isn't as simple as that. I mean, most people would love to be confident, happy, successful and popular, wouldn't they? Part of what makes us who we are is our innate personality. I mean, I am fully sure that DD1 has progressed as much as she has because she is so outgoing. Had DD1 been DD2, who is more passive in personality, I think she would have been much more 'disabled' by her condition, but DD1 is not a girl to be ignored!! Another part of what makes us who we are is life experience, and that is shaped by other people's reactions to our characteristics. So people who have been picked on are often lacking in confidence, for example.

The whole development of someone's character is so tightly entwined with their life experience, that you can't then predict what they would be like without their disability, especially if it is significant.

What makes DD1 as she is? Her LD? Her personality? Her lack of social inhibition? Her lack of danger awareness, so she doesn't fear what other children fear? What would you take away? Take it away, and you take her away. She is who she is.

My DH is offering to eradicate me if I don't go to bed

That's convenient Writer. You're not going to respond to difficult questions such as where did you get the information that people with AS are more likely than people with classic autism to have families. That was a fair question but you have 'decided not to respond'.

And newsflash, you don't get to tell me that I can 'keep posting if I like' .

I'm definitely wasting my time thinking you'll admit you made 'facts' up to support your OPINIONS.

You're so busted. If you weren't you'd just provide a link.

Ps, You returned from a quick break to advise us that you're pleased the debate has continued well. Oh the irony is humorous. Do you understand what debate is? You don't get to IGNORE the opinions you don't like! In a debate you can't say 'I'm not responding to that'.

I do think it's wrong to be able to terminate until birth for a disability and not for any baby. So like many of the other posters I would favour lifting the 24 week limit for all terminations, however I would insist that all terminations after 20 weeks have to go via an ethics committee (I believe the number would be very small). I don't know what would happen in the scenario where they turned down a termination.

It's tough, none of the 'choices' in this area are usually happy ones.

I do find it irritating when posters compare the Eng+Scot+Wales situation to the one in Ireland. As someone said further up, one reason why we (in Mainland UK) have slightly more later terminations than we might otherwise have is because women cross from Ireland and NI when access to an abortion at possibly an earlier stage is restricted.

Exactly. It's not as though any English woman is more likely to abort because of her nationality. The amount of abortions per head England is artificially high, and so totally misleading. Brushes our unplanned pregnancies nicely under the carpet.

Fing I only mentioned Ireland because of the cultural difference, I did state in my OP that I in no way want to suggest that women in Ireland don't have abortions. That's not what this debate is about.

I as thinking more of other methods, not abortion. We make women take folic acid in pregnancy to reduce the risk of some birth defects. That's a great idea. We encourage them not to smoke. Some Jewish communities make them have genetic tests given genes on both sides can cause prblems. Others again are pretty stupid and ensure 25% are first cousins which results in vast numbers born with birth defects.

Then of course as technology develops we may be able to ensure no child has X or Y by ensuring Z and I don't mean abortion.

It was said "that they don't value disabled people and view them as a blight then there is no way to change that view." I don't think that. I think parents and particularly children with disabilities would prefer not to have them. There is the utility argument too but that's harsh although true. If all babies born on the planet from now on had no legs it might be a bit harder for us to function.

Lougle - I think your point in your post about the difference between eradicating the causes of disability and aborting an individual child with a disability is what I have been trying to articulate very clumsily.

If we had a way to ensure that every child who is conceived is "normal" or could have treatment in utero to correct a disability or condition, that would be wonderful. But we can't, and termination of disabled babies is a poor second option, or last resort. But this is often dressed up in these arguments as the choice to have a disabled child or not. You already have a disabled child at the point that the child is terminated. The grief is no less, the choice is no more difficult.

And in terms of the right to abort very late based on disability, why is this any different to seeing a disabled newborn and then rejecting them? This is why I believe there is a point (for me - viability) that a known disabled child or a possibly disabled child, probably capable of surviving, should be treated as just as deserving of continued life as a non-disabled child.

75 years ago, my grandparents had their first child - a boy. He died three days later and all they were told was that it was a blessing because he wouldn't have had much of a life. My Granny never got over it.

A friend had a test and miscarried a completely normal baby afterwards. She never got over it which is why she now has 6 boys - the lost baby was a girl.

I have two other friends with severely disabled children. One it has broken almost completely the other has coped but the family is not the sunny unit it once was. Neither of those children's disabilities could have been predicted.

Medical care has improved so much that so many babies who are compromised (sorry can't think of a better word) now survive.

I don't know what the answer is but people have legal choices available to them and I cannot see how if aborting in these circumstances is deemed wrong that aborting due to what might amount to carelessness can be deemed right - although aborting after viability seems not right in any circumstances unless of course the mother's life is in danger otherwise but that would be bringing forward a birth would it not.

I think the legal framework has grown in response not only to greater genetic knowledge but to advances in medical care too
and a greater awareness of the impact that the death of a child or a disabled child has oon a family.

I have not been there and seek not to judge, although I will on many other things.

Perhaps if we all gave an hour a week to every family with a disabled child that would be a better answer than a debate about eeugenics - and I don't think this is about eugenics really - just a set of tragic circumstances which could face or have faced any of us.

I didn't say it was possible, just questioned the 'I wouldn't want to change it even if I could'. That's a good answer, thanks.

I think this a difficult one and I think it is up to the individual and people who decide to terminate - it must be a really hard decision for them but on another note this 'you will be flamed' attitude on MN is one I find really awful. People are entitled to their opinion on issues!

I have thought of a way to explain why it is so hard to answer Trillian's question.

Playdough.

You buy some lovely playdough and your child plays with it, the two colours get a bit mixed.

That's really frustrating. But, you can't then separate them, There will be some parts that have blended all together, to create a different colour, some parts that seem to be side by side, and other parts that seem completely separate.

However much you didn't want to have `2 colours mixed together, you realise that to take the blue away from the yellow, you either have to take some of the yellow with it, or accept that some of it is green, IYSWIM.

That is what it is like with a disabled child who has been disabled from birth or, sadly, shortly after. I am not talking about an adult, or a teenager or even a 7 year old with a firmly established 'persona'.

You can see bits of the child that are definitely affected by the disability, say the 'blue bits'.

You can see bits of the child that are definitely simply their personality and character, say the 'yellow bits'.

But lots of it is somewhere in the middle, you know that stage where there are little lines of one colour mixed with the other, separate but very much mixed and impossible to pull apart.

So to ask if we would choose to have our child without the disability is, well a bit unfair, because the disability is intrinsic to their being.

Ask me whether I would prefer DD1 to not have her difficulties and of course I would say yes.

Ask me whether I would change her, well if I am honest, yes there are some bits I would change, because they are such hard work, but is there any child whose parent wouldn't change anything?

Ask me if I think it would be better if she didn't exist, so I didn't have the hard bits? No way

At the end of the day, people who think that children with disabilities should be terminated (and by that I am talking about an ideology which some posters extend to others, not individual women who say that painful as the decision is, they couldn't cope and wouldn't want the extra caring that would bring) are saying that my DD shouldn't be sat on the sofa & enjoying life.

Yes, she costs the state money. She gets DLA, her Special school place is probably £30k pa, but she is worth it.

Read Jodi Picoults 'Handle with Care'- that challenged a lot of the ways I think.
I don't think I could ever have an abortion, but absolutely feel that people should have the option...and all the information too(incl. sex ed type info too). I researched into methods of abortion for a class I was teaching...eurgh...but I still feel it should be legal!
We didn't have any tests before DS was born- simply didn't trust ourselves! We felt it was better to not know and to not have to make any decisions that may actually have had no solution. But that's us.

Lougle, you posted at the same time as me, and now i feel pathetic!! What a lovely post- and really sounds like what I read in the book mentioned above.

That's a really nice post lougle

(I still want to say that I didn't actually ask 'would you have her without it?' because that's a slightly ridiculous question - someone said 'I wouldn't have her without it' and I wanted further explanations on that, which you have given very well)

onceamai - your comments about the legal framework being a response to scientific advances have helped me get my head around what I have been trying to say. Apologies for another rambling post but I am having real trouble sorting out my thoughts on this issue but I think I now know what I am trying to say.

The problems with debating this issue are pretty much the same problems that must face the people who formulate the legislation on this issue. There are several lines of argument that do not necessarily run together. There is the moral argument, the practical argument, the scientific argument etc. The legal position really needs to evolve to reflect the best possible balance of all these strands.

I think that to properly discuss some of the key points that have been raised in this thread, the basic moral argument about whether abortion is intrinsically right or wrong needs to be set aside - this has actually largely happened in this thread. So if the starting point is that abortion is allowed, the big question is how should it be regulated by the law?

My problem with the current state of the law is that I do not think it currently balances the various strands as well as it should. We have made big advances in our ability to save very premature infants and we have made big advances in our ability to recognise certain medical conditions pre-natally. At the moment, those two abilities are very close together in time and could easily, in the not two distant future, cross over, so that we could regularly save children before the age at which medical conditions become apparent. These two things could easily become quite a long way apart. For example, if we make an advance that allows us to save 22 week infants with high success rates and an advance that allows us to screen for another serious condition, but only at 30 weeks gestation.

I think that it is this unsettled scientific/medical position that is coming into conflict with the moral argument. Children of the same gestational age are treated entirely differently in the eyes of the law because of their disabilities. If a woman goes into premature labour at 26 weeks, the doctors have a legal obligation to try to save the life of the resulting baby. If a woman chooses to have a termination at 26 weeks, the doctors have the right, and the obligation, to leave the resulting baby to die if it survives the process.

There is then a further strand to take into consideration - the practical situation, ie how disabled children are viewed and treated by society. This, unfortunately, has not advanced along with our scientific advances, so instead of just weighing up whether something is right or wrong, and scientifically possible or not, we have the added dimension of how the child will or will not be treated, what support is available, how the family will cope.

The law as it stands at the moment feels to me as though it has disregarded a lot of the scientific strand, the majority of the moral strand, and is focussing on the practical strand. In some ways, the law is lagging behind the scientific.medical position, and in other ways it is almost assuming a level of control over the outcome of a pregnancy that we simply do not have yet.

By allowing late abortions of disabled children, the law is almost seeking to do something we would all like to be able to do - to allow every child to be a healthy, able-bodied child, but it is seeking to do it by what are, in my view, unacceptable means.

That's a good analogy. It works really well for a child on the spectrum.

I'm lucky my son is only mildly/moderately autistic but even so, if when I'd been early, early pregnant I'd been told the embryo was going to be autistic, out of fear I mgiht have terminated. Then I'd never have known my son and so wouldn't miss him. It wouldn't be like some massive big sadness. There could have been several children I might have had but for ten minutes timing here or there. Every single child could have been a different child if a different sperm had met the egg. It's all so random.

Every child, NT or with disabilities intellectual or physical is born into a family first and a society second and therefore the decision to terminate or go ahead should always be the woman/couple's decision.

As for the 'cultural differences' between Ireland and the UK, when it comes to the issue of abortion I'd say Irish women are only slightly more like to take a totally blinkered pro-life stance now.

the thing is imo as long as the law allows discrimination before birth, we never have a hope in hell of stamping it out after birth,

Slight tangent, but relevant to the Irish thing - I'm in NI, and had the misfortune to walk into an anti-abortion rally a few weeks ago. With my children. People were holding 8' wide placards with VERY distressing photographs, and a very sinister atmosphere - and I think, more men than women. Certainly several priests.

I luckily had a friend with me, and we shooed the kids into a shop so they didn't really see. But their protest surely backfires - not only am I still pro choice after seeing that (and as I said before, abortion on demand to term is my belief) I have actually lost a lot of respect for people who are anti-choice.

What right do they have to hurt people like that? I was very upset - the baby they showed was a similar gestation to my still born nephew, and it was very hard to cope with that. That is as an aunt of a lost child. How must mothers of lost babies feel, for WHATEVER reason the loss occurred?

Incidentally, the "Abortionists" who were targeted were not outside handing out leaflets telling women they have to abort! If the anti-lobby hadn't been there, nobody would have known about the conference at all.