now I know there is no way I would vote for this man

[2shoes]

dipstick that he is

I wouldn't vote for David Cameron, but it's not because of his stance on abortion. He's a tory....

agree fio, the same condition can influence people in different ways. am hoping to do some recording, btw, with some of the people on the gene therapy trials!

i know, am v excited...must ring The Man

"quality of life" that old chestnut, used to pass the buck imo.
who decides?
there are dc's at dd's school, who at first glance you could say they had none, then you take the time to get a bit closer and you realise that inside there is a child who night not be able to talk/walk and stuff. but they can communicate and have feelings.
of course there are exceptions to the rule, but how whould you be able to pick it all up on a scan?

2shoes - i made that point about 4 pages ago lol. even if the scan shows quite severe brain damage, there's no way of telling what functionality will be achieved, let alone quality of life...

i really don't think a change will even be discussed, for all of these reasons. it is political suicide.

and jh is treated like a child abandoner. which is the only other option currently available for people who can't cope with a child with a severe disability, who do not use the post 24 week abortion clause. whether her daughter's disability was caused at birth or not is irrelevant - if you do not allow post 24 wk abortion, all mothers of severely disabled babies will be in that position. (this obviously excludes those disabilities that are later onset, but they wouldn't have been detectable on a scan anyway.) is this decision easier or harder than to abort? i have no idea, having never been asked to make it - that was the only reason i dragged jh up!
of course that may mean that there is more an acceptable culture towards removing disabled children from their parents at birth, which brings us alarmingly close to a more institutional model if foster carers of the calibre of jh's can't be found...

but she did abandon her baby romy, no way you can dress it up as any other thing.

agree with riven the 24 weeks deadline should be the same for nt/sn

or did she give her child up to a woman that loves her to give both her and her daughter a better quality of life?

i know we've gone round this buoy a million times.

more people would be in that scenario though - and at the moment, whether we like it or not, post 24 week aabortion for babies that are likely to be severely disabled, is a more palatable option for some parents. (and financially more palatable for the taxpayer)

no issues with any of that, and that is exactly the position dc is in - he knows he should be the person to get off the fence, but how on earth does he do that? and where on earth does he get the money from to do it?

if we're talking utopian visions, that's fine, but the job of a politician is to work out what are the best and most realistic (including affordable) policies for society as a whole, and hand them over to the worker bees to implement them (with the cash, natch).

it's just unpalatable that existing policies are discriminatory, but unclear whether the electorate as a whole actually a -believe they are, or b- care.

i wouldn't be a politician. happy to add my voice, and even support an activist in my own wee niche, but global policy? too much of a coward.

'how useful they will be in later life'

it can be argued that any social policy points in this direction, not just abortions of disabled foetus. why do i have to get a job if i don't want one? i can get payouts from the state. so i pay into the economy. why do i have to send my kids to school? so they can be brainwashed into being good little taxpayers (oo i mean role models of the community)
back to work programme for single mothers anyone?

the initial idea of the welfare state was to be able to provide for those who needed it - ie for those who had no other options. unfortunately, we now seem to be in a position where there is an imbalance between those being supported by the welfare state, and those paying for it (ie the taxpayers)...
so all social policy has had to boil down to trying to get as many people as possible back over the other side of the line - ie into paying taxes, not claiming benefits.
anything that would increase reliance on the welfare state is unlikely to get political support at this point.

For me, the whole argument goes haywire because any discussion / decision about abortion that is based on whether the feotus is one (in particular) that the parents want immediately rests on value judgements about people with disabilities.

However, in theory, I actually believe that the abortion argument should be about whether a woman wants a feotus developing in her body or not. Any feotus. Whether, in short, she wants to be pregnant, and be a mother. If not - I think she should have the ight to abort. And if the law says 39 weeks for some pregnancies - then it should be for all pregnancies.

Viscerally, of course, the idea of terminating a foetus - any feotus - at 39 weeks is unthinkable. And because of that, I doubt many people do it. Well, they don't do they? the figures are tiny. I wonder, in truth, whether abortions carried out late due to 'disbility' of the cleft palate / talipes variety are actually women wh simply do not want to be pg, to have any baby, and manage to use the disability get-out? And to be honest, if that is the case, m own view would be 'let them have an abortion, and don't make them use disability as a reason'. DS's condition was identified as talipes at 20 week, and it would have been beyond preposterous to terminate on that basis - I honestly can't imagine a woman who wanted a baby considering termination at that stag fo something so minor...unless she actually didn't want to be pg at all.

So - I think there is a terrible conflation (caused by the discrepancy for disability) between abortion per se, and disability.

If abortion is allowed, it should be because it is allowed on the woman's say-so - because it is her body. And probably up until birth - ghastly though that is in practice. But it wouldn't happen v often. Probably not more often than it happens now.

Of course, some women would perhaps still choose that option once they discovered disability...but the option would be there because it is a woman's choice, NOT dependent on the feotus' ability.

lol riven - and i do like mike oliver - he presented a paper at a conference i was at a couple of years ago that was v interesting. the problem is, unless you are personally involved, you aren't going to be motivated into making disability rights a national media story. and the number of people personally involved still make it a minority discussion. it's not something we stiff upper lip brits discuss. we can barely manage to talk to anyone with a disability, we look for a carer to ask if he takes sugar, or we talk loudly and very slowly, because all people in wheelchairs are a bit slow, aren't they? it's not right, but it's not discussed either, except by those involved.

fio - happy with that - i was merely pointing out that those kids who would have been aborted would still have to go somewhere. presumably the parents who find out at birth will do what we or jh did anyway, as it stands.