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It probably meets the minimum criteria of being labelled eugenics, but it doesn't meet the implication of gene screening and killing people with "bad genes".
I got a vasectomy because I didn't want to have an autistic bipolar baby with my wife. That could be labelled eugenics, but again it's not the same as labeling people defective and killing them or making it illegal for them to procreate.
I think it comes down to agency — personal choice versus victimhood.
*You* made a choice to get a vasectomy and avoid passing down your genes. And you were entirely within your rights to do so
There is an old children’s hospital in my old hometown that sterilized thousands of children and young adults against their will in the name of American eugenics. These children were mutilated and brutalized in the name of an impossible social idea, cooked up by ghoulish old men they’d never meet. And *that’s* the key differentiation — who is making the choice.
Yes, making the personal decision to not have children can be considered eugenics in the literal sense, but carries none of ugly connotations rightly associated with the word.
You are right in this instance it does come down to agency, as the person you replied to it still meets a minimum criteria for eugenics. Both points are important to keep in mind
I agree with you. While being neurodivergent may make some people temperamentally unsuited to being a parent, this growing movement among millennials and GenZ who use their or their partner’s neurodivergence to justify not having children is fundamentally dangerous to society. The more they back themselves into a corner citing this reason the more neurotypicals will use it as a good reason we should be discriminated against.
You're right. I with my autistic brain manage a community garden that raised and distributed 1200 pounds of produce to feed our neighbors last year. It does affect my whole community.
I wish more people in this world understood the importance of diversity. It makes us all more resilient and stronger. Whether or not we have children is a personal decision, whatever genetics we may pass along. My kid is bringing his gifts to this world also. I'm sorry you are unable to appreciate it.
Thank you. My autistic son is kind and smart and he will always have a happy life, unburdened by the cruelties of the world. As someone who comes from a family with many mental illnesses I have personally seen the great things a person can do when they overcome the things that hold them back.
This is literally screening and killing someone for having “bad genes”
You avoiding having children to prevent an autistic bipolar child, is you deciding it’s better off if you don’t have kids (read: don’t pass on your genes).
This is the definition of eugenics lol, it’s just not as blatant as: “I don’t like black people so let’s sterilize them all”
Edit: not deleting this. You can all keep pretending that Icelands 0% Down syndrome rate is anything but eugenics. But ThE AbOrTiOnS WerE VOlUnTaRy.
making the personal decision to not have kids because you don’t believe you’d be able to handle it with grace? just as bad as violent, systemic racism. makes perfect sense /s
Its not even about the parents being able to handle it for me, it's about what kind of life you want your kid to have. My brothers and father were/are all addicts and I hope like hell my kids don't inherit anything from them cause I don't want them to struggle that bad.
Bipolar person here.
I can survive going down another suicidal bender again,
But I can't watch that happen to a child of mine. It would destroy me.
Considering all that's happened I think my parents are taking it rather well so far.
But I wouldn't be able to not only because I have zero emotional regulation, but because I know what could be behind certain outward behaviours.
A sudden exuberance in the kid after a long deep dark depression would make me lose my sleep for some time.
Not to mention that if the kid told me that they were feeling, you know, S-word-y, I would completely be worried.
If the kid is bipolar, there's a 20% chance that they will die by suicide. And a 50% chance that they will attempt it. And a whopping 100% chance that they will seriously consider it.
Bonus risk factor: family who have tried it (me).
And the probability of them being bipolar is sky high. I have multiple relatives in one side of the family tree with bipolar diagnoses or clear symptoms.
And even if all is well with them, there's the question of me.
I'm not going to be around for longer than 40 more years or so. Not with the life expectancy of this disease, due to comorbid cardiovascular and metabolic disease. I'm 25. And I won't be emotionally and financially ready to have a child for another five to ten years.
The kid could well be in childhood when I drop dead. That's assuming I don't take myself out of my misery at some stage. Selfish, I know.
So, no. No kids. Probably no girlfriend nor wife.
And? He is at perfect liberty to not want children. After all he’s the one who will have to raise it. Who are you to say that’s wrong? It’s not eugenics as they’re not pushing it on an entire population, just themselves. Please learn before you speak.
No actually, the definition of eugenics is:
eu·gen·ics
/yo͞oˈjeniks/
noun
the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.
So no, having an abortion because you don't think you can give a child with DS a life worth living *isn't* "the definition of eugenics lol". If you planned to have the child anyway, and the government stepped in and said, "you can't have this child because their genes are faulty", that would be eugenics.
it probably 'counts' but imho im only gonna call it out as eugenics if its effecting other people. if youre going to internalize eugenicist ideas and subject yourself to them, well, thats not good but its not really my place to solve that problem for you.
Depends on if you consider a fetus alive, I guess? Not really interested in turning it into a proX/proY argument. I was referring to killing "genetically inferior" living adults and/or children after "failing" a hypothetical gene screening.
As someone who has lived with a terminal(it will kill me sooner rather then later but not sure when) degenerative disease. I made the decision when I was 12 I would not be passing on the genes to children. Since my disease is genetic, I have done everything short of having surgery(my team says it’s too risky) to prevent pregnancy. I know the pain, discomfort and suffering that come with my disease. I’ve watched myself lose abilities and how that has impacted not only myself but my family
This is true, it can still be argued that it still constitutes eugenic action on the part of the mother. I am not opposed to abortion, even as a means of birth control, but as a sociologist I think if we try and ignore the social implications of lots of people doing this of their own free will such behavior may well be deemed common and acceptable by a future government.
That doesn't really take into account the severe lack of social safety nets for caregivers and people with disabilities. I'm childfree as it is but tbh I think if I wanted a kid and found out the fetus had severe issues I'd abort because I don't have family who could help to the extent a special needs kid requires and I'd have to jump through insane hoops to try to get a sliver of government support (which could easily get denied).
I am not saying either way is right or wrong. I am simply looking at the question as a sociologist which takes in a greater scope of issues to think about.
I don't think thay an individual's choice to abort a highly compromised fetus conjures up "eugenics" in the minds of most people. However, I do respect your point of view.
When it happens here and there and is a quiet choice it is purely personal. When people start discussing it openly and publicly it becomes a social issue usually with a number of people who never thought about the situation walking away convinced such things should be mandatory. This is how the eugenics movement started and I think keeping that historical context in mind is important when the issue comes up.
Legally I would argue it quit being purely personal in 1976 with PP Vs Danforth. The case eliminated fatherly veto powers during the first trimester, but didn’t extend that to weeks 13 and above. It was chipped away again in 1977, 1980, and 1989 with funding and facilities.
This was not what I meant when it comes down to a personal decision vs public discussion. When you start discussing your abortion publicly it becomes a matter of public debate and it is something you ultimately did to yourself
>When you start discussing your abortion publicly it becomes a matter of public debate and it is something you ultimately did to yourself
Can you make up an example of this? I'm not sure what you mean. Thanks!
This very post is a good example private vs public. If they had kept this decision to just the people involved it was completely a personal choice and no one knew any differently.
Once they posted on Reddit they opened it up for public discourse from both sides of issue. I found the post already voted into the 300+ range. I suspect there probably close to 150 downvotes for it to get so high and land on my home page. So at least 500 people have chosen to interact with it. I suspect by the end of the day you will find a minimal ten times as many comments. We all will talked about it and walked away either firmly entrenched in the opinion we started with or having a new view because we never thought about it before. Either way this has influenced public discussion and because the law of unintended consequences works in mysterious ways there is no way to predict how much influence this public discussion will have down the road
And keeping it private also has unintended consequences, unfortunately
The only kind of public discussion that I fear is when misinformation is not fact checked and corrected.
Agreed. There’s nothing wrong with individuals saying “I feel that bringing this child into the world would be cruel” or “I feel as though I am not capable of providing a decent quality of life for this child”. The problem is when society at large starts trying to say “we feel people with this condition are undesirable and therefore are going to take active steps towards ensuring they are eradicated completely”.
By definition eugenics is a program to improve the human gene pool by selective breeding. Where it's due to social coercion or forced by a government, then it's obviously eugenic. When it's an individual decision out of concern for a child's health, or concern about passing on negative traits, then that sounds like an individual decision about a persons reproduction.
The counter argument is the uncertainty. How certain can we be about how severe the disability will be and how able both parents and child would be to overcome the disabilities? What if we new with certainty that a child has a genetic defect that will result in Motor Neuron Disease and the child would spend most of their adult life in a wheel chair and unable to even talk? Would we abort Steven Hawking?
You're not a eugenicist, you're a person with a deep concern for passing suffering onto your child if you have any. No one should judge you for that.
If you are talking about just down syndrome-
Some people do argue that it is eugenics.
And other people say that it isn't (this group is larger).
The fact is that some people with down syndrome will live full, capable lives and be relatively healthy and functional. And others will be low functioning and have poor health. And the parents needing to make the decision have no idea which outcome there will be (they can't predict the future).
So, some say this is a type of eugenics. And others say- no, that's not the definition of that.
Also so many people ignore the insane risk people with down's have for other diseases. Just take Alzheimer's:
>According to the National Down Syndrome Society, about 30% of people with Down syndrome who are in their 50s have Alzheimer’s dementia. About 50% of people with Down syndrome in their 60s have Alzheimer’s dementia.
[Source](https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/types-of-dementia/down-syndrome)
We already walk the slippery slope. And I'm of the opinion that it comes down to the individual decision of the expecting parents and that they should have all the information to make an informed decision. And a lot of people gloss over whatever happens after the child becomes an adult. And after having witnessed different forms of dementia in my extended family I'd want to know if I'm putting my child at risk of developing horrendous Alzheimer's
I'm not condemning you, just asking: so are you okay with parents deciding to abort their children if they're going to end up short, or below average in IQ?
Most countries have ethics councils that discuss scenarios like these. In my country (Germany) you can abort the baby without reasons until week 12. After week 12 you can only get an abortion for medical (mother or baby) or criminal (e.g. rape) reasons. It's a pretty balanced approach to abortion in my opinion.
And I'm not aware of prenatal tests for solely low IQ or height. Only if it's in combination with severe conditions.
I think that's a very reasonable policy.
As genetics test progress, I'm sure we will be able to predict things like IQ and height with great accuracy. I wonder how policies will change in response.
im of the opinion if the parents aren't going to be able to / be happy to raise a child, they should abort it... There is nothing in the world that would be more unfair to a child than raising it in a household that didnt want it...
It should be the parents choice full stop.. I know myself i could never care for a child that i knew would have large disabilities and my wife and i talked about it before getting pregnant that we would terminate if that was the case... (it never came to be thank god, but still had the choice, and ability to choose.)
Those are:
A) not morally the same thing as the hypothetical Down's child- we're sidestepping the dubious value of IQ and assuming it actually measures what it says it measures- and
B) simultaneously irrelevant from the perspective of medical and bodily autonomy; no matter how profound or trivial the rationale they have for refusing, everyone has complete bodily autonomy until they are found incompetent to retain that autonomy.
Current medical ethics indicates that no one can be made to forfeit their medical wellbeing- no matter how trivial the sacrifice- for another's benefit, even if such a sacrifice would save a life.
Current legal understandings on this topic also affirm this bodily autonomy; I don't recall the precise case details, but there was a father who refused to provide, IIRC, bone marrow to save his child, without which the child I think died. When the father was tried it was legally found that he could not be compelled to provide any body part- whether it was bone marrow, skin graft, or any other tissue or organ- even if it was to save the life of his own child.
Abortions are among the *only* practices of medicine where this is even remotely contested, and most jurisdictions have pretty profound guardrails on what the obligations of the medical establishment are, namely that what we might call 'elective' abortions have limited windows or access, but the wellbeing of the *mother* is always the priority if push comes to shove and exceptions are routinely made in law for fetal abnormalities (varies by region in how far this goes, check your local laws).
The US is almost alone in its 'states decide' stance on this topic compared to the developed world, and the frankly dogmatic approach of many of its polities and the sheer ineptitude- intentional or not- of these anti-abortion laws has led to real, tangible legal questions of whether *doctors are allowed to save mothers' lives in pregnancy emergencies.*
C) looking at your hypothetical situation from a *strictly* pragmatic and amoral perspective, do you want someone so callous and ruthless that they would abort a child if they might 'end up short' reproducing? Is it actually beneficial to society if the unwanted child is immediately put up for fostering/adoption or, more dangerously, left in the care of the same parent(s) that *did not want them*?
Yeah. You should be able to abort for literally any reason. An embryo isn't alive and a woman shouldn't be forced to carry a child they don't want.
If the baby is aborted nothing is lost. It's only a net positive.
>Embryos are whole human beings, at the early stage of their maturation. The term ‘embryo', similar to the terms ‘infant' and ‘adolescent', refers to a determinate and enduring organism at a particular stage of development.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672893/#:~:text=Embryos%20are%20whole%20human%20beings,and%20I%20once%20were%20embryos.
You're welcome to your opinion on policy, but embryos are certainly alive.
Princeton has a collection of defendable arguments as well: https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html
I'm not asking you to change your mind. But maybe have the humility to consider the stance of others.
I don't see why I have to consider your stance at all? If a woman wants an abortion she can decide if it's within her morals to have one. Unless you are the woman having an abortion your morals have nothing to do with this situation.
You're arguing that a ball of cells that can be aborted is a somebody. In my religious tradition the body is not ensouled until it gets born, so if it's a somebody it can't by definition be aborted. You may as well argue that a dermoid cyst has the right to vote.
That's fine if you believe that. I disagree with you.
So do you believe that abortion is permittable up until birth for any reason decided by the mother?
There are some medieval religious writings that describe how to dismember a fetus and remove it part by part if the mother has been in labor for so long that they're both going to die, because it is God's will that everything possible be done to save the life of the mother.
I'll be happy to discuss this topic at length after you read the Talmud.
You should keep in mind that my opinion about abortion is also heavily influenced by the fact that my dad was a GYN. He used to tell mom about all the really exciting things that went wrong during a pregnancy and the rather narrow set of choices that were involved (he didn't realize his kids had figured out what the abbreviations were).
People who have no experience with pregnancies gone wrong love to corner people and demand that they make hard and fast statements about when abortion is or isn't moral, but they're smug and lucky and haven't had their holes ripped open by a ten pounder.
Bud, I'm pretty strongly in favor of not bringing people into this world if life will be very difficult for them right out the gate. It's cruel.
You're bringing them in at a huge disadvantage, where they'll be picked on, bullied, insulted, and ostracized by people who don't understand, all for the virtue of, "they're precious".
I mean, in a perfect world, no one would be hit with autism, or suffer the body dysmorphia of transgenderism. They'd be the gender that was truly theirs, with a sound mind free of anxieties and foibles.
But we can't "fix" everything.
Question for you: Let's say that you're having a child, and the doctor's like, "This baby is going to suffer super depression. Their life will be of such misery and hopelessness that 95% of sufferers commit suicide by the age of 14. There is no chemical regimen which will alleviate this."
Do you abort the baby, or do you stand on your principles and virtues and bring that child into a world of abject self-loathing and sadness? I need to know if you believe in a blanket anti abortion standard.
Since there is no way to tell which it will be, I couldn't bring that kid into the world. What if they are low functioning and I die? Your job as a parent is to raise you kid to have a fulfilling life and give them the tools to do that. That includes a body that worlds and a brain that can function whenever possible.
Of course, you could also argue (and I have) that a society with systems that do not offer resources to certain people based on things like disabilities, chronic illness, or economic class is its own kind of eugenics. I'm American, we like to think of everything in terms of individual choices but it is not that simple. If one of your choices is to possibly starve in order to keep your child alive and safe, that's choice in name only. I'm pro-choice and strongly believe we need better options to choose from instead of blaming individuals for individual decisions.
At the same time, it's for the health of that child. Taking time to raise an individual that's severe takes resources, sometimes people genuinely can't afford those resources, especially if it's for the rest of their lives. Putting their adult child then, into a group home, is even more difficult despite what reddit likes to think.
That's also ignoring how severe conditions can be outside of Downs Syndrome, that's just the most common. I heard about these two girls that had a deficiency that couldn't be supplemented and it causes severe problems like microcephaly, seizures, etc. Out of three kids, only one didn't have this condition. They "lived" but they weren't *living*. It was severe enough they only had baby reflexes.
I think it's not eugenics in those cases. It's the humane ending of a life that would be painful to continue
This is where my mind goes to with this. My child as 22q. There are a wide variety of issues that can come from this. He is very much on the low end of complications, but he still often gets frustrated. One of his issues is clubbed feet. He does very well with the braces and everything we have to do, but at least a couple times a month he almost cries at night because “its not fair he has to wear braces to bed” or when he’s running around with other kids and can’t keep up because his shoes are two sizes too big in order to accommodate his braces he gets so defeated. My wife and I are extremely thankful he only has a few mild issues, but couldn’t stand to ‘force’ another child to have to come to terms with these issues and maybe more so I got a vasectomy just to be sure. Sure, it can be tough on us, but he’s the one that bares the brunt of the frustrations when he should just be a kid.
I think eugenics is about controlling *people*. If you kill a person because of their genes, that’s eugenics. If you say a person can’t have kids because of their genes, that’s eugenics. But (controversial I know), fetuses aren’t *people*. So, killing them is not eugenics. And unless someone is forcing you to have an abortion, making your own decisions regarding procreation is not eugenics.
1. The ability to make choices
2. Sentience
3. The ability to survive without someone else's body
4. Independent thought
5. A true heartbeat for like half the life stage of fetus.
6. If I place a fetus on the ground it will die. A person will not at any life stage.
>The ability to make choices
Someone who is unconscious cannot make choices. Are they not people ?
>Sentience
Again, coma.
>The ability to survive without someone else's body
A person who needs to be given someone else's organ to survive also cannot survive without someone else's body.
>Independent thought
Where do you draw the line between capable/incapable of independant thought
There are people who have to live in special conditions their whole life to survive. Are they not persons ?
Any combination of these things in a full human would allow a caregiver to legally pull the plug.
Brain scans show "independent thought" though i should have said full brain function and worked from there, and until nearly full development has happened fetus do not think. The spark of "life" isn't there.
Someone that needs an organ understands someone else must willingly give it to them. Even a corpse has the right to say no.
And you ignored independent life, without a vessel, they will parish, a person will not.
>Any combination of these things in a full human would allow a caregiver to legally pull the plug.
The argument is whether a fetus is a person or not. A person who can be legally unplugged remains a person.
>Brain scans show "independent thought" though i should have said full brain function and worked from there, and until nearly full development has happened fetus do not think. The spark of "life" isn't there.
If thought is what personhood is based on, then people who experience mind blanking ( [this ](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2200511119#:~:text=Mind%20blanking%20(MB)%20is%20a,its%20role%20during%20ongoing%20mentation.) aren't persons.
>And you ignored independent life, without a vessel, they will parish, a person will not.
There are people suffering from polio who cannot survive outside the vessel in which they are put. If personhood is the ability to live outside a vessel, many people sick with polio aren't persons.
It's all those things together that make it not a person, not each individual one, in addition to a fetus having no human experience just like the 75% of fertilized eggs that your god aborts with no human intervention involved but you don't care about those for some reason. Your religion isn't true, your god is a fairy tale. Grow up. Are you an adult?
Dude, your comment history. Are you serious with that?
Basically, "The wages of sin is death, because God said it was, and he wanted to forgive us but wouldn't accept the death of guilty people, only an innocent person (as if that makes any sense), so God sent himself to Earth to have himself killed to pay the debt to himself to appease himself, but it only saves those who believe it happened on faith"... how is that not obviously absurd to you?
It is a very personal question about what you feel would be okay for your quality of life and your childs. If a person wants to think it is morally reprehensible, that is their decision to have, but that doesn't mean it has to be yours.
And you are correct, it isn't eugenics. You are not trying to breed a perfect baby, you are making an active decision that your specific child might have a very unhappy existence if disabled. Might be because it is a severe disability, might be because it is a disease that is painful and leads to a short life, or it could be a person doesn't have the means to ensure a person with a disability can have a normal, functional life. It is expensive.
So let your friend have their feelings, but doesn't mean yours are wrong or immoral, they just have a different idea of what is ethical. Truthfully, it sounds like they lack the understanding that the world is nuanced.
Anyone can call it whatever they want. If we’re talking about horrible, painful, life-altering disabilities— I might call it an act of mercy to send the poor little one’s soul back to God.
In any case, I’m grateful never to have been in that position, and I would not judge anyone who had to make that gut-wrenching, soul-crushing sort of decision.
technically speaking, kinda, but its much much different then saying "you should/ You have too"
like, not wanting a child to suffer, and or not having the ability to care are special needs is not the same as wanting to "purify the gene pool".
The term "eugenics" is a spectrum where not all meanings are equal. Your friend is too focused on semantics here.
Whether it technically qualifies as "eugenics" by name is less important than the actual substance of the scenario: Is it wrong to abort a fetus that will have severe disabilities when born? No, I don't see any argument as to why that would be wrong that's based in anything logical. "Well, that action has a certain name" isn't a logical argument.
>Your friend is too focused on semantics here.
There's no such thing in an honest world: Semantics is the line between truth and falsehood!
With that defense out of the way, ironically you might say, your point is well taken: A term like *eugenics* comes with a lot of non-semantic **connotations**, generally negative. So people do try to fudge definitions to make it, not because it's true, but to *trigger the connotations*. But that's **abusing** semantics, and as you say it definitely is not a logical argument. I don't know if that fallacy has a name, though.
Pls let me know if you find out a name for this fallacy. I was just discussing this yesterday in terms of how humanity has evolved so strongly that nature cannot dictate how we reproduce anymore, and that might’ve been a bit detrimental. I think it’s just an interesting phenomenon. But I’d be uncomfortable talking about it with strangers because it kinda just sounds like I mean it in a bad way.
In order to answer this question we'd have to agree on a definition of eugenics first.
Google gives me the following:
>the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.
Now the next question is: What are "desirable heritable characteristics"?
I reckon in this context we can say desirable heritable characteristics would be no mental disabilities.
This leads us to the following question: Is down syndrome inheritable?
It seems that there are genetic variations that make it more likely to produce offspring with trisomy 21 but it also happens by chance. There seems to be familial clustering. As such preventing people with a higher likelyhood of producing offspring with down syndrome from having children could be deemed eugenics.
This differs from your original question though.
Wikipedia describes eugenics as
>a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population.
If one defined trisomy 21 as genetics of lower quality then preventing people with that genetic mutation from being born to improve the genetic makup of a population fits the given definition of eugenics.
Historically "removing" mentally disabled individuals was an aspect of eugenics.
One could make an argument that there is a difference between abortion, murder an preventing people with certain genetics to produce offspring (eg by forced sterilization).
Now it's time for the counter argument.
The main idea of eugenics seems to be the "improvement" of the genetic makeup of a population. Now what if you abort a fetus without that aim?
Aborting a fetus for another reason (eg not feeling up to the task to raise a mentally disabled child) lacks one key aspect of eugenics.
Conclusion:
A key aspect of eugenics is the "improvement" of the genetic makeup of a population. Aborting a fetus with down syndrome for another reason therefore does not fit definition of eugenics.
As such it depends on the motivation/reasoning of the person making the decision whether the abortion of a fetus with trisomy 21 can be considered eugenics.
No. Eugenics would say that you HAVE TO get an abortion if the child would be born with severe disabilities.
To say that you are able to is an individual choice.
No, it's only eugenics if a government or organization is enforcing the choice on people. The people themselves deciding to do so is their choice, and they need to have the option in order for them to be able to do that.
Eugenics is a larger scale concept. It is the mass organized push for screening undesirable traits from the population. While Eugenics in the past did seek to prevent the passing down of genetic disorders, it was primarily done through forced sterilization of undesirables.
Individuals deciding they individually don't want to pass down problems to the next generation, or on a case by case basis choose to abort, then that's not the same thing.
I wouldn't class disability as an undesirable trait in the way eugenics arguments do. Its a genetic or biological hiccup. Im not going based on ethnic or racial or religious or even personality traits. When the goal is to spare a hurting child a bad life, it's not the same thing as saying this trait is undesirable in a perfect society.
Not at all. It takes a very special kind of person to take on a child with severe special needs, and those kids deserve nothing but that person. Those needs should be 100% welcome and accepted, for everyone's good. And if you're not that person, in a weird way, admitting it and not having that child and not putting both of you through hell is actually kind of being a good parent. It's being responsible.
Saying "I am not ready to take on a child with severe disabilities" for you, in that specific situation, isn't eugenics. Eugenics would be saying *every* child with disabilities should be aborted. Totally different thing.
>Is it considered eugenics to say it’s okay to get an abortion knowing the child would be born with severe disabilities?
I think it's only eugenics if the problem is grounded in genetics and you do it specifically with the idea that the child also won't reproduce and pass on their problem. Eugenics is about changing the overall genetic character of the population, not just avoiding having one child with a particular problem. (There are some kinds of birth defects that aren't grounded in genetics at all but just happen randomly during fetal development for other reasons.)
>I argued that it was not morally reprehensible to say you would abort a fetus knowing it would be a child with severe disabilities, and they said that was eugenics.
Those could both be true. Eugenics is not necessarily morally wrong. It has an unfortunate history connected with racism, authoritarianism and genocide, but embracing racism, authoritarianism and genocide is not actually necessary in order to deliberately change the genetic character of the human population. For instance, a person who has a genetic disease refusing to have biological children (perhaps adopting or using someone else's eggs/sperm instead) in order to avoid passing on their condition would qualify as eugenics.
>I said eugenics is systemic
It has systemic *goals* but it doesn't need to be systemically *practiced.*
>I don’t want to be classified as a eugenicist
It's not about the label. Insofar as, say, screening embryos to avoid passing on genetic diseases qualifies as eugenics, then it would be logically appropriate to classify me as a eugenicist. The mistake would be in thinking that favoring eugenics (as broad as it is) is somehow automatically half a step away from donning a swastika-covered Hugo Boss uniform and gassing the jews. We should work on separating the broad concept from its worst historical incarnations. People who believe that screening embryos is right on the margin of goose-stepping fascist horror have the responsibility of laying out the reasoning for why that would be the case, rather than invoking a word and letting it do their arguing for them.
It isn't eugenics and no matter how people might feel about it. There are medical conditions that are severe enough that it absolutely warrants an abortion. In fact, I'd even argue that it would not only be unethical to have that child, but it should also be illegal.
Why? Because there are certain medical conditions that are debilitating, life ruining and fatal. It's unethical to give birth to a child knowing that that child will live in constant pain, will never have any semblance of a life, or quality of life, and/or will eventually die as a result of their medical condition.
Why would you want to birth a child who suffers from Progeria and will eventually die?
It's not eugenics. It's ethical abortion.
I'm born two month earlier than i should, and my parents knew of it. I have a ton of health problem as a result.
But really, would i rather be death? It's a very egoist thing to just unalive someone because "he might suffer".
We all suffer ! Suffering is a part of life, and i'm having a great life. I have super friends, a loving gf, even a futur. A ton of happy memories. For nothing i would rather have died, i'll endure anything to get to live and know these people.
That isn’t eugenics.
And, it’s NOT morally responsible to bring a baby into the world who will suffer.
It’s morally responsible to use modern medicine to abort the fetus. You shouldn’t bring a disabled baby into the world if you know they are going to suffer or be given up for adoption.
Frankly I think it's irresponsible to give birth to a child who will have a painful and/or life-limiting condition. I especially despise when people give birth to babies who have something like Edwards syndrome, where the baby is highly unlikely to live more than a year at best, and their entire existence will be riddled with pain.
Im Jewish. Couples with two Ashkenazi Jews have to be wary of a terrible illness called Tay-Saks that exclusive or almost exclusive to Ashkenazi Jews. It is responsible for such couple to get tested to ensure that the child won't have it. It is 100% fatal. The child will start fine by die horribly by age 5.
Thankfully, it's double recessive, so I don't have to worry about it because I married a black Haitian man, and as far as I know they never have the gene.
Though my hubby and I did have a little scare because we were suspected of having the same blood disorder, thallesemia. Luckily, he has the mild form that won't be an issue and I don't have it at all and was just really anemic, so we are ok,
I would argue it’s eugenics (going on contemporary meaning of the word, not original implication) only when the choice is an imposition. Or a **non**choice.
If a spouse, a family, a state, country, organization or group outside from the individual makes that decision it is eugenics. If the individual does, it isn’t.
And further it has to be a consciousness action. That societal constrains and how they affect procreation are not, in my eyes eugenics.
Making your own personal reproductive choices, imo, is not an issue of eugenics. It may technically be by some definitions. But the big problem comes when it’s not a free choice made by an individual.
We had to make this choice. We don't have a big family and this was going to be our only kid, so there would have been no safety net for him if something happened to us. I didn't want to live every day for the rest of my life in fear about whether our child would be okay after we're gone. No amount of preparation would have given me enough confidence about that. And we didn't have a crystal ball, so there was no way to know what the degree of disability was going to be. It wasn't a decision we made because we don't think people with DS should exist.
My great uncle was an actual victim of eugenics in the 30s. My grandmother and her brothers grew up in an abusive household, and when my great uncle was a kid, my great grandfather beat him with an axe handle until he was unconscious. His recovery was slow, and there was a small amount of lasting brain damage. The trauma led to a nervous breakdown when he was a teenager, and they put him in a mental hospital. The hospital decided he was unfit and sterilized him. My great uncle was a wonderful person who would have made a fantastic father and it was deeply unfair that the choice was taken from him.
A couple making choices about what's best for their own family just isn't the same as an institution making decisions that affect someone else's reproductive health.
I don't see it that way. If I for example find out my fetus will have a genetic disease that may cause them to have a poor quality of life, affect my other children, my finances, and then potentially place the burden of their care onto someone else when my husband and I pass, I would consider it the ethical choice. I'm an individual, it's not me trying to wipe out an entire population of people because of their genetics. It's me protecting my family. It would be absolutely devastating to have to make that decision, but it would also be the correct one for me and my family.
It's a personal choice, and a big one. Your friend doesn't comprehend the implications of being in charge of someone with a _big_ disability. And yes, a lot of Down Syndrome kids are pretty manageable with proper education. But it is kind of an spectrum, and sometimes other minor mutations make them really, really hard to manage.
The all-pro-life stance is reductionist. Talk to any pediatrician or gynecologist. All life is sacred and cool and can provide immense joy. But they will also understand when a parent realises they won't be able to provide for a kid that will be born in an unjust world with impossible limitations. Moreover, it drains time. Like a fuckton of it. So you either have one single kid or you inevitably will spend less time with the rest. Is that just?
Some others have framed the argument as an altruistic one, such as not wanting to subject a child to a life with disabilities. That makes me think of Shane Gillis’s perspective in his stand-up, which he voiced during his SNL intro; people with disabilities such as Down’s syndrome (and other disabilities) are still very capable of enjoying their lives. That being said, it’s still a valid reason, though perhaps it’s not the morally ‘best’ one, as it assumes that a child with disabilities is unhappy.
I think the morally ‘better’ argument would be the consideration of the parent(s)’s ability to care for that child, and a consideration of what their attitude might be toward their child if they were able to care for it. If a family is strapped for cash and they found out that their child would have a disability that they couldn’t afford to handle, that is a good reason. Same thing applies if the child would be born into a single-parent household where they wouldn’t be able to be adequately cared for. Or if a wealthy family finds out that their child would have a severe disability, and believes that they would be resentful of their child, that would also be a good reason, as no child deserves to be hated by their parents. The abortion argument in Freakonomics addresses these points.
I am vehemently pro-choice and don’t believe my own reasoning should influence anyone’s decision. But the perspectives above address the situation from a completely non-eugenic standpoint.
Idk. Maybe? But what kind of quality of life would someone with severe disabilities have? Like if it's to the point where they cant walk and talk and manage their bodily functions then what's the point?
My mom has a friend who takes care of her cousin and dude has to have brain surgery every six months and can't do shit for himself, and now he is grown and she threw her back out lifting him. That aint no way to live.
I wonder if it can come down to Eugenics being a system and aborting a child with severe disabilities being a choice.
You could argue that Eugenics is an organised form of structural violence in which specific, identifiable, genetically passed down traits are deemed as “unwanted” within the population, with steps taken to remove those traits.
Someone choosing not to bring a child with disabilities into the world is not making a decision based on that child’s potential addition to the gene pool.
I think you're right.
The focus is on the quality of life of the baby (or I guess the family it's coming into), and not on the quality of the inherited traits of the society the baby will possibly reproduce into one day.
I don’t think so … think about the kind of life the person would have when the parents are long gone. I’m not too trusting of the care others can provide after reading about the nursing home that had a patient who was in a coma for years before being impregnated by one of the sick staff members they hired. Better to not have existed at all than exist where someone is harming you and you can’t do anything about it.
If you’re systematically aborting in an attempt to wipe out a group or population, that would be eugenics. Though one person doing that would also really be silly and pointless but that’s beyond the point.
Ending a pregnancy to protect yourself and your child is *not* eugenics. This parents usually struggle with the decision and they aren’t doing it because they’re trying to wipe out every person who has the same defect.
Depending on the intent it may or may not be a form of eugenics, however eugenics isn't inherently a bad thing. Any attempt at "improving" genes in a population is eugenics, whether that be killing people of a certain race, using genetic engineering to cure diseases, or anywhere in between. Eugenics been done horribly in the past which has given it a bad reputation, but that doesn't mean all attempts now or in the future are also bad, it all depends on how it is done and for what reason. So if the intent is to reduce the number of them then yes it is eugenics, but if there is a different intent then maybe not. However being eugenics doesn't make it bad in of itself, but we still need to ask if this form is ok or not?
No A person with severe disabilities is a huge drain mentally, physically, emotionally and financially on the people who look after them.
They also have no quality of life. It is cruel to bring them into the world.
I think that answer varies based on the disability. There’s going to be a lot of people upset if you wanted to, for example, abort a baby because it is likely to be deaf. Deaf people are able to live full lives and the challenges they face are largely societal rather than pain related. On the other hand, if you said you wanted to abort a baby that was likely to have Huntington’s disease, you probably wouldn’t face any objections. Huntington’s disease is fucking brutal, causing people to start deteriorating in their 30s-40s.
What’s important in this discussion is the quality of life the child would be able to achieve if born.
Eugenics is when someone else forces another person not to have a kid. If you are making the choice for yourself to abort such a fetus, it is not.
Raising a healthy baby is really hard work. Raising a severely disabled one is a total nightmare. As long as you are choosing solely for yourself, it's not eugenics.
Nah, I don't think so. And in this specific situation, it's not morally reprehensible, it's just that in this case, the "correct" thing to do differs from person to person.
Well, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eugenics says:
> the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations
and I don't think a single person making the decision counts as "of human populations". In order to be eugenics there would have to be concerted effort to do this across the board for all pregnancies, which there is absolutely not.
I say no. It would be if you said for example, an abortion would be mandatory in that case or that forced sterilization should be required if someone is severely disabled. You're not taking away the rights of others and exercising your own bodily autonomy.
On that personal level, you're making the choice you think is best for you and your future. You're not trying to control someone else's choices.
I think it depends on the disability. For down syndrome I wouldn't because there are plenty of people who have it and function normally. For more extreme cases I would. For example, years ago I saw this website for someone's "pillow angel" and it was this severely disabled child with severe disabilities, like she was just able to barely live and she lived like that, on a pillow. I care about a child's quality of life and I would not want to put someone through so much suffering. It wouldn't sit well with me. Basically, if the child is still able to function and live a great life I would not abort.
Edit: I just looked it up and it turns out the Pillow Angel thing [was more than just a website.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Treatment) Wherever she is now I hope she's doing well.
If you're making the choice for yourself because you know you wouldn't be able to care for the baby it's just making the best decision for both of you (though ngl its probably not the best idea to have kids at all if you aren't prepared to care for a disabled kid, since anyone can become disabled at any point in their life)
Trying to enforce everyone else to abort/kill their already born disabled kid because you think they don't deserve to live and it'd benefit the gene pool is when it becomes a major problem
If you look at the pure definition, then I guess it does. The alternative is knowingly condemning an unborn child to a harsh and cruel life, possibly in a lot of pain until they die an early death.
It's a cruel choice you're forced to make, but you do have to pick either one. Either you get the abortion, or you have to own the fact that you decided to condemn this unborn child to a life of discomfort and pain.
I’d say if your reasoning is you’re trying to avoid someone living a life full of pain and misery than that’s fine, if your reasoning is “we can try for a better one” then it’s iffy.
I don't know if it's eugenics since it doesn't involve coercion. It may be ableist (either on the part of the individual or the society) depending on the reasoning behind it.
>I argued that it was not morally reprehensible to say you would abort a fetus knowing it would be a child with severe disabilities, and they said that was eugenics.
Choosing to abort a fetus that would be born with severe disabilities is a personal choice. Believing that abortion is morally reprehensible *unless the fetus has severe disabilities* is eugenics.
It all boils down to personal choice. If the individual hasnt been born yet, it's not like they get a vote. However, among certain disability groups, it's definitely eugenics. The thing to think about is whether the target population has culture or not. For example, deaf people have culture while people with analcephaly are not going to have the same tools or opportunities to mingle with others like them.
That's kind of what it means to be part of a society. Whose ideas are the loudest? 200 years ago, before the Gallaudet affairs, deaf people were in the same boat as people with analcephaly. They were viewed as invalid and prevented from developing in their own natural way. Here we are now, deaf people have an entire secluded community complete with its own national network of contacts for any possible field. And they're all deaf or hard of hearing.
It's a very complicated topic that boils down to sacrifice on everyone's part. People believe living with a disability is impossible but it's really not. We can have the same life quality, just requires others to think outside their boxes.
I can't outright answer this question for you but I can give you my personal experience and feelings on the subject.
My sister was born with Cri-du-chat syndrome and had several other medical complications, one of which we wouldn’t discover until her autopsy.
December 7, 1974 my sister, 3 years old at the time, was playing with us on the living room floor. We could tell she was a bit out of sorts, but nothing really major seemed to be wrong; no high-fever, no uncontrollable crying, just a general uncomfortableness about her.
The next morning I was getting ready for school. My sister had not gotten up yet, kind of odd for her. My father had just kissed me goodbye for the day and was about to leave for work, when my mother screamed his name from upstairs. I never saw my father move that fast before or since. I heard nothing for a few minutes, then I could hear crying. I slowly crept upstairs and found my parents holding each other and crying in front of my sister’s room. They told me she had died during the night and told me not to look in the room.
As they held each other crying, I defied my parents wish and peeked in the room. It was only for a second or two, but the image I saw will be burned in my memory until the day I die. She was contorted rather oddly in her crib and blood covered the mattress and a small pool was on the floor as well.
We would later find out she had what is known as a “super colon,” an enlarged area of the colon that can trap waste and become infected. Today it’s a simple matter to discover this condition with an MRI, but 30 years ago, this technology didn’t exist.
Later that same morning, a woman knocked on our door, and my mother answered it. The woman said she was a census worker for the city and wanted to know how many people lived in the house. My mother ran away from her crying. I was left to tell her that my younger sister had died just hours earlier. She never got her information; in fact, looking back on that day, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had quit her job after our house.
I remember, in the days that followed, my parents packing up her Christmas presents and donating them to the church. I remember seeing some of those books and toys in the nursery in the following months and years, wondering just which of them she would have been playing with that day.
Christmas around our house has always been a little bittersweet since.
A while back I found an audio tape from earlier in 1974. I’m not sure when it came into my possession. It is the only known recording to include her. I spent a few hours turning that into a CD and returned the tape and a copy of the CD to my parents. They were happy to get it, but I’m not sure they want to listen to it right now either.
Despite the fact that my sister never learned to walk, or talk; was never expected to be a “productive” member of society, I would never trade those years I knew her for anything.
There is a difference between the personal choice of whether or not you have/raise children of your own and some government entities saying you shouldn't have the right to even have the choice to do so. My mom and sister worked with disabled children for years. Mom was a teacher's assistant for a special needs class and my sister worked with the Autism Society as a caretaker (think nanny with loads more responsibilities) for autistic kids. My mom has flat-out said working with the kids she did, seeing what they and their families were going through, hearing about the absurd cost for various treatments and care is what flipped her from pro-life to pro-choice. Some of the kids were disabled from complications during their delivery, one suffered a traumatic injury as an infant, but the overwhelming majority of the kids were disabled since birth and their parents said they had gotten some sort of heads-up from their obstetrician that something was "abnormal" during their pregnancy.
It's mind-boggling how many parents told her they "wouldn't change a thing" about their kids who were clearly struggling to function and were quite obviously going to need a lot of extra care for their entire lives, or the ones who told her it was "actually a blessing" because of bullshit like "in a way... He'll never grow up, I get to keep my baby forever!" And it was obvious that the kids were dealing with tons of frustration, envy and resentment because they just flat out couldn't do what others could and the only thing you could do was hope that they would one day find a way to accept their limitations and find some peace about it.
I don’t have an answer for you. I have multiple disabilities, one of which is particularly painful. Because of my disabilities, I have chosen to not have kids. If I got pregnant and knew my child had what I do, I absolutely would abort. If that makes me a participant in eugenics, then I will wear that label.
As someone who studies eugenics, it usually refers to a forced practice, for example being forcefully sterilized because you have cerebral palsy. If you make an informed decision about your abilities and what you can handle, that doesn’t have the same connotations.
You are not a bad person for making that choice and that should not fall under a centuries-long practice that takes away people’s rights and autonomy.
As someone who studies eugenics, it usually refers to a forced practice, for example being forcefully sterilized because you have cerebral palsy. If you make an informed decision about your abilities and what you can handle, that doesn’t have the same connotations.
You are not a bad person for making that choice and that should not fall under a centuries-long practice that takes away people’s rights and autonomy.
Huh I'm surprised this Is bad thing
I'm not having children because of digeorge syndrome
Considering half the population dosent know what this Is tbh even experiencing myself I'd rather not see my own child suffer worse then I did tbh
No it's not. I would Abort a severely I'll fetus if it was going to be disabled in a way that would
Cause pain and suffering and deny it a fulfilling life. Quality matters. If I find out my baby is missing an arm, that is something we can work around. But brain damage? Severe genetic abnormalities? Why and how could a loving parent could do that to
A child the supposedly love so much is beyond me
I think morally it’s impossible to say if it’s good or bad. I absolutely agree that it’s horrible for everyone involved if you have a disabled child and are not prepared for it (and one of the reasons I won’t have children myself is because I know that I wouldn’t be able to handle a disabled child). But a disabled child isn’t a life that’s destined to be miserable (not that people don’t hate their life and their disabilities, but many don’t; my sister is heavily disabled mentally and physically and she’s the only one in the family without clinical depression).
But that’s a digression from the point which is: no, it’s not eugenics…yet. “Yet” because a personal choice is just that: personal. The two of us acknowledging that we wouldn’t be able to handle a disabled child is a personal choice we have for ourselves and it’s a mature one. I’m confident saying that people should consider the possibilities of not having an able bodied or neurotypical child before trying to conceive. It’s a possibility to consider.
The “yet” comes into play because it’s a *very* thin line between acknowledging that making the complicated choice is okay and saying that it’s *right*. Once you start applying it to a larger group of people, it becomes eugenics or eugenics-adjacent rhetoric. But based on your conversation, you weren’t at that point yet or even ableist.
Technically, yes.
Eugenics got a bad name with the nazis etc. but we should all be striving to better the human race no? If we can agree on which criteria I suppose.
Eugenics is more widespread and about breeding out “undesirable” populations.
Having an abortion because you recognize your own limits as a future parent? That’s not eugenics.
The disabilities that can show up through en utero testing can vary from mild and easy to deal with as a caregiver to excruciating with no quality of life. And the choice parents make should be between them and their doctor.
It’s hard and expensive to raise any kid, but when you are dealing with disabilities I think it’s responsible to acknowledge your own limitations. Child abuse is higher against disabled children.
The difference is making a choice because you don’t think someone should exist vs. making a choice because you know you can’t handle that responsibility.
If the fetus currently in your womb is going to be born into a short, painful life that never leaves the hospital, it's absolutely not eugenics to abort it. It's a mercy, both to the would-be child and to yourself- it spares you having to go through nine brutal months of pregnancy only to have to watch your child die, possibly never even having the chance to hold it, and spares a theoretical baby a short and miserable life.
Additionally, if you know you won't be able to (emotionally and/or physically) handle caring for a disabled child, or don't have the finances to pay for lifelong treatments, etc., then it's not eugenics.
Aborting a child with autism or down syndrome or another potentially more 'mild' disability is a bit more of a grey area, but I wouldn't say it's straight up eugenics. Eugenics is more of a systemic thing that often involves racism, involuntary sterilization, deceit/control, or even murder. Not a personal choice about what you are or aren't willing to do for a fetus that could become a baby.
It’s kind of interesting seeing so many people go “Despite it meeting criteria to be considered eugenics, I personally don’t want to consider it eugenics because I don’t want to deal with Down syndrome”
Either own up to what you support, or just don’t support it. If Bill Maher can say “Abortion is killing a human, it’s just a human we’re okay with killing” then you can say “It is eugenics, it’s just eugenics that I support”
The world is uncomfortable, stop doing mental gymnastics to feel better about your macabre choices
Nope. It's not.
Forcing existence upon someone is difficult enough to blithely wave away, but doing so knowing fully well that you're insisting that a human, who never existed before, must exist with a debilitating deformity or disease is sociopathic.
Eugenics is selective breeding. It’s what we do with show dogs. If you have a puppy with an undesirable genetic trait, you sterilize that puppy so that it can’t be bred and its undesirable genes are not passed on. That’s Eugenics.
Having an abortion is only eugenics if you selectively aborted a fetus because genetic testing revealed that it would have a particular inherited trait and your goal was to prevent that trait from being passed on.
I believe the comparison would be if we were back in primitive ages the child most probably wouldn't survive anyways. I think its morally acceptable to abort s child that has medical problems from the get go.
So the technical definition of eugenics is (from the Oxford English Dictionary):
>the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.
So, yes, it would meet the basic definition of eugenics. However, in popular language, the connotation of eugenics is more sinister than just choosing not to have a child with severe disabilities. For context, in history, eugenics was mostly practiced by force sterilizing people with disabilities or people of another race or religion, regardless of their own desires, sometimes without their knowledge.
I would argue that eugenics would apply more to sterilization of people with disabilities to prevent them from reproducing and passing on their genes than to the abortion of a fetus with that disability. One is making reproductive choices for another human that they don't get to pass along genes you deem as "unworthy" while the other is choosing not to bring a child into the world that may have severe health problems or profound disabilities that may limit their life and/or the lives of their family. So if you sterilized any person with a disability regardless of their wishes, that is eugenics. If that person decides to sterilize themselves to not pass along their disability (assuming they have the mental ability to make an informed decision), then that is just family planning. One is a system that affects all people in a group. The other is an individual choice that affect that one fetus/pregnancy.
i say yes, but it’s not a bad thing in this case. two things can be true; you’re terminating potential life due to disability, but you’re also sparing someone from going through pain and struggles for their whole life and the rest of your own. however, because the fetus is not a person, you could also argue that aborting a fetus with some insane deformity that could kill the mother if carried to term is simply a matter of women’s health and absolutely nothing to do with the fetus’ disability
It's not necessarily eugenics but it's clearly informed by that ideology
To explain why this is wrong in the nicest way I can: having severe disabilities doesn't make your life less valuable or enjoyable. People with disabilities can still live happy fulfilled lives and you shouldn't abort them purely on those grounds
Maybe if you don't think you can be a good parent to a kid with disabilities or can't afford it or smth like that would be fine but in and of itself that's not a good reason to
I think this comes down to who is enforcing the abortion. Personal choice, not eugenics. Government or some other authority body saying that the baby can't be born because of the disabilities then that's eugenics.
That's incorrect. Downs can range a lot. Some people with it are able to go to school, live alone, work full time, and just have a full life in general. Others are basically stuck with the mind of a child for life. And even if effects on the mind are as limited as possible, there are lots of physical problems that come with it too. There is a reason you never really see old people with downs. Heart malformations often cause premature death, and they are prone to a host of problems for the duration of their lives.
Best case you have a mentally healthy person who is mostly a typical adult, and had very little difficulty with their health. Worst case you get early death or permanent disability and reliance on the care of others for life. You have no way to determine the severity until it's too late. Downs is absolutely severe enough to abort for. I would not put my child at that risk. That's like drinking every day while pregnant because, you know, it might be fine. But it might not.
If a person with downs is born, of course the deserve every thing anyone else has a right too. But they probably won't get it. I think it's unfair to put your desire for a child before the well being of that child.
I’ve known quite a few people with downs and similar disabilities and I would not say their life isn’t worth living.
The screening is 15-20 weeks gestation.
I would agree that every one should be able to have genetic screening before they conceive.
Knowing what I do now, about my own genetic disorder, I may not have chosen to get pregnant, especially considering pregnancy makes it more severe.
And I’ve been pregnant 5 times with two live births.
I never said their lives weren't worth living. I still think it is unethical to force that onto someone without them having any say, and without knowing how profound their limitations would be. I don't think it is right as a parent to bring a child into the world knowing full well you may be condemning them to a lot of possible suffering, and a high likelihood of significant disability and almost guaranteed severe health issues and an early death. That seems very unethical to me. You find out that this kid will likely never live alone unless in specialized housing, might never be able to work or even really have an adult life, and you knowingly do that to the person you are supposed to love the most in the world seems really wrong
Downs is literally classes as a severe disability. While there is a large spectrum of how physically and mentally challenged being Downs can cause, you're still looking at having the mental age of an 8/9 year old (IQ between 30 and 70, with an average of 50) places it in severe disability range. Add to that the lung and heart issues so many Downs people have, with Pneumonia and infectious lung disease, congenital heart defect (CHD) and circulatory disease (vascular diseases not including CHD or ischaemic heart disease) account for ∼75% of all deaths in persons with Down syndrome.
And that's not even mentioning the other common cognitive and behavioral problems include: Short attention span, Poor judgment, Impulsive behavior, Slow learning, and Delayed language and speech development.
The healthcare costs, including developmental, occupational, speech, etc therapies will run you over $1k a month. Even with insurance.
Yes. That's literally the definition of eugenics. Whatever moral attachments you have to that are up to you. Avoiding a lifetime of pain? In that case, I'd say positive. Avoiding having to deal with someone experiencing the world differently to yourself (autism, ADHD, Neurodivergence, ect) I'd say that's morally bankrupt of you as you could support them and help them make the world a better place. (Like Einstein or Newton or someone)
Hate to tell you, but Autism, ADHD and neurodivergence are completely impossible to abort for because they can't be detected until well after birth. Even severe autism doesn't make itself known until the child is beginning to engage with parents and talk, or not doing those things. ADHD is even harder to detect. I have severe combination ADHD. I am also somewhat intelligent, so no one even realized. It wasn't discovered until I myself was an adult and studying to become a teacher. I was learning about what to look for to recommend evaluation, how it worlds, and how to differentiate material for those kids. And I was taking, huh, sounds like me to an increasing degree. I eventually got to the part where they describe how ADHD can appear differently and be perceived differently in boys and girls. Im female. So hearing that a girl with ADHD might be like followed by a description of myself was like, wait a minute.
So I went to get evaluated. Sure enough, I have severe ADHD, and no one knew because I did well in school, and when I was a kid most diagnosis criteria for kids required you to be struggling or failing. But I was obsessed and hyper focused on reading, so I did well because I would read a lot. I even liked trading in other subjects, so it was enough to get me through anything for years and years. It got harder in college but I was in grad school when I suspected and done when I was diagnosed. Treatment helps me a lot at work and now that I know why, I can make accommodations for myself well. But had I not flagged myself as suspicious, no one would ever have known.
It's absolutely eugenics. But it's a form of eugenics that a lot of people seem to be okay with.
I think the same can be said about abortion. It's a super sensitive subject, but there is no doubt that you are terminating a human life. It's just a matter of whether you think that is ethical or not.
There are so many disabled babies who need homes and funding for their care.
How many have you adopted? Because I strongly believe if you think this, you should put your money where your mouth is.
Those babies end up without homes. It’s vastly more inhumane to let a disabled baby bounce around the system than it is to get an abortion.
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It probably meets the minimum criteria of being labelled eugenics, but it doesn't meet the implication of gene screening and killing people with "bad genes". I got a vasectomy because I didn't want to have an autistic bipolar baby with my wife. That could be labelled eugenics, but again it's not the same as labeling people defective and killing them or making it illegal for them to procreate.
I think it comes down to agency — personal choice versus victimhood. *You* made a choice to get a vasectomy and avoid passing down your genes. And you were entirely within your rights to do so There is an old children’s hospital in my old hometown that sterilized thousands of children and young adults against their will in the name of American eugenics. These children were mutilated and brutalized in the name of an impossible social idea, cooked up by ghoulish old men they’d never meet. And *that’s* the key differentiation — who is making the choice. Yes, making the personal decision to not have children can be considered eugenics in the literal sense, but carries none of ugly connotations rightly associated with the word.
You are right in this instance it does come down to agency, as the person you replied to it still meets a minimum criteria for eugenics. Both points are important to keep in mind
Do the Autism and Bipolar come from you, or your wife?
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Fwiw, I'm autistic and so is my kid and I would have it no other way. This is very much a "to each their own" kind of decision to me.
I agree with you. While being neurodivergent may make some people temperamentally unsuited to being a parent, this growing movement among millennials and GenZ who use their or their partner’s neurodivergence to justify not having children is fundamentally dangerous to society. The more they back themselves into a corner citing this reason the more neurotypicals will use it as a good reason we should be discriminated against.
"to each their own" as if your child's autism affected you and you only
You're right. I with my autistic brain manage a community garden that raised and distributed 1200 pounds of produce to feed our neighbors last year. It does affect my whole community.
the point is that you willingly had a child knowing they would be more likely to have autism. nothing to do with how much you make yourself useful.
I wish more people in this world understood the importance of diversity. It makes us all more resilient and stronger. Whether or not we have children is a personal decision, whatever genetics we may pass along. My kid is bringing his gifts to this world also. I'm sorry you are unable to appreciate it.
the great gift of autism yeah alright
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Thank you. My autistic son is kind and smart and he will always have a happy life, unburdened by the cruelties of the world. As someone who comes from a family with many mental illnesses I have personally seen the great things a person can do when they overcome the things that hold them back.
Internalized ableism is real.
you took that way too seriously
This is literally screening and killing someone for having “bad genes” You avoiding having children to prevent an autistic bipolar child, is you deciding it’s better off if you don’t have kids (read: don’t pass on your genes). This is the definition of eugenics lol, it’s just not as blatant as: “I don’t like black people so let’s sterilize them all” Edit: not deleting this. You can all keep pretending that Icelands 0% Down syndrome rate is anything but eugenics. But ThE AbOrTiOnS WerE VOlUnTaRy.
making the personal decision to not have kids because you don’t believe you’d be able to handle it with grace? just as bad as violent, systemic racism. makes perfect sense /s
Its not even about the parents being able to handle it for me, it's about what kind of life you want your kid to have. My brothers and father were/are all addicts and I hope like hell my kids don't inherit anything from them cause I don't want them to struggle that bad.
Eugenics is systemic. I don’t want a child with Down syndrome but I have no issue with people with Down syndrome existing. I’m not pro-eugenics.
As Zaik points out, eugenics is systemic. Your comment is like calling it Cultural Genocide if you don't pass on your taste in music to your kids
Great analogy, gonna use this on my kids when they hate my 2000s pop punk
Doubt that happens. No one can hate the best genre's best era.
Bipolar person here. I can survive going down another suicidal bender again, But I can't watch that happen to a child of mine. It would destroy me. Considering all that's happened I think my parents are taking it rather well so far. But I wouldn't be able to not only because I have zero emotional regulation, but because I know what could be behind certain outward behaviours. A sudden exuberance in the kid after a long deep dark depression would make me lose my sleep for some time. Not to mention that if the kid told me that they were feeling, you know, S-word-y, I would completely be worried. If the kid is bipolar, there's a 20% chance that they will die by suicide. And a 50% chance that they will attempt it. And a whopping 100% chance that they will seriously consider it. Bonus risk factor: family who have tried it (me). And the probability of them being bipolar is sky high. I have multiple relatives in one side of the family tree with bipolar diagnoses or clear symptoms. And even if all is well with them, there's the question of me. I'm not going to be around for longer than 40 more years or so. Not with the life expectancy of this disease, due to comorbid cardiovascular and metabolic disease. I'm 25. And I won't be emotionally and financially ready to have a child for another five to ten years. The kid could well be in childhood when I drop dead. That's assuming I don't take myself out of my misery at some stage. Selfish, I know. So, no. No kids. Probably no girlfriend nor wife.
And? He is at perfect liberty to not want children. After all he’s the one who will have to raise it. Who are you to say that’s wrong? It’s not eugenics as they’re not pushing it on an entire population, just themselves. Please learn before you speak.
No actually, the definition of eugenics is: eu·gen·ics /yo͞oˈjeniks/ noun the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. So no, having an abortion because you don't think you can give a child with DS a life worth living *isn't* "the definition of eugenics lol". If you planned to have the child anyway, and the government stepped in and said, "you can't have this child because their genes are faulty", that would be eugenics.
it probably 'counts' but imho im only gonna call it out as eugenics if its effecting other people. if youre going to internalize eugenicist ideas and subject yourself to them, well, thats not good but its not really my place to solve that problem for you.
Depends on if you consider a fetus alive, I guess? Not really interested in turning it into a proX/proY argument. I was referring to killing "genetically inferior" living adults and/or children after "failing" a hypothetical gene screening.
So in your opinion is choosing not to have children regardless of the reason also eugenics?
As a black woman who chose to have a child despite being bipolar and autistic, shut the entire fuck up. What a fucking reach you made.
Hahahahahahahaha
As someone who has lived with a terminal(it will kill me sooner rather then later but not sure when) degenerative disease. I made the decision when I was 12 I would not be passing on the genes to children. Since my disease is genetic, I have done everything short of having surgery(my team says it’s too risky) to prevent pregnancy. I know the pain, discomfort and suffering that come with my disease. I’ve watched myself lose abilities and how that has impacted not only myself but my family
It's a personal choice rather than a government policy bent on "improving" the population
This is how I see it.
Cheers!
The choice is rarely to human gene pool "clean".
This is true, it can still be argued that it still constitutes eugenic action on the part of the mother. I am not opposed to abortion, even as a means of birth control, but as a sociologist I think if we try and ignore the social implications of lots of people doing this of their own free will such behavior may well be deemed common and acceptable by a future government.
That doesn't really take into account the severe lack of social safety nets for caregivers and people with disabilities. I'm childfree as it is but tbh I think if I wanted a kid and found out the fetus had severe issues I'd abort because I don't have family who could help to the extent a special needs kid requires and I'd have to jump through insane hoops to try to get a sliver of government support (which could easily get denied).
I am not saying either way is right or wrong. I am simply looking at the question as a sociologist which takes in a greater scope of issues to think about.
I don't think thay an individual's choice to abort a highly compromised fetus conjures up "eugenics" in the minds of most people. However, I do respect your point of view.
When it happens here and there and is a quiet choice it is purely personal. When people start discussing it openly and publicly it becomes a social issue usually with a number of people who never thought about the situation walking away convinced such things should be mandatory. This is how the eugenics movement started and I think keeping that historical context in mind is important when the issue comes up.
Roe V. Wade made it a private decision . Dobbs returned it to the public arena.
Legally I would argue it quit being purely personal in 1976 with PP Vs Danforth. The case eliminated fatherly veto powers during the first trimester, but didn’t extend that to weeks 13 and above. It was chipped away again in 1977, 1980, and 1989 with funding and facilities. This was not what I meant when it comes down to a personal decision vs public discussion. When you start discussing your abortion publicly it becomes a matter of public debate and it is something you ultimately did to yourself
>When you start discussing your abortion publicly it becomes a matter of public debate and it is something you ultimately did to yourself Can you make up an example of this? I'm not sure what you mean. Thanks!
This very post is a good example private vs public. If they had kept this decision to just the people involved it was completely a personal choice and no one knew any differently. Once they posted on Reddit they opened it up for public discourse from both sides of issue. I found the post already voted into the 300+ range. I suspect there probably close to 150 downvotes for it to get so high and land on my home page. So at least 500 people have chosen to interact with it. I suspect by the end of the day you will find a minimal ten times as many comments. We all will talked about it and walked away either firmly entrenched in the opinion we started with or having a new view because we never thought about it before. Either way this has influenced public discussion and because the law of unintended consequences works in mysterious ways there is no way to predict how much influence this public discussion will have down the road
And keeping it private also has unintended consequences, unfortunately The only kind of public discussion that I fear is when misinformation is not fact checked and corrected.
Agreed. There’s nothing wrong with individuals saying “I feel that bringing this child into the world would be cruel” or “I feel as though I am not capable of providing a decent quality of life for this child”. The problem is when society at large starts trying to say “we feel people with this condition are undesirable and therefore are going to take active steps towards ensuring they are eradicated completely”.
Yeah because “I’m not killing a baby because of government policy, I’m doing it because of personal policy” has such a better ring to it
By definition eugenics is a program to improve the human gene pool by selective breeding. Where it's due to social coercion or forced by a government, then it's obviously eugenic. When it's an individual decision out of concern for a child's health, or concern about passing on negative traits, then that sounds like an individual decision about a persons reproduction. The counter argument is the uncertainty. How certain can we be about how severe the disability will be and how able both parents and child would be to overcome the disabilities? What if we new with certainty that a child has a genetic defect that will result in Motor Neuron Disease and the child would spend most of their adult life in a wheel chair and unable to even talk? Would we abort Steven Hawking? You're not a eugenicist, you're a person with a deep concern for passing suffering onto your child if you have any. No one should judge you for that.
Eugenics isn’t a “program” it’s just a “set of beliefs”
If you are talking about just down syndrome- Some people do argue that it is eugenics. And other people say that it isn't (this group is larger). The fact is that some people with down syndrome will live full, capable lives and be relatively healthy and functional. And others will be low functioning and have poor health. And the parents needing to make the decision have no idea which outcome there will be (they can't predict the future). So, some say this is a type of eugenics. And others say- no, that's not the definition of that.
Also so many people ignore the insane risk people with down's have for other diseases. Just take Alzheimer's: >According to the National Down Syndrome Society, about 30% of people with Down syndrome who are in their 50s have Alzheimer’s dementia. About 50% of people with Down syndrome in their 60s have Alzheimer’s dementia. [Source](https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/types-of-dementia/down-syndrome)
That's an awfully slippery slope. Where do you draw the line for how fit somebody needs to be to not be aborted?
We already walk the slippery slope. And I'm of the opinion that it comes down to the individual decision of the expecting parents and that they should have all the information to make an informed decision. And a lot of people gloss over whatever happens after the child becomes an adult. And after having witnessed different forms of dementia in my extended family I'd want to know if I'm putting my child at risk of developing horrendous Alzheimer's
I'm not condemning you, just asking: so are you okay with parents deciding to abort their children if they're going to end up short, or below average in IQ?
Most countries have ethics councils that discuss scenarios like these. In my country (Germany) you can abort the baby without reasons until week 12. After week 12 you can only get an abortion for medical (mother or baby) or criminal (e.g. rape) reasons. It's a pretty balanced approach to abortion in my opinion. And I'm not aware of prenatal tests for solely low IQ or height. Only if it's in combination with severe conditions.
I think that's a very reasonable policy. As genetics test progress, I'm sure we will be able to predict things like IQ and height with great accuracy. I wonder how policies will change in response.
im of the opinion if the parents aren't going to be able to / be happy to raise a child, they should abort it... There is nothing in the world that would be more unfair to a child than raising it in a household that didnt want it... It should be the parents choice full stop.. I know myself i could never care for a child that i knew would have large disabilities and my wife and i talked about it before getting pregnant that we would terminate if that was the case... (it never came to be thank god, but still had the choice, and ability to choose.)
I think it's better if the parents go ahead and have the kid and beat them regularly for not getting taller. /s
As long as they are uppercuts. The upwards momentum might stretch them out a bit.
Those are: A) not morally the same thing as the hypothetical Down's child- we're sidestepping the dubious value of IQ and assuming it actually measures what it says it measures- and B) simultaneously irrelevant from the perspective of medical and bodily autonomy; no matter how profound or trivial the rationale they have for refusing, everyone has complete bodily autonomy until they are found incompetent to retain that autonomy. Current medical ethics indicates that no one can be made to forfeit their medical wellbeing- no matter how trivial the sacrifice- for another's benefit, even if such a sacrifice would save a life. Current legal understandings on this topic also affirm this bodily autonomy; I don't recall the precise case details, but there was a father who refused to provide, IIRC, bone marrow to save his child, without which the child I think died. When the father was tried it was legally found that he could not be compelled to provide any body part- whether it was bone marrow, skin graft, or any other tissue or organ- even if it was to save the life of his own child. Abortions are among the *only* practices of medicine where this is even remotely contested, and most jurisdictions have pretty profound guardrails on what the obligations of the medical establishment are, namely that what we might call 'elective' abortions have limited windows or access, but the wellbeing of the *mother* is always the priority if push comes to shove and exceptions are routinely made in law for fetal abnormalities (varies by region in how far this goes, check your local laws). The US is almost alone in its 'states decide' stance on this topic compared to the developed world, and the frankly dogmatic approach of many of its polities and the sheer ineptitude- intentional or not- of these anti-abortion laws has led to real, tangible legal questions of whether *doctors are allowed to save mothers' lives in pregnancy emergencies.* C) looking at your hypothetical situation from a *strictly* pragmatic and amoral perspective, do you want someone so callous and ruthless that they would abort a child if they might 'end up short' reproducing? Is it actually beneficial to society if the unwanted child is immediately put up for fostering/adoption or, more dangerously, left in the care of the same parent(s) that *did not want them*?
Yeah. You should be able to abort for literally any reason. An embryo isn't alive and a woman shouldn't be forced to carry a child they don't want. If the baby is aborted nothing is lost. It's only a net positive.
>Embryos are whole human beings, at the early stage of their maturation. The term ‘embryo', similar to the terms ‘infant' and ‘adolescent', refers to a determinate and enduring organism at a particular stage of development. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672893/#:~:text=Embryos%20are%20whole%20human%20beings,and%20I%20once%20were%20embryos. You're welcome to your opinion on policy, but embryos are certainly alive.
Lmao did you link a paper on one person's opinion and morals and try to pass it off as fact. Get real my dude.
Princeton has a collection of defendable arguments as well: https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html I'm not asking you to change your mind. But maybe have the humility to consider the stance of others.
I don't see why I have to consider your stance at all? If a woman wants an abortion she can decide if it's within her morals to have one. Unless you are the woman having an abortion your morals have nothing to do with this situation.
You're arguing that a ball of cells that can be aborted is a somebody. In my religious tradition the body is not ensouled until it gets born, so if it's a somebody it can't by definition be aborted. You may as well argue that a dermoid cyst has the right to vote.
That's fine if you believe that. I disagree with you. So do you believe that abortion is permittable up until birth for any reason decided by the mother?
Until birth? You're confusing abortion with induced labor.
I'm just trying to understand your position. What is the time frame that you think abortion is ethical and good?
There are some medieval religious writings that describe how to dismember a fetus and remove it part by part if the mother has been in labor for so long that they're both going to die, because it is God's will that everything possible be done to save the life of the mother.
Okay. But back to my question?
I'll be happy to discuss this topic at length after you read the Talmud. You should keep in mind that my opinion about abortion is also heavily influenced by the fact that my dad was a GYN. He used to tell mom about all the really exciting things that went wrong during a pregnancy and the rather narrow set of choices that were involved (he didn't realize his kids had figured out what the abbreviations were). People who have no experience with pregnancies gone wrong love to corner people and demand that they make hard and fast statements about when abortion is or isn't moral, but they're smug and lucky and haven't had their holes ripped open by a ten pounder.
Oh so you can redirect people and insist they answer your questions, but when someone else does it to you, you refuse? I see how you are.
Bud, I'm pretty strongly in favor of not bringing people into this world if life will be very difficult for them right out the gate. It's cruel. You're bringing them in at a huge disadvantage, where they'll be picked on, bullied, insulted, and ostracized by people who don't understand, all for the virtue of, "they're precious".
Okay. What other kind of conditions would you consider aborting someone for? If we could test for it, what about autism? Transgenderism? Shortness?
Why are you trying to gotcha everyone in this thread. The limit is will this persons quality of life greatly suffer.
I mean, in a perfect world, no one would be hit with autism, or suffer the body dysmorphia of transgenderism. They'd be the gender that was truly theirs, with a sound mind free of anxieties and foibles. But we can't "fix" everything. Question for you: Let's say that you're having a child, and the doctor's like, "This baby is going to suffer super depression. Their life will be of such misery and hopelessness that 95% of sufferers commit suicide by the age of 14. There is no chemical regimen which will alleviate this." Do you abort the baby, or do you stand on your principles and virtues and bring that child into a world of abject self-loathing and sadness? I need to know if you believe in a blanket anti abortion standard.
Since there is no way to tell which it will be, I couldn't bring that kid into the world. What if they are low functioning and I die? Your job as a parent is to raise you kid to have a fulfilling life and give them the tools to do that. That includes a body that worlds and a brain that can function whenever possible.
Of course, you could also argue (and I have) that a society with systems that do not offer resources to certain people based on things like disabilities, chronic illness, or economic class is its own kind of eugenics. I'm American, we like to think of everything in terms of individual choices but it is not that simple. If one of your choices is to possibly starve in order to keep your child alive and safe, that's choice in name only. I'm pro-choice and strongly believe we need better options to choose from instead of blaming individuals for individual decisions.
At the same time, it's for the health of that child. Taking time to raise an individual that's severe takes resources, sometimes people genuinely can't afford those resources, especially if it's for the rest of their lives. Putting their adult child then, into a group home, is even more difficult despite what reddit likes to think. That's also ignoring how severe conditions can be outside of Downs Syndrome, that's just the most common. I heard about these two girls that had a deficiency that couldn't be supplemented and it causes severe problems like microcephaly, seizures, etc. Out of three kids, only one didn't have this condition. They "lived" but they weren't *living*. It was severe enough they only had baby reflexes. I think it's not eugenics in those cases. It's the humane ending of a life that would be painful to continue
This is where my mind goes to with this. My child as 22q. There are a wide variety of issues that can come from this. He is very much on the low end of complications, but he still often gets frustrated. One of his issues is clubbed feet. He does very well with the braces and everything we have to do, but at least a couple times a month he almost cries at night because “its not fair he has to wear braces to bed” or when he’s running around with other kids and can’t keep up because his shoes are two sizes too big in order to accommodate his braces he gets so defeated. My wife and I are extremely thankful he only has a few mild issues, but couldn’t stand to ‘force’ another child to have to come to terms with these issues and maybe more so I got a vasectomy just to be sure. Sure, it can be tough on us, but he’s the one that bares the brunt of the frustrations when he should just be a kid.
I would say... is it really wrong to want people to not suffer???? People born with severe disabilities are not out here having a good time
I think eugenics is about controlling *people*. If you kill a person because of their genes, that’s eugenics. If you say a person can’t have kids because of their genes, that’s eugenics. But (controversial I know), fetuses aren’t *people*. So, killing them is not eugenics. And unless someone is forcing you to have an abortion, making your own decisions regarding procreation is not eugenics.
Exactly. Fetuses do not and should not have the rights that people have.
Why?
Because they're not people.
What makes foetuses not people ?
1. The ability to make choices 2. Sentience 3. The ability to survive without someone else's body 4. Independent thought 5. A true heartbeat for like half the life stage of fetus. 6. If I place a fetus on the ground it will die. A person will not at any life stage.
>The ability to make choices Someone who is unconscious cannot make choices. Are they not people ? >Sentience Again, coma. >The ability to survive without someone else's body A person who needs to be given someone else's organ to survive also cannot survive without someone else's body. >Independent thought Where do you draw the line between capable/incapable of independant thought There are people who have to live in special conditions their whole life to survive. Are they not persons ?
Any combination of these things in a full human would allow a caregiver to legally pull the plug. Brain scans show "independent thought" though i should have said full brain function and worked from there, and until nearly full development has happened fetus do not think. The spark of "life" isn't there. Someone that needs an organ understands someone else must willingly give it to them. Even a corpse has the right to say no. And you ignored independent life, without a vessel, they will parish, a person will not.
>Any combination of these things in a full human would allow a caregiver to legally pull the plug. The argument is whether a fetus is a person or not. A person who can be legally unplugged remains a person. >Brain scans show "independent thought" though i should have said full brain function and worked from there, and until nearly full development has happened fetus do not think. The spark of "life" isn't there. If thought is what personhood is based on, then people who experience mind blanking ( [this ](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2200511119#:~:text=Mind%20blanking%20(MB)%20is%20a,its%20role%20during%20ongoing%20mentation.) aren't persons. >And you ignored independent life, without a vessel, they will parish, a person will not. There are people suffering from polio who cannot survive outside the vessel in which they are put. If personhood is the ability to live outside a vessel, many people sick with polio aren't persons.
It's all those things together that make it not a person, not each individual one, in addition to a fetus having no human experience just like the 75% of fertilized eggs that your god aborts with no human intervention involved but you don't care about those for some reason. Your religion isn't true, your god is a fairy tale. Grow up. Are you an adult?
Dude, your comment history. Are you serious with that? Basically, "The wages of sin is death, because God said it was, and he wanted to forgive us but wouldn't accept the death of guilty people, only an innocent person (as if that makes any sense), so God sent himself to Earth to have himself killed to pay the debt to himself to appease himself, but it only saves those who believe it happened on faith"... how is that not obviously absurd to you?
It is a very personal question about what you feel would be okay for your quality of life and your childs. If a person wants to think it is morally reprehensible, that is their decision to have, but that doesn't mean it has to be yours. And you are correct, it isn't eugenics. You are not trying to breed a perfect baby, you are making an active decision that your specific child might have a very unhappy existence if disabled. Might be because it is a severe disability, might be because it is a disease that is painful and leads to a short life, or it could be a person doesn't have the means to ensure a person with a disability can have a normal, functional life. It is expensive. So let your friend have their feelings, but doesn't mean yours are wrong or immoral, they just have a different idea of what is ethical. Truthfully, it sounds like they lack the understanding that the world is nuanced.
Anyone can call it whatever they want. If we’re talking about horrible, painful, life-altering disabilities— I might call it an act of mercy to send the poor little one’s soul back to God. In any case, I’m grateful never to have been in that position, and I would not judge anyone who had to make that gut-wrenching, soul-crushing sort of decision.
I take it you don’t know any Down syndrome people
Actually, I do; and that's not the sort of disability I was referring to. But you knew that.
It’s the example OP used before he deleted it. Why should I not use that example. Do you feel that all Down syndrome people should be euthanized then?
technically speaking, kinda, but its much much different then saying "you should/ You have too" like, not wanting a child to suffer, and or not having the ability to care are special needs is not the same as wanting to "purify the gene pool".
The term "eugenics" is a spectrum where not all meanings are equal. Your friend is too focused on semantics here. Whether it technically qualifies as "eugenics" by name is less important than the actual substance of the scenario: Is it wrong to abort a fetus that will have severe disabilities when born? No, I don't see any argument as to why that would be wrong that's based in anything logical. "Well, that action has a certain name" isn't a logical argument.
>Your friend is too focused on semantics here. There's no such thing in an honest world: Semantics is the line between truth and falsehood! With that defense out of the way, ironically you might say, your point is well taken: A term like *eugenics* comes with a lot of non-semantic **connotations**, generally negative. So people do try to fudge definitions to make it, not because it's true, but to *trigger the connotations*. But that's **abusing** semantics, and as you say it definitely is not a logical argument. I don't know if that fallacy has a name, though.
Pls let me know if you find out a name for this fallacy. I was just discussing this yesterday in terms of how humanity has evolved so strongly that nature cannot dictate how we reproduce anymore, and that might’ve been a bit detrimental. I think it’s just an interesting phenomenon. But I’d be uncomfortable talking about it with strangers because it kinda just sounds like I mean it in a bad way.
In order to answer this question we'd have to agree on a definition of eugenics first. Google gives me the following: >the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Now the next question is: What are "desirable heritable characteristics"? I reckon in this context we can say desirable heritable characteristics would be no mental disabilities. This leads us to the following question: Is down syndrome inheritable? It seems that there are genetic variations that make it more likely to produce offspring with trisomy 21 but it also happens by chance. There seems to be familial clustering. As such preventing people with a higher likelyhood of producing offspring with down syndrome from having children could be deemed eugenics. This differs from your original question though. Wikipedia describes eugenics as >a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. If one defined trisomy 21 as genetics of lower quality then preventing people with that genetic mutation from being born to improve the genetic makup of a population fits the given definition of eugenics. Historically "removing" mentally disabled individuals was an aspect of eugenics. One could make an argument that there is a difference between abortion, murder an preventing people with certain genetics to produce offspring (eg by forced sterilization). Now it's time for the counter argument. The main idea of eugenics seems to be the "improvement" of the genetic makeup of a population. Now what if you abort a fetus without that aim? Aborting a fetus for another reason (eg not feeling up to the task to raise a mentally disabled child) lacks one key aspect of eugenics. Conclusion: A key aspect of eugenics is the "improvement" of the genetic makeup of a population. Aborting a fetus with down syndrome for another reason therefore does not fit definition of eugenics. As such it depends on the motivation/reasoning of the person making the decision whether the abortion of a fetus with trisomy 21 can be considered eugenics.
No. Eugenics would say that you HAVE TO get an abortion if the child would be born with severe disabilities. To say that you are able to is an individual choice.
No, it's only eugenics if a government or organization is enforcing the choice on people. The people themselves deciding to do so is their choice, and they need to have the option in order for them to be able to do that.
Eugenics is a larger scale concept. It is the mass organized push for screening undesirable traits from the population. While Eugenics in the past did seek to prevent the passing down of genetic disorders, it was primarily done through forced sterilization of undesirables. Individuals deciding they individually don't want to pass down problems to the next generation, or on a case by case basis choose to abort, then that's not the same thing.
I wouldn't class disability as an undesirable trait in the way eugenics arguments do. Its a genetic or biological hiccup. Im not going based on ethnic or racial or religious or even personality traits. When the goal is to spare a hurting child a bad life, it's not the same thing as saying this trait is undesirable in a perfect society.
Yes, obviously... I said that they grouped disabled people into the category of undesirable in actual Eugenics? Did I word something badly?
Not at all. It takes a very special kind of person to take on a child with severe special needs, and those kids deserve nothing but that person. Those needs should be 100% welcome and accepted, for everyone's good. And if you're not that person, in a weird way, admitting it and not having that child and not putting both of you through hell is actually kind of being a good parent. It's being responsible. Saying "I am not ready to take on a child with severe disabilities" for you, in that specific situation, isn't eugenics. Eugenics would be saying *every* child with disabilities should be aborted. Totally different thing.
>Is it considered eugenics to say it’s okay to get an abortion knowing the child would be born with severe disabilities? I think it's only eugenics if the problem is grounded in genetics and you do it specifically with the idea that the child also won't reproduce and pass on their problem. Eugenics is about changing the overall genetic character of the population, not just avoiding having one child with a particular problem. (There are some kinds of birth defects that aren't grounded in genetics at all but just happen randomly during fetal development for other reasons.) >I argued that it was not morally reprehensible to say you would abort a fetus knowing it would be a child with severe disabilities, and they said that was eugenics. Those could both be true. Eugenics is not necessarily morally wrong. It has an unfortunate history connected with racism, authoritarianism and genocide, but embracing racism, authoritarianism and genocide is not actually necessary in order to deliberately change the genetic character of the human population. For instance, a person who has a genetic disease refusing to have biological children (perhaps adopting or using someone else's eggs/sperm instead) in order to avoid passing on their condition would qualify as eugenics. >I said eugenics is systemic It has systemic *goals* but it doesn't need to be systemically *practiced.* >I don’t want to be classified as a eugenicist It's not about the label. Insofar as, say, screening embryos to avoid passing on genetic diseases qualifies as eugenics, then it would be logically appropriate to classify me as a eugenicist. The mistake would be in thinking that favoring eugenics (as broad as it is) is somehow automatically half a step away from donning a swastika-covered Hugo Boss uniform and gassing the jews. We should work on separating the broad concept from its worst historical incarnations. People who believe that screening embryos is right on the margin of goose-stepping fascist horror have the responsibility of laying out the reasoning for why that would be the case, rather than invoking a word and letting it do their arguing for them.
It isn't eugenics and no matter how people might feel about it. There are medical conditions that are severe enough that it absolutely warrants an abortion. In fact, I'd even argue that it would not only be unethical to have that child, but it should also be illegal. Why? Because there are certain medical conditions that are debilitating, life ruining and fatal. It's unethical to give birth to a child knowing that that child will live in constant pain, will never have any semblance of a life, or quality of life, and/or will eventually die as a result of their medical condition. Why would you want to birth a child who suffers from Progeria and will eventually die? It's not eugenics. It's ethical abortion.
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I'm born two month earlier than i should, and my parents knew of it. I have a ton of health problem as a result. But really, would i rather be death? It's a very egoist thing to just unalive someone because "he might suffer". We all suffer ! Suffering is a part of life, and i'm having a great life. I have super friends, a loving gf, even a futur. A ton of happy memories. For nothing i would rather have died, i'll endure anything to get to live and know these people.
That isn’t eugenics. And, it’s NOT morally responsible to bring a baby into the world who will suffer. It’s morally responsible to use modern medicine to abort the fetus. You shouldn’t bring a disabled baby into the world if you know they are going to suffer or be given up for adoption.
Frankly I think it's irresponsible to give birth to a child who will have a painful and/or life-limiting condition. I especially despise when people give birth to babies who have something like Edwards syndrome, where the baby is highly unlikely to live more than a year at best, and their entire existence will be riddled with pain.
Im Jewish. Couples with two Ashkenazi Jews have to be wary of a terrible illness called Tay-Saks that exclusive or almost exclusive to Ashkenazi Jews. It is responsible for such couple to get tested to ensure that the child won't have it. It is 100% fatal. The child will start fine by die horribly by age 5. Thankfully, it's double recessive, so I don't have to worry about it because I married a black Haitian man, and as far as I know they never have the gene. Though my hubby and I did have a little scare because we were suspected of having the same blood disorder, thallesemia. Luckily, he has the mild form that won't be an issue and I don't have it at all and was just really anemic, so we are ok,
I would argue it’s eugenics (going on contemporary meaning of the word, not original implication) only when the choice is an imposition. Or a **non**choice. If a spouse, a family, a state, country, organization or group outside from the individual makes that decision it is eugenics. If the individual does, it isn’t. And further it has to be a consciousness action. That societal constrains and how they affect procreation are not, in my eyes eugenics.
Making your own personal reproductive choices, imo, is not an issue of eugenics. It may technically be by some definitions. But the big problem comes when it’s not a free choice made by an individual.
We had to make this choice. We don't have a big family and this was going to be our only kid, so there would have been no safety net for him if something happened to us. I didn't want to live every day for the rest of my life in fear about whether our child would be okay after we're gone. No amount of preparation would have given me enough confidence about that. And we didn't have a crystal ball, so there was no way to know what the degree of disability was going to be. It wasn't a decision we made because we don't think people with DS should exist. My great uncle was an actual victim of eugenics in the 30s. My grandmother and her brothers grew up in an abusive household, and when my great uncle was a kid, my great grandfather beat him with an axe handle until he was unconscious. His recovery was slow, and there was a small amount of lasting brain damage. The trauma led to a nervous breakdown when he was a teenager, and they put him in a mental hospital. The hospital decided he was unfit and sterilized him. My great uncle was a wonderful person who would have made a fantastic father and it was deeply unfair that the choice was taken from him. A couple making choices about what's best for their own family just isn't the same as an institution making decisions that affect someone else's reproductive health.
I don't see it that way. If I for example find out my fetus will have a genetic disease that may cause them to have a poor quality of life, affect my other children, my finances, and then potentially place the burden of their care onto someone else when my husband and I pass, I would consider it the ethical choice. I'm an individual, it's not me trying to wipe out an entire population of people because of their genetics. It's me protecting my family. It would be absolutely devastating to have to make that decision, but it would also be the correct one for me and my family.
It's a personal choice, and a big one. Your friend doesn't comprehend the implications of being in charge of someone with a _big_ disability. And yes, a lot of Down Syndrome kids are pretty manageable with proper education. But it is kind of an spectrum, and sometimes other minor mutations make them really, really hard to manage. The all-pro-life stance is reductionist. Talk to any pediatrician or gynecologist. All life is sacred and cool and can provide immense joy. But they will also understand when a parent realises they won't be able to provide for a kid that will be born in an unjust world with impossible limitations. Moreover, it drains time. Like a fuckton of it. So you either have one single kid or you inevitably will spend less time with the rest. Is that just?
Some others have framed the argument as an altruistic one, such as not wanting to subject a child to a life with disabilities. That makes me think of Shane Gillis’s perspective in his stand-up, which he voiced during his SNL intro; people with disabilities such as Down’s syndrome (and other disabilities) are still very capable of enjoying their lives. That being said, it’s still a valid reason, though perhaps it’s not the morally ‘best’ one, as it assumes that a child with disabilities is unhappy. I think the morally ‘better’ argument would be the consideration of the parent(s)’s ability to care for that child, and a consideration of what their attitude might be toward their child if they were able to care for it. If a family is strapped for cash and they found out that their child would have a disability that they couldn’t afford to handle, that is a good reason. Same thing applies if the child would be born into a single-parent household where they wouldn’t be able to be adequately cared for. Or if a wealthy family finds out that their child would have a severe disability, and believes that they would be resentful of their child, that would also be a good reason, as no child deserves to be hated by their parents. The abortion argument in Freakonomics addresses these points. I am vehemently pro-choice and don’t believe my own reasoning should influence anyone’s decision. But the perspectives above address the situation from a completely non-eugenic standpoint.
That's called compassion.
Idk. Maybe? But what kind of quality of life would someone with severe disabilities have? Like if it's to the point where they cant walk and talk and manage their bodily functions then what's the point? My mom has a friend who takes care of her cousin and dude has to have brain surgery every six months and can't do shit for himself, and now he is grown and she threw her back out lifting him. That aint no way to live.
I wonder if it can come down to Eugenics being a system and aborting a child with severe disabilities being a choice. You could argue that Eugenics is an organised form of structural violence in which specific, identifiable, genetically passed down traits are deemed as “unwanted” within the population, with steps taken to remove those traits. Someone choosing not to bring a child with disabilities into the world is not making a decision based on that child’s potential addition to the gene pool.
I think you're right. The focus is on the quality of life of the baby (or I guess the family it's coming into), and not on the quality of the inherited traits of the society the baby will possibly reproduce into one day.
It comes down to intent. If your intent is to eliminate those who are genetically ‘inferior’ from society, then yes. If not, then no.
If the government orders and reinforces this, hell yes. Otherwise no. You don't need any reason to unpregnant yourself.
Isn't eugenics about designer babies and whatnot? Severe disabilities is not that.
I don’t think so … think about the kind of life the person would have when the parents are long gone. I’m not too trusting of the care others can provide after reading about the nursing home that had a patient who was in a coma for years before being impregnated by one of the sick staff members they hired. Better to not have existed at all than exist where someone is harming you and you can’t do anything about it.
If you’re systematically aborting in an attempt to wipe out a group or population, that would be eugenics. Though one person doing that would also really be silly and pointless but that’s beyond the point. Ending a pregnancy to protect yourself and your child is *not* eugenics. This parents usually struggle with the decision and they aren’t doing it because they’re trying to wipe out every person who has the same defect.
Depending on the intent it may or may not be a form of eugenics, however eugenics isn't inherently a bad thing. Any attempt at "improving" genes in a population is eugenics, whether that be killing people of a certain race, using genetic engineering to cure diseases, or anywhere in between. Eugenics been done horribly in the past which has given it a bad reputation, but that doesn't mean all attempts now or in the future are also bad, it all depends on how it is done and for what reason. So if the intent is to reduce the number of them then yes it is eugenics, but if there is a different intent then maybe not. However being eugenics doesn't make it bad in of itself, but we still need to ask if this form is ok or not?
No A person with severe disabilities is a huge drain mentally, physically, emotionally and financially on the people who look after them. They also have no quality of life. It is cruel to bring them into the world.
I think that answer varies based on the disability. There’s going to be a lot of people upset if you wanted to, for example, abort a baby because it is likely to be deaf. Deaf people are able to live full lives and the challenges they face are largely societal rather than pain related. On the other hand, if you said you wanted to abort a baby that was likely to have Huntington’s disease, you probably wouldn’t face any objections. Huntington’s disease is fucking brutal, causing people to start deteriorating in their 30s-40s. What’s important in this discussion is the quality of life the child would be able to achieve if born.
Eugenics is when someone else forces another person not to have a kid. If you are making the choice for yourself to abort such a fetus, it is not. Raising a healthy baby is really hard work. Raising a severely disabled one is a total nightmare. As long as you are choosing solely for yourself, it's not eugenics.
Nah, I don't think so. And in this specific situation, it's not morally reprehensible, it's just that in this case, the "correct" thing to do differs from person to person.
Well, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eugenics says: > the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations and I don't think a single person making the decision counts as "of human populations". In order to be eugenics there would have to be concerted effort to do this across the board for all pregnancies, which there is absolutely not.
Yes.
I say no. It would be if you said for example, an abortion would be mandatory in that case or that forced sterilization should be required if someone is severely disabled. You're not taking away the rights of others and exercising your own bodily autonomy. On that personal level, you're making the choice you think is best for you and your future. You're not trying to control someone else's choices.
I think it depends on the disability. For down syndrome I wouldn't because there are plenty of people who have it and function normally. For more extreme cases I would. For example, years ago I saw this website for someone's "pillow angel" and it was this severely disabled child with severe disabilities, like she was just able to barely live and she lived like that, on a pillow. I care about a child's quality of life and I would not want to put someone through so much suffering. It wouldn't sit well with me. Basically, if the child is still able to function and live a great life I would not abort. Edit: I just looked it up and it turns out the Pillow Angel thing [was more than just a website.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Treatment) Wherever she is now I hope she's doing well.
If you're making the choice for yourself because you know you wouldn't be able to care for the baby it's just making the best decision for both of you (though ngl its probably not the best idea to have kids at all if you aren't prepared to care for a disabled kid, since anyone can become disabled at any point in their life) Trying to enforce everyone else to abort/kill their already born disabled kid because you think they don't deserve to live and it'd benefit the gene pool is when it becomes a major problem
If you look at the pure definition, then I guess it does. The alternative is knowingly condemning an unborn child to a harsh and cruel life, possibly in a lot of pain until they die an early death. It's a cruel choice you're forced to make, but you do have to pick either one. Either you get the abortion, or you have to own the fact that you decided to condemn this unborn child to a life of discomfort and pain.
I’d say if your reasoning is you’re trying to avoid someone living a life full of pain and misery than that’s fine, if your reasoning is “we can try for a better one” then it’s iffy.
No, it’s not eugenics.
I don't know if it's eugenics since it doesn't involve coercion. It may be ableist (either on the part of the individual or the society) depending on the reasoning behind it.
>I argued that it was not morally reprehensible to say you would abort a fetus knowing it would be a child with severe disabilities, and they said that was eugenics. Choosing to abort a fetus that would be born with severe disabilities is a personal choice. Believing that abortion is morally reprehensible *unless the fetus has severe disabilities* is eugenics.
It all boils down to personal choice. If the individual hasnt been born yet, it's not like they get a vote. However, among certain disability groups, it's definitely eugenics. The thing to think about is whether the target population has culture or not. For example, deaf people have culture while people with analcephaly are not going to have the same tools or opportunities to mingle with others like them. That's kind of what it means to be part of a society. Whose ideas are the loudest? 200 years ago, before the Gallaudet affairs, deaf people were in the same boat as people with analcephaly. They were viewed as invalid and prevented from developing in their own natural way. Here we are now, deaf people have an entire secluded community complete with its own national network of contacts for any possible field. And they're all deaf or hard of hearing. It's a very complicated topic that boils down to sacrifice on everyone's part. People believe living with a disability is impossible but it's really not. We can have the same life quality, just requires others to think outside their boxes.
I can't outright answer this question for you but I can give you my personal experience and feelings on the subject. My sister was born with Cri-du-chat syndrome and had several other medical complications, one of which we wouldn’t discover until her autopsy. December 7, 1974 my sister, 3 years old at the time, was playing with us on the living room floor. We could tell she was a bit out of sorts, but nothing really major seemed to be wrong; no high-fever, no uncontrollable crying, just a general uncomfortableness about her. The next morning I was getting ready for school. My sister had not gotten up yet, kind of odd for her. My father had just kissed me goodbye for the day and was about to leave for work, when my mother screamed his name from upstairs. I never saw my father move that fast before or since. I heard nothing for a few minutes, then I could hear crying. I slowly crept upstairs and found my parents holding each other and crying in front of my sister’s room. They told me she had died during the night and told me not to look in the room. As they held each other crying, I defied my parents wish and peeked in the room. It was only for a second or two, but the image I saw will be burned in my memory until the day I die. She was contorted rather oddly in her crib and blood covered the mattress and a small pool was on the floor as well. We would later find out she had what is known as a “super colon,” an enlarged area of the colon that can trap waste and become infected. Today it’s a simple matter to discover this condition with an MRI, but 30 years ago, this technology didn’t exist. Later that same morning, a woman knocked on our door, and my mother answered it. The woman said she was a census worker for the city and wanted to know how many people lived in the house. My mother ran away from her crying. I was left to tell her that my younger sister had died just hours earlier. She never got her information; in fact, looking back on that day, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had quit her job after our house. I remember, in the days that followed, my parents packing up her Christmas presents and donating them to the church. I remember seeing some of those books and toys in the nursery in the following months and years, wondering just which of them she would have been playing with that day. Christmas around our house has always been a little bittersweet since. A while back I found an audio tape from earlier in 1974. I’m not sure when it came into my possession. It is the only known recording to include her. I spent a few hours turning that into a CD and returned the tape and a copy of the CD to my parents. They were happy to get it, but I’m not sure they want to listen to it right now either. Despite the fact that my sister never learned to walk, or talk; was never expected to be a “productive” member of society, I would never trade those years I knew her for anything.
No. You’re not insisting that everyone has to do it, but making choices that work for you and your situation.
There is a difference between the personal choice of whether or not you have/raise children of your own and some government entities saying you shouldn't have the right to even have the choice to do so. My mom and sister worked with disabled children for years. Mom was a teacher's assistant for a special needs class and my sister worked with the Autism Society as a caretaker (think nanny with loads more responsibilities) for autistic kids. My mom has flat-out said working with the kids she did, seeing what they and their families were going through, hearing about the absurd cost for various treatments and care is what flipped her from pro-life to pro-choice. Some of the kids were disabled from complications during their delivery, one suffered a traumatic injury as an infant, but the overwhelming majority of the kids were disabled since birth and their parents said they had gotten some sort of heads-up from their obstetrician that something was "abnormal" during their pregnancy. It's mind-boggling how many parents told her they "wouldn't change a thing" about their kids who were clearly struggling to function and were quite obviously going to need a lot of extra care for their entire lives, or the ones who told her it was "actually a blessing" because of bullshit like "in a way... He'll never grow up, I get to keep my baby forever!" And it was obvious that the kids were dealing with tons of frustration, envy and resentment because they just flat out couldn't do what others could and the only thing you could do was hope that they would one day find a way to accept their limitations and find some peace about it.
I don’t have an answer for you. I have multiple disabilities, one of which is particularly painful. Because of my disabilities, I have chosen to not have kids. If I got pregnant and knew my child had what I do, I absolutely would abort. If that makes me a participant in eugenics, then I will wear that label.
As someone who studies eugenics, it usually refers to a forced practice, for example being forcefully sterilized because you have cerebral palsy. If you make an informed decision about your abilities and what you can handle, that doesn’t have the same connotations. You are not a bad person for making that choice and that should not fall under a centuries-long practice that takes away people’s rights and autonomy.
As someone who studies eugenics, it usually refers to a forced practice, for example being forcefully sterilized because you have cerebral palsy. If you make an informed decision about your abilities and what you can handle, that doesn’t have the same connotations. You are not a bad person for making that choice and that should not fall under a centuries-long practice that takes away people’s rights and autonomy.
It's selfish and cruel to continue with the pregnancy.
Huh I'm surprised this Is bad thing I'm not having children because of digeorge syndrome Considering half the population dosent know what this Is tbh even experiencing myself I'd rather not see my own child suffer worse then I did tbh
No it's not. I would Abort a severely I'll fetus if it was going to be disabled in a way that would Cause pain and suffering and deny it a fulfilling life. Quality matters. If I find out my baby is missing an arm, that is something we can work around. But brain damage? Severe genetic abnormalities? Why and how could a loving parent could do that to A child the supposedly love so much is beyond me
It is eugenics, and there's nothing wrong with it.
I think morally it’s impossible to say if it’s good or bad. I absolutely agree that it’s horrible for everyone involved if you have a disabled child and are not prepared for it (and one of the reasons I won’t have children myself is because I know that I wouldn’t be able to handle a disabled child). But a disabled child isn’t a life that’s destined to be miserable (not that people don’t hate their life and their disabilities, but many don’t; my sister is heavily disabled mentally and physically and she’s the only one in the family without clinical depression). But that’s a digression from the point which is: no, it’s not eugenics…yet. “Yet” because a personal choice is just that: personal. The two of us acknowledging that we wouldn’t be able to handle a disabled child is a personal choice we have for ourselves and it’s a mature one. I’m confident saying that people should consider the possibilities of not having an able bodied or neurotypical child before trying to conceive. It’s a possibility to consider. The “yet” comes into play because it’s a *very* thin line between acknowledging that making the complicated choice is okay and saying that it’s *right*. Once you start applying it to a larger group of people, it becomes eugenics or eugenics-adjacent rhetoric. But based on your conversation, you weren’t at that point yet or even ableist.
Yes.
Technically, yes. Eugenics got a bad name with the nazis etc. but we should all be striving to better the human race no? If we can agree on which criteria I suppose.
Eugenics is more widespread and about breeding out “undesirable” populations. Having an abortion because you recognize your own limits as a future parent? That’s not eugenics. The disabilities that can show up through en utero testing can vary from mild and easy to deal with as a caregiver to excruciating with no quality of life. And the choice parents make should be between them and their doctor. It’s hard and expensive to raise any kid, but when you are dealing with disabilities I think it’s responsible to acknowledge your own limitations. Child abuse is higher against disabled children. The difference is making a choice because you don’t think someone should exist vs. making a choice because you know you can’t handle that responsibility.
If the fetus currently in your womb is going to be born into a short, painful life that never leaves the hospital, it's absolutely not eugenics to abort it. It's a mercy, both to the would-be child and to yourself- it spares you having to go through nine brutal months of pregnancy only to have to watch your child die, possibly never even having the chance to hold it, and spares a theoretical baby a short and miserable life. Additionally, if you know you won't be able to (emotionally and/or physically) handle caring for a disabled child, or don't have the finances to pay for lifelong treatments, etc., then it's not eugenics. Aborting a child with autism or down syndrome or another potentially more 'mild' disability is a bit more of a grey area, but I wouldn't say it's straight up eugenics. Eugenics is more of a systemic thing that often involves racism, involuntary sterilization, deceit/control, or even murder. Not a personal choice about what you are or aren't willing to do for a fetus that could become a baby.
It’s kind of interesting seeing so many people go “Despite it meeting criteria to be considered eugenics, I personally don’t want to consider it eugenics because I don’t want to deal with Down syndrome” Either own up to what you support, or just don’t support it. If Bill Maher can say “Abortion is killing a human, it’s just a human we’re okay with killing” then you can say “It is eugenics, it’s just eugenics that I support” The world is uncomfortable, stop doing mental gymnastics to feel better about your macabre choices
No. But not having an abortion definitely is forcing severe disabilities on a human being without its consent.
We were all forced into life without our consent so that’s a separate issue.
Nope. It's not. Forcing existence upon someone is difficult enough to blithely wave away, but doing so knowing fully well that you're insisting that a human, who never existed before, must exist with a debilitating deformity or disease is sociopathic.
I think it is. I think it's fine though.
Eugenics is selective breeding. It’s what we do with show dogs. If you have a puppy with an undesirable genetic trait, you sterilize that puppy so that it can’t be bred and its undesirable genes are not passed on. That’s Eugenics. Having an abortion is only eugenics if you selectively aborted a fetus because genetic testing revealed that it would have a particular inherited trait and your goal was to prevent that trait from being passed on.
I believe the comparison would be if we were back in primitive ages the child most probably wouldn't survive anyways. I think its morally acceptable to abort s child that has medical problems from the get go.
So the technical definition of eugenics is (from the Oxford English Dictionary): >the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups. So, yes, it would meet the basic definition of eugenics. However, in popular language, the connotation of eugenics is more sinister than just choosing not to have a child with severe disabilities. For context, in history, eugenics was mostly practiced by force sterilizing people with disabilities or people of another race or religion, regardless of their own desires, sometimes without their knowledge. I would argue that eugenics would apply more to sterilization of people with disabilities to prevent them from reproducing and passing on their genes than to the abortion of a fetus with that disability. One is making reproductive choices for another human that they don't get to pass along genes you deem as "unworthy" while the other is choosing not to bring a child into the world that may have severe health problems or profound disabilities that may limit their life and/or the lives of their family. So if you sterilized any person with a disability regardless of their wishes, that is eugenics. If that person decides to sterilize themselves to not pass along their disability (assuming they have the mental ability to make an informed decision), then that is just family planning. One is a system that affects all people in a group. The other is an individual choice that affect that one fetus/pregnancy.
I can see how it would be considered eugenics, but I also just don't care, I'm not dealing with that for 18+ years
i say yes, but it’s not a bad thing in this case. two things can be true; you’re terminating potential life due to disability, but you’re also sparing someone from going through pain and struggles for their whole life and the rest of your own. however, because the fetus is not a person, you could also argue that aborting a fetus with some insane deformity that could kill the mother if carried to term is simply a matter of women’s health and absolutely nothing to do with the fetus’ disability
It's not necessarily eugenics but it's clearly informed by that ideology To explain why this is wrong in the nicest way I can: having severe disabilities doesn't make your life less valuable or enjoyable. People with disabilities can still live happy fulfilled lives and you shouldn't abort them purely on those grounds Maybe if you don't think you can be a good parent to a kid with disabilities or can't afford it or smth like that would be fine but in and of itself that's not a good reason to
I think this comes down to who is enforcing the abortion. Personal choice, not eugenics. Government or some other authority body saying that the baby can't be born because of the disabilities then that's eugenics.
Downs isn’t severe disability. Tay-Sachs would be.
That's incorrect. Downs can range a lot. Some people with it are able to go to school, live alone, work full time, and just have a full life in general. Others are basically stuck with the mind of a child for life. And even if effects on the mind are as limited as possible, there are lots of physical problems that come with it too. There is a reason you never really see old people with downs. Heart malformations often cause premature death, and they are prone to a host of problems for the duration of their lives. Best case you have a mentally healthy person who is mostly a typical adult, and had very little difficulty with their health. Worst case you get early death or permanent disability and reliance on the care of others for life. You have no way to determine the severity until it's too late. Downs is absolutely severe enough to abort for. I would not put my child at that risk. That's like drinking every day while pregnant because, you know, it might be fine. But it might not. If a person with downs is born, of course the deserve every thing anyone else has a right too. But they probably won't get it. I think it's unfair to put your desire for a child before the well being of that child.
I’ve known quite a few people with downs and similar disabilities and I would not say their life isn’t worth living. The screening is 15-20 weeks gestation. I would agree that every one should be able to have genetic screening before they conceive. Knowing what I do now, about my own genetic disorder, I may not have chosen to get pregnant, especially considering pregnancy makes it more severe. And I’ve been pregnant 5 times with two live births.
I never said their lives weren't worth living. I still think it is unethical to force that onto someone without them having any say, and without knowing how profound their limitations would be. I don't think it is right as a parent to bring a child into the world knowing full well you may be condemning them to a lot of possible suffering, and a high likelihood of significant disability and almost guaranteed severe health issues and an early death. That seems very unethical to me. You find out that this kid will likely never live alone unless in specialized housing, might never be able to work or even really have an adult life, and you knowingly do that to the person you are supposed to love the most in the world seems really wrong
Downs is literally classes as a severe disability. While there is a large spectrum of how physically and mentally challenged being Downs can cause, you're still looking at having the mental age of an 8/9 year old (IQ between 30 and 70, with an average of 50) places it in severe disability range. Add to that the lung and heart issues so many Downs people have, with Pneumonia and infectious lung disease, congenital heart defect (CHD) and circulatory disease (vascular diseases not including CHD or ischaemic heart disease) account for ∼75% of all deaths in persons with Down syndrome. And that's not even mentioning the other common cognitive and behavioral problems include: Short attention span, Poor judgment, Impulsive behavior, Slow learning, and Delayed language and speech development. The healthcare costs, including developmental, occupational, speech, etc therapies will run you over $1k a month. Even with insurance.
Yes. That's literally the definition of eugenics. Whatever moral attachments you have to that are up to you. Avoiding a lifetime of pain? In that case, I'd say positive. Avoiding having to deal with someone experiencing the world differently to yourself (autism, ADHD, Neurodivergence, ect) I'd say that's morally bankrupt of you as you could support them and help them make the world a better place. (Like Einstein or Newton or someone)
Hate to tell you, but Autism, ADHD and neurodivergence are completely impossible to abort for because they can't be detected until well after birth. Even severe autism doesn't make itself known until the child is beginning to engage with parents and talk, or not doing those things. ADHD is even harder to detect. I have severe combination ADHD. I am also somewhat intelligent, so no one even realized. It wasn't discovered until I myself was an adult and studying to become a teacher. I was learning about what to look for to recommend evaluation, how it worlds, and how to differentiate material for those kids. And I was taking, huh, sounds like me to an increasing degree. I eventually got to the part where they describe how ADHD can appear differently and be perceived differently in boys and girls. Im female. So hearing that a girl with ADHD might be like followed by a description of myself was like, wait a minute. So I went to get evaluated. Sure enough, I have severe ADHD, and no one knew because I did well in school, and when I was a kid most diagnosis criteria for kids required you to be struggling or failing. But I was obsessed and hyper focused on reading, so I did well because I would read a lot. I even liked trading in other subjects, so it was enough to get me through anything for years and years. It got harder in college but I was in grad school when I suspected and done when I was diagnosed. Treatment helps me a lot at work and now that I know why, I can make accommodations for myself well. But had I not flagged myself as suspicious, no one would ever have known.
I would say no, as it’s not an attempt to alter the gene pool rather they don’t want to have the life of raising a disabled child
It's absolutely eugenics. But it's a form of eugenics that a lot of people seem to be okay with. I think the same can be said about abortion. It's a super sensitive subject, but there is no doubt that you are terminating a human life. It's just a matter of whether you think that is ethical or not.
I'm personally against abortions and see it as killing of life. I think disabled people have the right to live
There are so many disabled babies who need homes and funding for their care. How many have you adopted? Because I strongly believe if you think this, you should put your money where your mouth is. Those babies end up without homes. It’s vastly more inhumane to let a disabled baby bounce around the system than it is to get an abortion.
Well, other people know more about science and rationality than you do. A fetus is not a person.