Abortion - An age old issue

[NimertiS]

Those statistics are slightly misleading though. 90% of pregnancies with definite Down syndrome diagnosis are terminated in Europe, that's true.

But to have a definite Down syndrome diagnosis, you need to have had an initial prenatal test which gives an indication that your fetus has Down syndrome, and subsequently you need to have a follow up test to confirm that it definitely has Down syndrome (no one wants to terminate a non-Down baby by accident).

You have parents who don't want the initial test (16% or so in Europe), and their pregnancies are therefore never diagnosed prenatally as Down pregnancies. Then you have parents (20% or so) who refuse the follow up test to confirm the diagnosis, since they'll continue the pregnancy anyway and therefore they never receive a definite Down diagnosis. The "90% of Down pregnancies are terminated" are only the group for who it's really important whether their kid has Down or not and did both tests.

The amount of actual Down births has ultimately remained relatively steady (in Europe) since we've been getting older (a risk factor for Down's) and we hardly abort every Down baby.

Maybe it's true for your country and some people keep them. Here, you invest in children.
You have to secure their education,1-2 foreign languages is the new standard, university degree, career, money and eventually grandchildren. People here don't want babies with Down.

Two years ago,I completed my master of art in Criminology, and our principal told us how difficult is to find adoptive parents for children like this. Nobody wants them, and they're the majority of the kids in orphanages, women here if they have an unplanned pregnancy, they abort it,or keep it, there is no social stigma around unmarried single mums. They don't leave healthy babies in orphanages.

Edit: It's a bad written post and I should feel bad. Though,it addresses a sad reality

 

[PorcupineTree]

Edit: It's a bad written post and I should feel bad. Though,it addresses a sad reality

The situation is sad but I don't know why you should feel bad for saying it. It's an insane lifetime investment to deliberately birth and raise someone who won't be able to function as an adult. It gets harder and more expensive once the parents are older, and it causes a lot of suffering regardless of whether people want to admit it or not (I mean, can you really expect parents to say out loud when they regret having a baby? Those aren't uncommon feelings, they're just taboo.)

If you want to raise a child who will get the most out of life then it makes sense to try again or to reserve your energy for any pre-existing healthy kids.

 

[SofondaCox]

Maybe it's true for your country and some people keep them. Here, you invest in children.
You have to secure their education,1-2 foreign languages is the new standard, university degree, career, money and eventually grandchildren. People here don't want babies with Down.

Two years ago,I completed my master of art in Criminology, and our principal told us how difficult is to find adoptive parents for children like this. Nobody wants them, and they're the majority of the kids in orphanages, women here if they have an unplanned pregnancy, they abort it,or keep it, there is no social stigma around unmarried single mums. They don't leave healthy babies in orphanages.

Edit: It's a bad written post and I should feel bad. Though,it addresses a sad reality

Children should be legally entitled to healthy bodies and minds. They should be entitled to be welcomed and wanted by their parents.

Its interesting. If you were to perform some awful act on a child of any age, even an hour old, that created the symptoms of DS, you would (rightfully) be imprisoned. Why on earth is it acceptable to create a pet that will suffer and almost assuredly outlive you?

 

[LordAzazel]

Maybe it's true for your country and some people keep them. Here, you invest in children.
You have to secure their education,1-2 foreign languages is the new standard, university degree, career, money and eventually grandchildren. People here don't want babies with Down.

Do you have some figures for live Down Syndrome births counts over time in Greece? Because I can only find European wide figures, no figures for Greece alone. Probably because I search in English and not in Greek.

Two years ago,I completed my master of art in Criminology, and our principal told us how difficult is to find adoptive parents for children like this. Nobody wants them, and they're the majority of the kids in orphanages, women here if they have an unplanned pregnancy, they abort it,or keep it, there is no social stigma around unmarried single mums. They don't leave healthy babies in orphanages.

Edit: It's a bad written post and I should feel bad. Though,it addresses a sad reality

Yeah, that's across the whole Western world a problem, although I'd argue that another big factor is that we stopped trafficking babies out of the third world, so now there's a baby shortage. That was also depressing to read up on that situation and to find out a whole lot of "orphaned" babies actually had parents, who were told they were only giving them up temporarely and then found out they were sold to Western couples.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

generally speaking, im pro life myself, but if it means lowering the fan bases of the paul brothers, then yeetus that fetus

 

[NimertiS]

The situation is sad but I don't know why you should feel bad for saying it. It's an insane lifetime investment to deliberately birth and raise someone who won't be able to function as an adult. It gets harder and more expensive once the parents are older, and it causes a lot of suffering regardless of whether people want to admit it or not (I mean, can you really expect parents to say out loud when they regret having a baby? Those aren't uncommon feelings, they're just taboo.)

If you want to raise a child who will get the most out of life then it makes sense to try again or to reserve your energy for any pre-existing healthy kids.

I know, and I'm pro-abortion in these cases, but I understand that Americans are more sensitive to this topic.
And some mothers-to-be are suffering, you know if you had a couple of IVF or you're in yout fifties and your ship is going to sail is sad to abort a baby,you lose your hopes.

Also, I'll try to find statistics as a fellow kiwi asked.

 

[PorcupineTree]

I know, and I'm pro-abortion in these cases, but I understand that Americans are more sensitive to this topic.
And some mothers-to-be are suffering, you know if you had a couple of IVF or you're in yout fifties and your ship is going to sail is sad to abort a baby,you lose your hopes.

Also, I'll try to find statistics as a fellow kiwi asked.

True. The combination of pregnancy hormones and a ticking biological clock must be a horrible stress to add on top of the situation.

 

[2_blank_spaces]

I'm pro choice. I think it's absolutely ridiculous the lengths pro-lifers will go to to try and stop women from aborting. And even then, they're grossly misinformed about why women go to places like PP anyway. Many of these pro-lifers also believe that things like the pill are actually abortion pills. No joke.

I read something insane and I wanted to share it with you guys. It's a long read, but really interesting.... https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/arti...IPTImmIJiEClZj__WoExee7jAKyfgZ2FqLZLFBdBlxsl8

 

[cactus]

I'm pro choice. I think it's absolutely ridiculous the lengths pro-lifers will go to to try and stop women from aborting. And even then, they're grossly misinformed about why women go to places like PP anyway. Many of these pro-lifers also believe that things like the pill are actually abortion pills. No joke.

I read something insane and I wanted to share it with you guys. It's a long read, but really interesting.... https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/arti...IPTImmIJiEClZj__WoExee7jAKyfgZ2FqLZLFBdBlxsl8

The title of the article reminded me how, I think it was, Roaming Millennial tried to claim that those pro-life centers aren't using underhanded tactics to keep women from aborting, despite what is really happening.

 

[MadDamon]

Medical advancement has made abortion more easier to get, and much more safer to have one. However, it can't erase the moral stigma of erasing a soon-to-be human, even 100 hundred years later. It's just human nature: Unless you are a psychopath, no one want to have the thought of another person being destroyed and they cannot stop it.
At the end of the day, imo, abortion is, and should be, a personal choice between the would-be father and mother (or sometimes mother only). Other people should not have any saying in such a intimate and important choice, since other people would never know what drives the parent to have a abortion.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Medical advancement has made abortion more easier to get, and much more safer to have one. However, it can't erase the moral stigma of erasing a soon-to-be human, even 100 hundred years later. It's just human nature: Unless you are a psychopath, no one want to have the thought of another person being destroyed and they cannot stop it.
At the end of the day, imo, abortion is, and should be, a personal choice between the would-be father and mother (or sometimes mother only). Other people should not have any saying in such a intimate and important choice, since other people would never know what drives the parent to have a abortion.

At the end of the day, a woman killing herself and her baby by driving off a cliff is a personal choice for the mother. Other people shouldn't have any say in such an intimate and important choice, since other people will never know what drives the parent to drive off a cliff.

That's a cop out. If that's how society worked, we wouldn't have much in the way of laws. "Oh that dude came home mad and murdered his whole family? Oh well, it was a personal choice, how can we know why he did it?"

That's not to say it definitely should or shouldn't be legal, but can we stop with the thought terminating cliches like this. As a society, we already said "It's definitely our business what happens to the vulnerable, you're not allowed to keep a rape house full of your brainwashed offspring tied to the radiators".

And you know what? Even though I am a big proponent of individual freedoms, I also want the government to step in in cases like that.

 

[MadDamon]

At the end of the day, a woman killing herself and her baby by driving off a cliff is a personal choice for the mother. Other people shouldn't have any say in such an intimate and important choice, since other people will never know what drives the parent to drive off a cliff.

That's a cop out. If that's how society worked, we wouldn't have much in the way of laws. "Oh that dude came home mad and murdered his whole family? Oh well, it was a personal choice, how can we know why he did it?"

That's not to say it definitely should or shouldn't be legal, but can we stop with the thought terminating cliches like this. As a society, we already said "It's definitely our business what happens to the vulnerable, you're not allowed to keep a rape house full of your brainwashed offspring tied to the radiators".

And you know what? Even though I am a big proponent of individual freedoms, I also want the government to step in in cases like that.

I just feels like every individual could have their freedom as long as what they are doing is law-abiding. There's reasons that forced suicide and sex cult is banned by the law, you know.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

I just feels like every individual could have their freedom as long as what they are doing is law-abiding. There's reasons that forced suicide and sex cult is banned by the law, you know.

Yeah. That reason is because we as a society have decided that we definitely should step in when kids are being abused or killed, even if they aren't our own.

I mean, jesus, we're talking about abortion and you talk about forced suicide (AKA murder) as if it's completely unrelated.

Do you not get the connection? Sometimes we say "Even though we don't know why you're doing that to your kid, we're not going to let you do that to your kid."

 

[MadDamon]

Yeah. That reason is because we as a society have decided that we definitely should step in when kids are being abused or killed, even if they aren't our own.

I mean, jesus, we're talking about abortion and you talk about forced suicide (AKA murder) as if it's completely unrelated.

Do you not get the connection? Sometimes we say "Even though we don't know why you're doing that to your kid, we're not going to let you do that to your kid."

It's a problem of how you define a murder, and a human. Modern abortion, at its core, is to discontinue a pregnancy at its early stage. Most of the time, fetuses at that time hasn't even develop enough characteristic that imply it's alive.
Can you call that a human? Sure you can. But at the same time could you disagree with someone saying that it's not alive? In a sense, abortion is murder. It's undeniable. Yet at the same time, it isn't. It is, and will be forever, a moral stigma, as long as there's different definition of murder and human.

Furthermore, where is the line between what should be intervened by other and what shouldn't, beside the law we human constructed to protect the interest of the public?
If you consider abortion as a form of murder, and it should be banned. You are right.
But to me, abortion should not be considered a murder, therefore parents who considered abortion, after mutual agreement, have the right to make the decision, since what they are doing isn't offending the law.
Other people can voice their objection to the parents, but I just feels like the parents also have the right to choose to listen or not.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

It's a problem of how you define a murder, and a human. Modern abortion, at its core, is to discontinue a pregnancy at its early stage. Most of the time, fetuses at that time hasn't even develop enough characteristic that imply it's alive.
Can you call that a human? Sure you can. But at the same time could you disagree with someone saying that it's not alive? In a sense, abortion is murder. It's undeniable. Yet at the same time, it isn't. It is, and will be forever, a moral stigma, as long as there's different definition of murder and human.

Furthermore, where is the line between what should be intervened by other and what shouldn't, beside the law we human constructed to protect the interest of the public?
If you consider abortion as a form of murder, and it should be banned. You are right.
But to me, abortion should not be considered a murder, therefore parents who considered abortion, after mutual agreement, have the right to make the decision, since what they are doing isn't offending the law.
Other people can voice their objection to the parents, but I just feels like the parents also have the right to choose to listen or not.

And that is why the debate is tricky. But at least you're laying out the sides pretty accurately here. And fine, that is your opinion, it's a valid one, and you don't attempt to invalidate the opposing side to the argument.

This is all I'm trying to accomplish. Knock down the bullshit arguments so we can at least be on the same page before we tear each other to pieces, instead of each setting up a strawman on our own field and tearing him apart, then both of us declaring ourselves the winner.

 

[sweetdreamslambie]

as stated by others, making abortion illegal doesn't stop abortion, people are just gonna do it illegally so it'd be better if it was legal so that it's observed by the government and regulations and such could be put in place

 

[Fresh froosh]

Do what you want with your body it's none of my biz. As long as abortion is legal then I'm happy.
Personally I'd be a bit weirded out at the idea of having an abortion myself because I'd feel kinda bad. Unless it was a given that my baby would be a non sentient vegetable doomed to die anyway. I'd have no problems having a run of the mill special needs or downs kid though. They deserve just as much love and respect as anyone else and a decent number lead normalish lives anyway with the right intervention etc.

 

[Emperor Julian]

We havnt really got the resoarces to sustain current population levels and whenever it's been banned it's a total shit-show. Morality aside pro-life is just impractical and probably unworkable, not in the least because no one wants to adopt those babies.

 

[queerape]

Question that I may make a separate thread for if it diverges enough from this one: Can you be both pro-life and a feminist? Can you be not pro choice and a feminist?

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

as stated by others, making abortion illegal doesn't stop abortion, people are just gonna do it illegally so it'd be better if it was legal so that it's observed by the government and regulations and such could be put in place

Making murder illegal doesn't stop murder, people just do it illegally, so it'd be better if it was legal so that it's observed by the government and regulations and such could be put in place.

Your argument works equally well against any law. I don't think you would agree with the conclusion of my modified version of your argument though, even though it uses the same logic and assumptions.