I honestly don't know what to say...

[antares]

Found this comment thread...

Basically the gist seems to be that abortion and pre-natal techonology is good because more "undesirable" babies are aborted, and people who advocate for people with disabilities like Down Syndrome are idiots. Also, feminism is bad because it makes women have kids when older, and have less kids, and more disabled kids. Or feminism is bad because all the smart women are having kids when older so they're having both less kids and more disabled ("retarded") kids while all the dumb, less educated women are having more kids.

I'm gonna be sick.

gnxp.com/new/2007/05/12/pro-forma-hand-wringing/

“have had to grapple with the reality that the right to choose may well be used selectively to abort fetuses deemed genetically undesirable.†Are they completely mad? Surely it’s one of the most upright, proper reasons to have an abortion?

Dudes,

You’ve said you don’t pay that much attention to the political blogosphere, so don’t be offended if I tell you that this has been all the rage there for the last week. I noticed this while scanning the CNS of the left (Atrios), which I read once in a while just to see what they’re buzzing about.

Big I: to give two examples, it’s been discussed by Michael Berube (left blogger; father of a Down’s kid) and George Will (right-wing; father of a Down’s kid).

GNXP types are likely to state what you did bluntly and autistically. That just doesn’t happen in the rest of the blogosphere.

IMO, Will says nothing he hasn’t said before a million times: he crudely accuses us of favoring genocide against a group of people who are no different from the rest of us (while admitting that his son has a genetic “defectâ€). Berube is making a much more sophisticated argument against the limits of individual autonomy. I grant him that…but isn’t the choice to have a Down’s child based upon the autonomy argument? It benefits Berube to have his Down’s child. What does it benefit the rest of society?

Berube is making a much more sophisticated argument

Berube is the kind of person whose stock in trade is making stupidity sound “sophisticated†(e.g. when he maintained that liberals were *not* overrepresented on college campuses). Much like Brad Delong, or Victor Davis Hanson, or Belmont Club, or James Wolcott.

People like this are impotent in the face of greater technological firepower. Let them talk all they want. They will buy it when it is sold, whether they lie to themselves about it or not.

Of course, you don’t come out and tell them straight up that they *will* violate various leftist (and rightist) shibboleths. You don’t have to tell them, because they’re just going to do it, in the same way they put their kids into private schools to insulate them from dangerous urban minorities.

Will:

especially repulsive manifestation of today’s entitlement mentality—every parent’s “right†to a perfect baby.

Yes, parents should just accept that they will:

a) never have grandchildren

b) never have an adult conversation with their child

c) spend their old age caring for a child who cannot care for them

Berube:

We have worked in the academic field of â€disability studiesâ€for about 10 years. … But on the other hand, autonomy is vastly overrated.

Do we really need to read any further? This is the same kind of totalitarian slop. Who wants to spend thirty years caring for a child with an incurable birth defect…or, worse, paying for some other person’s kid?

Note the common thread from both Will and Berube: quash personal autonomy. Interestingly enough, though, it’s personal autonomy that got them into this situation in the first place…for Down’s syndrome is much more likely to befall children of older (read: career) women.

In the long run, civilizations that hew to these kinds of outmoded taboos on reproduction are as doomed as those that prohibited usury.

i read ?I thought it would be morally wrong to have an abortion for a child that had a genetic disability,? said Ms. Lester, a marketing manager in St. Louis. and thought “what kind of mother are you?†seriously — babies don’t come out of the ether and neither do their physical and psychological traits. a couple will only have a small number of children, and the actual children they have is an infinitesimal fraction of the set of possible children they could have conceived had the events of meiosis and fertilization (and development!) gone differently. why have a Downs child when you can have his/her non-Downs sibling?

he’s not a particularly good writer, nor is he particularly conservative

But this is a requirement for being a popular rightist in the mainstream media! A talented writer who was indisputably right wing would be too convincing. Think David Brooks or Sullivan.

By justifying policies in leftist terms (e.g. calling opposition to policy X “racistâ€), the house conservative helps to define the rightward edge of the acceptable boundaries of discourse. But a rightist is not speaking truth unless he has caused a leftist’s brain to shut down from splenetic, stereotyped outrage.

gc May 14th, 2007 at 1:51 am

Think David Brooks or Sullivan.

To clarify, these are fellows who are basically on the left edge of the right. Like Bush. Liberals do not realize that these people share their same basic worldview (meaning the axiom of equality and all consequent fallacious deductions).

We watched some friends go through having a Downs baby (with no indications at all in the amnio or the ultrasound), who survived just over a year of intense, constant medical intervention. I wouldn’t wish that ordeal on my worst enemy.

That is tough. My ire above is only directed at feminists who live in a la-la land where biology is a patriarchal fiction which doesn’t matter.

That is, I think it’s funny when feminists end up without kids. The fact that Amanda Marcotte’s line will die out with her is a boon to all humanity, and a silver line to the current dysgenic cloud.

But when it happens to people who know about h-bd? Then it’s not funny at all. Tough choice, tough choice. A friend of mine was in this situation; fortunately for his genes [though he didn't see it that way at the time], his wife cheated on him and they got a divorce. He ended up with a younger woman and his 2nd kid is on the way. Her? Alone as a 40 year old adjunct at some no-name place.

Women who have their first child late in life, sure – but good Catholic women should keep having kids late in life too, right? :)

[DGayle]

The only thing I could think to say to that person would be something un-PC:

"Too bad there weren't scans for heartlessness like yours, so that your mother could abort an "undesirable" and spare the world of your cruelty."

A lot of boys who joined the Nazis didn't understand what they were getting into at first. They joined because it was expected of them. (A lot of boys joined in the US military for WWII without really getting it either.) But these days, Hitler wouldn't have to worry about kids getting swept up in things for them to serve. There are plenty of adults in today's world who fully understand reality, and still believe eugenics is the way to go, and would probably love to chance to get to kill people not up to their standards.