would you abort if you knew baby will be profoundly ret*d

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I would not keep the child. I could not take proper care of such a child. Given I am not female, whether or not to abort would not be my decision, but I would suggest abortion, because life sucks enough for most without being profoundly ret*d. Like my government teacher likes to say, "Why on earth would you bring a defenseless child into this horrible place?"

Not necessarily. Profound MR doesn't mean oblivious and it doesn't mean not fighting back. Just like with autistic people, the degree of ability to do those things depends upon the person. And once you start getting into the profound MR range, it becomes difficult to know what are the true limitations of the person and what just look that way to people with common biases. Just like with all other forms of cognitive impairment as it becomes more severe (where severe generally means "how much different this person looks from the average person's perception of people). I have known of people diagnosed with profound MR who managed to survive on their own in situations where many nondisabled people don't. Being diagnosed with profound MR means a person basically can do almost nothing on the most basic sorts of IQ tests and also has impairments in a certain number of adaptive skills in certain environments. It doesn't mean a person is devoid of any skills at all in every situation. More vulnerable in certain regards on average, but individual people can differ from the average.

Forced/compulsory eugenics is one thing. When you leave it up to a parents decision that is totally different.

I don't believe in abortion for any reason, so no.

Why do you guys keep assuming life with profound MR is worse than life any other way? You keep on saying it, and then not proving it; and that makes very little sense to me.

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there saying that life with autism is worse than life any other way and they would abort their child if they learned it was going to be autistic. Same line of thinking here, just a different group to pity.

It's not really just up to the parents though.

One, when medical professionals (who have been shown in studies to have a clear disability bias) talk to parents after a condition is found in the fetus, they most often use overt or covert pressure to abort. They emphasize the worst aspects of the conditions. They behave coldly to parents who show signs of wanting the baby. They have been known to taunt parents who decide not to abort with references to the parents religious views even if the parents are not religious (which implies the belief that only religion would make parents want such a child). And even the most neutral disability literature they hand parents has a strong disability bias (because society has huge amounts of ableism so it ends up with neutral meaning somewhere between a huge disability bias and merely a large one).

Plus, most parents grow up in places where disabled people are badly devalued. "ret*d" people are among the most devalued disabled people of all (sharing that space with autism, mental illness, and various cognitive impairments, where the position relative to each other changes but the position of all these things in the bottom tier of the hierarchy doesn't usually change). And they're then told their child will not only be disabled, not only have one of the most devalued conditions, and then that their child has the most severe form of that condition.

Then the fact that when parents know ahead of hand and don't abort, they have to put up with people they thought were their friends asking why, calling them selfish or stupid, accusing them of wasting future tax money, doing the equivalent of causing a severe head injury to a nondisabled child, bringing someone into the world whose life will be suffering and misery, burdening society, and generally being treated as if they have committed a crime rather than had a baby. And "My aunt worked in an institution with those people, that's no life" (as if institutions have to be inevitable and as if people should just not have existed rather than be put in a terrible place that still has a chance of escape). And being told everything their child will supposedly never do, while also being told those things are essential to being happy or even to being human.

Between all these things and more, it may not be the state mandating it, but it is the society as a whole putting on social pressure that can be more effective than many federal laws. Not everyone can stand up to that pressure. Maybe most people don't. Maybe that's why when told their kids will have Down syndrome (which usually doesn't even cause profound MR) most parents abort. This isn't the spontaneous decision of parents who have been brought up in a society where disabled people are treated as equal -- or even close. This is the decision of people under immense pressure that they may not even be aware of because ableism is insidious that way and so is subtle but strong social pressure that is often more powerful than obvious government pressure.

People do have individual rights to do this kind of thing. But don't mistake lack of state mandation of these things, for being so totally different from society-wide eugenics. It's not. In some ways it can be worse.

Billions of people obviously believe it's better to be than not to be.... no matter the price.

Never to be in the FIRST PLACE that is.


It's not a mentality I will ever comprehend.

Hopefully you realize I wasn't among those who assumed that.


Quality of life is an entirely subjective thing.


Only the individual has the right to determine what quality of life
means IMO.

This might contradict my own prochoice ( please allow the term to stand for the sake of simplicity) and anti-natalist positions in the eyes of some.

I see no contradictions here myself...though I truly don't feel like explaining
why I don't.

I don't wish to potentially spark an abortion debate for one thing and for another, I just don't feel like explaining it.

Life with whatever is ultimately wrong with my brain is certainly far worse
than life "any other way".

So yeah.....occasionally some of those people are right so long as they're referring
to their own lives.

Abortion would've been the kindest thing my mother could've ever done for me.

Right, it's an individual's prerogative to make that decision themselves. Not the right or responsibility of others to make it for them.




This may be a harsh question, but it's been running through my head as I read this thread: why haven't you committed suicide?

Not harsh at all.

I could say i'm too afraid of physical pain and death to take my own life
and that would be a true, but rather unscientific, explanation.

I prefer to say that for whatever neurobiological reasons, my self-preservation
instinct is intact. Said instinct is obviously not intact in the actively suicidal for
their own neurobiological reasons.

Now no need to get into discussions about neurochemistry, 5-HT receptors and
all that jazz, but perhaps one thing should be said about the neurobiology of
suicide.

That is.....there is good evidence to suggest that suicidality can be associated
with other mental disorders aside from depression. It seems that non-depressed
people with personality (and some other mental disorders) disorders (certain
ones at least) also have high rates of suicide. I doubt the role that 5-HTergic
dysfunction plays in the pathophysiology of suicide is confined to depression.


Furthermore....while I have little hope of ever enjoying a better life, death
would mean NO hope of ever doing so of course.

That makes perfect sense to me.



That's also very logical.

Thanks for an honest answer to an honest question.

I have a severely autistic 6 yo. He is thought to be MR. I don't know that he is. He operates on most levels as a 12 mo. old. I will admit that at times I am tired, and stressed, but his giggle is one of the best things I've ever heard in my life. He fully enjoys the world around him in ways most do not. His quality of life is good. It's just not 'good' in the way most typical people would label quality of life. He's a very happy little boy.

It says more about their own imperfections, than that of their disabled child when a parent decides to abort/kill based on disability alone.

I have worked with profoundly ret*d people professionally (before it became clear I wasn't NT enough) and I never felt more accepted than by them. So: no! They are pure and honest.

As a male, I don't pretend to know how women might think completely differently on this kind of issue. This is a very blurry question, and I can't answer directly. If my wife asked me, I'd think about it carefully, and verify in my own conscience whether or not the baby would be a dependent vegetable all his/her life, versus maybe a bit slow or non-functional in society but otherwise perfectly happy.

I don't believe in abortion as routine birth control, but I do believe it has it's place.

Charles