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

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I would not, That's wrong in many ways, and that doesn't make them not humans.

Yes. I would choose life even though I knew the child would live his/her entire life in an institution.
You ask why. I ask, why not?
Does a life in an institution need to be bad and miserable and worse than not getting the chance to live?
Depends on the institution, I guess. Sure I would choose a good one that I trusted.
What signal does that send to people who actually live in institutions? "Your life is worse than no life."
It's better to get the possibility of support in an institution than not getting proper support in the parents' home.

Religious belief does have an influence on my view, but don't worry, I won't write you a sermon on that. Remember though that pro-life in itself doesn't need to be religious.

And, the question is, can we always know for sure where the child is going to be all life? Who knows which possibilities for more or less independent living will appear somewhere in the future?

I would want to, because it would be "best" for everyone. But I wouldn't because it's wrong.

No. I would only get an abortion if my life was in danger or I knew the baby wouldn't live.

I notice a pattern in most of the "no" replies. They would save the unborn child because the child would then have a chance to live happily. It's a sentiment that I support, but I don't support bringing a profoundly mentally ret*d baby into this world.

You have to be realistic about the lives these people will have. You can say that it's unknowable, but that isn't really true. You know that they won't be able to do most of the things they might want, and you know how little society cares about them. Is a chance at happiness really worth it, when misery and self-loathing are much more likely? Choosing to ignore that possibility is idealistic and selfish.

My decision has nothing to do with the happiness of the child. I wouldn't be able to handle an abortion if a life wasn't in danger.

I would abort in a heartbeat, mental retardation or no. In fact, I have. I am unwilling to care for a child, and unwilling even to carry a pregnancy to term. And one thing is for sure: I can't ever love a child. I truly believe that one of the greatest problems facing the world today is overpopulation, and I believe that having a child is often (but not always) more irresponsible than aborting one. I don't have any idea why people think children are so precious. Oddly, I greatly value animal life, and have absolutely loved and adored every animal that I've had.

Exactly that. I also refused amnio with my last child...same reasoning. But I wouldn't judge someone else for making a different decision.

~Kate

I notice a pattern in most replies like yours: They repeat tired old disability tropes of unimaginable suffering, and present them as fact just because most people happen to believe them. It's a nice shortcut but it doesn't work. It's actually been scientifically shown that if you eliminate questions that equate happiness with the ability to do a particular thing, then disabled people (giving room for an adjustment period if they weren't born disabled) have the same happiness as anyone else, and have the same level of happiness before and after they acquire their impairments, after that adjustment period.

You say that disabled people find it horrible that we can't do certain things. The reality is that most people who are born disabled and who don't internalize scripts of "everyone must want to do Thing X", have the same attitude towards our limitations as most people do. Even most people who aren't born disabled adjust. The fact is all humans are limited, nobody gets all their wishes, and people can deal with this if they aren't encouraged to wallow in self-pity and don't have additional problems such as depression. (And you can actually see that the issue isn't happiness truly when people bring this stuff up. Because they always bring up impairments that are extremely devalued. They rarely say "Would you abort a child with a gene that caused depression?" And they assume that all other impairments must cause depression automatically, and that those who are not depressed are special exceptions or idealistic myths.)

I have to live in bed 99% of the time and when I get out of bed I use a power wheelchair that tilts back. I have trouble leaving the house because either I become horribly painfully overloaded, or I get into a state that would be dangerous outside because it involves dropping many 'higher' forms of thought and only responding to patterns of light and sound and such (which has been a problem around, say, cars). For that matter, even when inside I spend most of my time in that state and make occasional forays into language-land to make posts to be read mostly by people who live in language-land all the time and can't imagine being without it (honestly I think language-land is the source of many people's unhappiness -- so should we abort everyone except those who have impairments that allow us to escape it?). I get plenty of support just to get through the day and do ordinary things. (And some of my impairments are progressive, so the stuff I can't do is always increasing.)

If happiness really related to level of impairment, I am pretty sure I would be an incredibly miserable person. But I'm not. I'm not and neither are many people I know who actually have a diagnosis of profound retardation. (I know them primarily through the agencies we all get services through.) Yes I know the occasional person who is that self-hating, but most are not that self-hating. And many of the ones who are that self-hating got that way because of the actions of nondisabled people, not because of their own impairments (so maybe we should find a test for bullies and sociopaths and abort them?).

I'm not talking about these things because of some hypothetical idealistic image of the eternally happy blissfully innocent disabled person, nor am I talking about these things because of an equally hypothetical image of disability as inherent tragedy and limitations being inherently the sort of thing that drives you crazy with self-loathing for having to have these horrible things that don't allow you to walk, fly, etc. I'm talking about these things from personal experience with severe impairments of other kinds (physical and autism-related cognitive), and experience of knowing a lot of people with severe intellectual impairments. These are people's lives you're devaluing whether you know it or not. Real, actual, physical people who have the same range of happiness as anyone else, who have actual lives that are actually valuable, just as much as anyone else's. The ableism that sometimes crops up in this forum is disgusting. "These people". Grrr.

Thanks for giving me such a serious, thoughtful, and passionate reply.

My assumption was completely wrong, thanks for the reality check. I was confident that my relative ignorance on the subject would not interfere with my plans to project my own hatred of an unfair world. I have a few mental disadvantages, and the fact that they are not severe has been my consolation as I try to come to terms with them. When I imagined my current situation without the high intelligence that I'm leaning heavily on, my entire coping strategy collapsed. I'm starting to see why my strategy has not been completely successful. From a purely physical standpoint, I can do things that you cannot, but your ability to love and accept yourself is still out of my reach. I guess I'm still adjusting.

That said, I don't feel that I devalued anyone. There is nothing wrong with mentally ret*d people; however, modern society often fails them. If the parents don't have the resources to support their child, he/she could end up homeless. This concern is the basis for my position on the matter.

Hard question.

Years ago i would of definately said no i wouldnt abort but now i just dont know due to my life experiences. I gave birth to a child with some severe birth defects. My child hates me due to it as she tells me I should of aborted her, she's hated me all her life and at 19 yrs old, still hasnt accepted her disability.. she's been throu hell and back due to it.

So maybe for some.. abortion would actually be a gift of love.

(I didnt vote, I couldnt as I dont know what i'd nowdays do due to my daughter.. thou i dont believe in abortion either. I wouldnt thou even think of aborting a child with Asperger's as I see nothing wrong with being different as such).

The only thing I can add to this thread is, that the future is always uncertain.Yes, many parents would not want his/her son or daughter to go through life with a great amount of adversity that I understand though, no one can say what would be the outcome based on a decision yes or no..Personally, my mom could have chosen to have had me aborted since I deal with many issues in life but, she did not.Still, to answer the topic would depend if and when such situation came about..


Sincerely Spoken,
ProfessorX

I would not abort a child even if I knew they'd have profound disabilities. It is a matter of how we define quality of life, and the fact that people with profound intellectual (or physical) disabilities are presumed not to have any quality of life, is based on the ableist presumption of what quality of life is.

I'd never have kids of my own so I can't answer the question lol.

Although personally I wouldn't want a baby full stop...

I would not abort one, healthy or not. I am against abortion except for medical reasons. If I couldn't cope with the child, I would have him/her adopted. If the baby was seriously ill, say it couldn't breath without breathing apparatus and was never going to get better without the apparatus I would probably have to make a tough decision because that is no quality of life, however if the kid is healthy, just mentally disabled, I would do my best by them.

no i wouldn't