Possible major break though in Autism, Great News.

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one statistic speaks of the high number of downs syndromes aborted. another speaks of the relative small amount of change that these numbers make on the over all abortion rate. This suggests that, in the grand scheme of things, the number of downs syndrome babies are numerically small, thus the even of pro-lifers experiencing a downs syndrome child will be even smaller, allowing for little to no "transgressions of faith" within that percentage.

Consider all the facts before wild assumptions. And understand that not every human is perfect, so there will always be a percentage of any belief (even athiests), who transgress their faith in the face of adversity. So this is irrelavent, a red herring so to speak.

Actually, the assumption is sound no matter the percentage of children born with Down's is. What he is saying is that unless every person having children with Down's is a pro-choicer (an almost statistical impossibility), then the vast majority people would abort their child in certain circumstances.

In other words, pro-life is in part due to the lack of putting yourself in someone else's situation, and the vast majority of pro-lifers would abort a baby with Down's when actually faced with that situation. How do these facts go against this reasonable assumption? Another shocker (well, not really)is that a Christian is more likely to have an abortion than an atheist. It is pure moral hypocrisy, and it easy to be on the high-horse when you haven't experienced it.

I like how you use the phrase "transgressions of faith", because this just confirms my conclusion that people who are pro-life do so purely for religious reasons, which is why the majority who preach "sanctity of life" have no qualms screwing over the living, i.e. capital punishment, cut social welfare, aggressive foreign policies that kill children and unborn babies alike, etc. (how is this logically protecting the sanctity of life? the list goes on). Just do me a favor and keep your religious dogma out of the law.

No, this is where you're straying. lets consider hypothetical numbers. Assume, (for the sake of simplicity) that there are 1,000,000 pregnant women, and assume that 100,000 of them are pro-lifers. now assume for simplicity that all of them are 35, which gives them roughly a 1 in 360 or so chance of having a down syndrome baby, and is slightly over the median age of ceasing reproduction for the average individual. that gives a RISK of 2750 or so children out of 1,000,000 children being born with Downs, That is 0.002% risk of children being born with downs. Now applying that to the 100,000 that is 200 children. Not having validated the previously asserted statistics, lets look at the obvious. 87% to 98% is a wide and very inacurate study, and in no way scientific, or indicative of society as a whole. But let's use 90% as an even number, even though it's less in favor of your argument than 98%, it is above the minimum and gives us easy math. This gives 275 children that won't be aborted.

No statistics show the faiths or beliefs of those aborting the downs syndrome fetus but in abortion in general, pro-life married women are far less likely to seek abortions for any reason than undecided or pro choice, now that holds less true for women claiming to be pro-life in a christian school or college that punishes "immoral behavior" (premarital sex included) but in general, the statistics are less than 0.001% for the inacurate studies available. so lets just assume that it's still 0.01% and assume every single one of those are downs syndrome (which falsely inflates the numbers dramatically.). That gives aproximately, 20 babies aborted by pro-lifers for downs syndrom (still, falsely high but we don't have any more reliable data). So therefore out of the 100,000 pro-life mothers. 0.0002% aborted and all for downs syndrome. thus out of the 2750 that were aborted, 0.007% were aborted by pro-lifers.

The statistics, do NOT support your assumption. It is even possible that the 275 chidren all originate from pro-life families (though not probable) given the adherence to values of life.

Regardless, we do know factually, through questionnaires, that the majority of those seeking abortions claim to be "christian" of some form or another. However there is a distinction between claiming a faith and practicing a faith, thus the religion is an inaccurate indicator of the pro-life practicer. I know of several fairly major "christian" denominations which embrace both pro-choice, and LGBT rights. Thus we need to maintain a distinction with purely "pro-life" versus "pro-choice". Additionally, not all "pro-life" are christian, many are agnostic or even athiest, though relatively few in comparison to the total "pro-life" group.

But again, these are all off topic, irrelavent, "red herrings", or smoke screens to dramatize and have no substance to the discussion of whether tests for autism should be used to consider abortions, other than the fact that they were the same concerns with downs and other issues.

EDIT:
Lets also keep in mind that statisticaly, only 2 to 3% of women who are pregnant have the amneo test done. This fact alone drops the numbers so drastically that all the above math becomes way too high.

Gamer is correct - my conclusion about pro-life hypocrisy does not depend on the number or percentage of DS pregnancies.

Tell me if you see any flaws in the following assumptions or logic.

Assuming:

A1) 44% of women are pro-life (from Gallup)
A2) 87% of DS pregnancies are terminated (lowest figure from Wikipedia)
A3) DS pregnancies are equally distributed between pro-life and other women

Then:

S1) 44 out of every 100 pregnancies with DS will belong to "pro-life" and 56 to "other" women
S2) 87 out of every 100 pregnancies with DS are terminated
S3) At most 56 out of those 87 could be terminated by "other" women
S4) At least 31 out of those 87 must have been terminated by "pro-life" women
∴ At least 31 out of every 100 pregnancies with DS are terminated by pro-life women


The fundamental difference in your "for the sake of simplicity" example is that it assumes different statistics. In your example 10% of women are pro-life and 90% of DS pregnancies are terminated, therefore it is indeed possible that the remaining 10% of pregnancies all belonged to pro-life women. This is not possible using my assumptions, which are based on the actual statistics that I could find.

As for the relevance of this to autism, I agree that it's not relevant in principle, but I think it could be relevant in practice. Even a person comfortable with being autistic themselves may not be so comfortable with the serious possibility of spending the rest of their lives caring for a LFA child.

No, the numbers I found online, when studied, show that less than 0.002% of the 90% of the 2 to 3% of pregnancies tested are from POSSIBLE pro-life. and less than two thousandth of one percent does not equate to hypocrisy. It equates to "human uncertainty" It also proves that 90% of downs syndromes are not aborted, but only "maybe" 90% of those tested. Generally speaking. Pro-life advocates who are staunch in their beliefs refuse the amneo test as it is only a means to consider abortion. So there in lies another discrepancy. Those who are sincerely pro-life don't get the test to begin with. Your statistics do not consider the lack of testing amongst pro-lifers nor the fact that only 2 to 3 % of the pregnancies are tested.

Sorry. but neither the numbers nor the conclusions suppor the assumptions, imo.

EDIT: also the numbers I could find of pregnant women who identify as specifically pro-life" were less than 10% in comparison to other pregnancies who were either undecided or pro choice, but I inflated it to 10% for easier math. so, correct. My simplified math is not accurate, it's actually much higher than the figures would suggest with proper study.

So essentially you take issue with assumptions A2 and A3?

Re A3) - it's true that I couldn't find statistics for pregnant women specifically, but I just can't see anything to suggest that pro-life women are so much less likely to become pregnant than other women.

Re A2) - you do have a point there. The statistics were for terminations following a pre-natal diagnosis of DS, rather than as a % of all DS pregnancies, as I incorrectly stated, so it is possible that pro-life women are much less likely to get a diagnosis. Unfortunately I could not find statistics on how likely pregnant women with pro-life views are to get screening. I found a blog post that makes the same point - but also lacks that statistic.

Last edited by FMX on 10 Aug 2013, 9:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't have the data to confirm it available, but I do take issue with A1as well. Primarily from a study we conducted in social psychology as a class. In the (1997) study, only 67 % of women identified as religious. Of that 67%, only 43% identified as definitely prolife. The rest were mostly undecided or conditional, meaning in favor of abortion under specific circumstances which included things not considered acceptable exceptions for "prolife". In our study, less than 1% of women identified as non-religious but prolife and were excluded from the study (which focused on the correlation with religion and abortion). Considering these figures, regional variations understood, only 29% of the female population tested considered themselves definitely prolife. This was notably in stark contrast to the reported national average based off of smaller samples. (our regional sampling tested more women than the national studies reported to have sampled). Additionally, our study had a sub study where we tested the differences of the same subjects when questioned by a male versus a female, and and well dressed individuals versus poorly dressed individuals. Surprisingly, more women claimed to be pro-choice to other women than men and also to poorly dressed individuals than to well dressed individuals. Because of the number of differences studied, the university refused to submit the study for peer review, claiming that it was too broad.

Therefore completely irrelevant, but affects my opinions nonetheless.

Last edited by FlanMaster on 10 Aug 2013, 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

So some think that expanding knowledge of our neurobiology is a bad thing because some people will misuse that knowledge?

This seems like an argument against science in general.

I cannot see this announcement as anything but positive, even If it results in some negative consequences.