The New York Times has a piece which goes over the issue of genetic testing and abortion. Most of the coverage is given over to people who support abortion rights but are not particularly happy about the consequences of the rhetoric of "choice." I'm not old enough to remember, but does this airing of "concerns" remind anyone of some of the sounds made when "test tube" babies were a big social issue? I suspect that most "progressives" given space in this article would concede the importance of points the disability rights activist person makes. That being said, I also suspect that they won't do anything about the inevitable shift toward consumer genetics and the selective abortions of fetuses with disabilities.
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Forty years ago, the US Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade that states could not ban first-trimester abortions.
One of the problems with denialists is that they simply can't accept that science doesn't conform to their ideology.
The July 28 edition of the Lancet has a superb editorial about the need for legal and safe abortion in the developing world, particularly in Latin America (I've snipped parts; italics mine):
Inspired by this Jeffrey Feldman post, I'm putting together a post about abortion, evolution, and the dislike by some scientists of framing.
"That being said, I also suspect that they won't do anything about the inevitable shift toward consumer genetics and the selective abortions of fetuses with disabilities."
I often find myself wondering whether such a development would really be so dreadful. Why is it somehow morally superior to simply allow ourselves to be slaves to a genetic lottery?
I hardly find it very "progressive" to prolong the existence of genetic defects and the immense suffering they are capable of causing.
I hardly find it very "progressive" to prolong the existence of genetic defects and the immense suffering they are capable of causing.
bingo. the problem is how far do we let this logic go?* we, as a society, have to draw lines. for example, we know many (most) of the genes that control between group skin color variation. what if you had a couple where one was white and the other black/white biracial. they wanted children, but they agreed that it would be best if they had a child who could 'pass' as white. in furtherance of this they perform pre-implantation screening for zygotes which exhibit the appropriate genetic configuration (biased sampling of the "white" alleles from the biracial parent). this is a canned example, but this sort of thing is already viable today (though expensive).
* another issue is that selective abortion of fetuses with disabilities/defects has a negative impact on the current generation with said disability/defect.
It's not. But we are, or at least we've been so in the past. It's how people who have physical deficiencies, or just aren't particularly exceptional, comfort themselves - "it's not what we're capable of, it's how hard we try, etc." - and not aborting defective babies is just one of the things necessary to maintaining that fiction.
Once a society actually accepts the idea that people can be defective, the great mass of people who have crippling flaws start becoming unhappy.
It's one of the big lies we tell ourselves.
Well, since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I've gone through a bit of a change about all this. All this being abortion. Or, well, I dunno. I am way the he*l ambivalent, but that's my problem.
I have a mild form of MS, or seem to, and here's hoping it stays that way! So, say you there is a prenatal diagnostic test for MS, but it doesn't tell you for sure that it will be a mild or severe form. Also, in even the severe forms you usually have 20-30 years of normal health. So?
I'm glad I'm here. I know that's not the level of discussion razib prefers, but I don't know how else to put it. Like I said. I dunno.
Oddly enough, I'm not unhappy with my 'crippling flaws', or at least, I'm not yet.
What other 'crippling flaws' should we be afraid of discovering? Depression? Personality disorders? Lack of personality as a disorder?
Geez, half of academia would disappear....although, maybe those are defects we should consider deleting from society.
I always pretty much discount the "but then I wouldn't even exist" emotional arguments against abortion in various circumstances.
Each of us wouldn't exist, in exactly our current existence anyway, if things were shifted only slightly around conception. If our parents had the conceiving intercourse a day before or after, or even just at a different time, a different sperm with a different mix of genes might have impregnated our mother's egg. And so on.
In another sense though we WOULD still be here, only slightly different. Perhaps better. Because much of the genetics would be the same and most of the formative parental environment - or in many cases (e.g. unwed pregnancy abortions), a better one.
Personally I would want to abort any significant genetic defect and maybe even not so hugely significant ones, provided in the later case that there was a good margin of assurance that future pregnancies won't be too much of a problem.
When such determinations become possible, I might well even want to abort for IQ below a range that seems reasonable to hope for given that of myself and my spouse - though I recognize that THAT will definitely be problematic for many.