What Would You Do? New twist on an old argument....Follow

You're pregnant with a planned and wanted child. On your physicians advice you have the new test by Sequenom. It's a simple blood draw from the baby that tests for Down's Syndrome with 99% accuracy. Your baby, at 10 weeks old, tests positive for the the chromosomal abnormality.

If you're in Mississippi, it could be you'd have no choice on what to do. Aborting the fetus would be murder. But in the other 49 states and PR you're still well within the time frame, and your rights, to have a standard abortion. Some doc can just suck that defective blob of cells right out of your uterus.

Would you abort if you knew your kid would, basically, be retarded?

Do you think the world would be a better place without people with Down's Syndrome?

I'm guessing as we get smarter there will be more an more opportunity to detect birth defects, with high accuracy, very early on in a pregnancy, not just downs but others as well. Should we be factoring this into any debate about abortion, the right-to-life, or the person-status of a newly joined egg/sperm unit?

Yeah, and most of the Down's folks I've met were not them.

No...

Not at all really. Aborting an unwanted baby is one thing, but aborting a baby you planned because you find out it has down's syndrome is entirely different.

Come on now, Barry is a man of many talents, but he just doesn't have time or credentials to be helping out with abortions.

I would.

My mother said that when I was in vivo, so to speak, the first tests for DS were just available. They were invasive, harmful, and carried a high risk of complications. My mother was 39 and decided the risk of the test was worth it. I came out negative. So they had me. (To be fair, I was one of the unplanned valentine's babies and not planned.)

There is no cure for Trisomy 21. While there are many adults with the syndrome that are high functioning and can lead productive lives, there are many more who are low functioning. Most other DNA transcription errors of this magnitude on other chromosomes will cause the fetus to miscarry, or will cause much more severe issues that result in death. Also, many adults with Down's syndome suffer from infertility, so it's unlikely you'll get grandchildren later on.

This is the truest statement in the whole pro-life/pro choice debate. If you've got balls GTFO!

For me, if I were involved in the decision with my hypothetical future wife, it would have more to do my financial situation at the time. In theory, I'd have have no problem raising a child with Down's Syndrome; I've known a few over the years, and they can be wonderful. But to be totally honest, one would be very expensive to raise properly, especially considering that they will most likely need care well into their adulthood (probably for all of their life).

Ultimately, though, as a few people have said, it wouldn't be my decision in the end, since I'm not the one carrying it in my tummy.

I think there would be a lot of factors to consider, not the least of which being: "How hard did we have to try to get to this point?".

While the accuracy for determining if a fetus has downs or not is very high, I don't think there's any testing to provide much information about severity of the defect.
Sounds like a waste of *****.

My sister has a part time job at a center for severely handicapped people. There are patients there that can't move on their own, can't breathe themselves, get tube fed and are really just plants. There are some vague reactions to things like bathing or music but nothing beyond that. Yet they're still being kept alive artificially for decades, with very few to no visits of family or anything.
The only real reason these people are alive is because their family doesn't want to let nature take it's course.
In cases like that, I'm all for abortion.

Yes, and Yes.

I like Eugenics.