I'm an American but studied abroad in Denmark for around 6 months. When I was there, I found out that the Nordic countries have virtually eradicated down syndrome by testing pregnant people for it. 99% choose to abort. How do you guys feel about this?
Personally this is quite disturbing to me. I've known people with down syndrome who live happy, quality lives. Even if it is up to the mother whether or not to abort, when it happens 99% of the time, is it not cultural eugenics? It seems the culture is almost afraid of taking care of a child with down syndrome. Especially in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, where the resources to take care of them are more widely available. If you could test for other things like autism, or even something like extreme depression, would yall do the same thing?
EDIT: I am strongly pro choice and I have talked to many American people on both sides of the political spectrum about this and they unanimously agree with me. On an individual level, I support everyones right to make their own decisions, but when it gets to the population level it becomes more of a cultural issue. There seems to be a cultural agreement that children with down syndrome are too difficult to care for. Does that make it ok to eradicate them? I honestly don't know
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The original was posted on /r/denmark by /u/queen_bs at 2024-03-13 15:12:18+00:00.
Obstructionitist at 2024-03-13 15:57:47+00:00 ID:
kuoylsdDown's Syndrome comes with a lot of complications. It makes life more difficult for everyone. When you can detect it this early, I have no objection whatsoever with people deciding to have an abortion, due to high risk of Down's Syndrome. Abortion isn't really a big deal here, since we generally don't let made-up sky-fairies make grand decisions about how we live our lives. Down's Syndrome is an error in the chromosomes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with aborting a fetus which has such an error. If you could detect other syndromes and diseases, that causes significant and life-long complications and degradations in quality of life, with high enough probability, then I wouldn't have anything against deciding to get an abortion on account of such a discovery either. Autism is a bit different, since it's a spectrum and there's really no saying how the life of a person with autism may progress. If you could detect severe cases, where the person has no language and needs 24 hours care for the entirety of their life, and you could detect it early enough, then I'd have no objections either. You can call it eugenics if you wish, it doesn't really make a difference, I call it being practical and realistic.