@MedsVsTherapy
Yeah! Sorry about that sentence. Not one of my best. You know what I mean though,…. no?

@The Nameless. Is this thread finally dead, or will it rise again…?

Re: my comment about neurological disorders and perspectives: sorry if that came across as an insult… but I said that *because* everything I say comes across as an an insult… the image of a distorting mirror came into my head.

I was trying to make allowances for you. Several of you have said you have neurological impairments… it’s not unreasonable to guess that they might be responsible– also for your apparent lack of interest in the way other people see things. That said, I’ve had plenty of experience debating with people who do exactly the same thing, with no such excuse.

“Thank you for trying to undermine my perspective, but I’m damn sure it’s at least as valid as yours.”

Actually, I think the problem all along is that your “side” has come in with the conviction that your perspective is the *only* valid one.

I was writing the post from memory of the other comments, and think on re-reading I’ve over-extrapolated. A bit of journalistic mis-representation on my part, sorry

I’m going to bow out of this – it’s a really interesting debate, but I’m up to my eyeballs in work at the moment!

One interesting thing about the pity debate was that the word was originally used by Gonzo Girl to describe feelings that she attributed to other posters (possibly The Nameless).

There is definately a discussion to be had on different interpretations of the word. I don’t think people have always helped themselves on this thread with their choice of words. Having said that, it is at a level beyond individual words that I think the misunderstanding/disagreement is coming in. People are reading large sections of text and getting totally different things from it.

I for one think Gonzo Girl and others have genuine points to make that I and others are failing to understand. I also think Gonzo Girl and others are repeatedly failing to see the intended meaning of other peoples posts.

Coobeastie, I wonder if you could point me in the direction of the post(s) by The Nameless that led you to conclude:

“Nameless et al cannot imagine that people who do not have the ability-priviledge that they do can have happiness/fulfillment in their lives.”

I’ll happily reread the thread, but right now I can’t recall anything like that.

To be continued….

“Nameless et al cannot imagine that people who do not have the ability-priviledge that they do can have happiness/fulfillment in their lives.”

Perhaps The Nameless can confirm whether this is what he/she meant. For myself, it certainly isn’t anything I would subscribe to.

I would have said that not having my “ability-priviledge” in no way implies that an individual can’t have “happiness/fulfillment”. It is very interesting to me that people keep reading that kind of argument into text where I just don’t see it (back to your point on language perhaps).

Not being able to imagine an individual having a happy/fulfilling life could perhaps be the basis for an argument for abortion though.

As for The Nameless’s specific comment:

“this lot all have neurological problems which I suppose affect the way they perceive things”

I understand The Nameless’s frustration. We were trying REALLY hard and felt very frustrated by what felt like an unwillingness in some of the other posters to admit the possibility of other readings of texts on which we totally differed in our understanding. Some of the posters stated that they had neurological disorders which *could* have had some relationship to this.

Clearly it is a statement that tends to close down discussion. Equally, in my view, The Nameless and I had tried and felt like we’d failed to get anywhere. The people we’d been talking to hadn’t responded in days. At that point it looked like The Nameless was abandoning a discussion that had already stopped.

Equally, if I was one of the other posters to whome it was directed, I probably wouldn’t have welcomed the comment.

What part of this comes to as well, if I’m going sociological, is the power-construct. Nameless et al cannot imagine that people who do not have the ability-priviledge that they do can have happiness/fulfillment in their lives. Therefore, it is acceptable for them to be aborted for the simple reason that they do not fit the social construct of a ‘person’ (or a good person? A worthy person?). A social construct that’s negotiated here by individuals who state clearly that they can’t imagine being disabled, but feel that their power-status allows them to throw down dictats to those who have had similar/relevant experiences.

@Nameless, “this lot all have neurological problems which I suppose affect the way they perceive things”
Wow, I’d read that one in Joanna Russ’ ‘How To Supress Women’s Writing’, but I’d never had it used on me. Thank you for trying to undermine my perspective, but I’m damn sure it’s at least as valid as yours.

One of the problems seems to be that people reason whatever ‘worth’ you assign to a foetus you are also assigning to a child, or an adult.

I think this is wrong if only because by the time you have a child, let alone an adult the situation has changed. You love them specifically rather than the idea of them and have a history with them specifically that can’t be transferred to a theoretical superior child. In considering abandoning that history the cost benifit changes.

Another problem seems to be that people assume that whatever consequences one decides to apply to this assignment of ‘worth’ are necessarily desired as ends in themselves. Thus, people end up reasoning that if you would abort a disabled foetus then the abortion of disabled foetuses something that you find desirable.

This seems to me to be clearly nonsense. I might feel (rightly or wrongly) that I wouldn’t be able to cope with a child with a particular disability, but I certainly wouldn’t judge somebody who found they could cope and were able to enjoy such a child. If anything it might make me regret my decision.

If so, MedsVsTherapy, you’re in the wrong thread.

Isn’t this an arbitrary moral judgement made my society?

But here it is again: we “pick on the unborn” because they *are* unborn. Once they’re born they’re people.

It may astonish you to learn– in fact, judging from the responses I’ve seen on this thread, it WILL astonish you– that even those of us so supremely wicked and selfish as to prefer, should we have the option, *not* to have to spend the rest of our lives caring for a handicapped person do have occasional qualms about murdering our grandparents. Really. We do.

–Oh, I do like this:

“The disAbilities community is beginning to be alarmed about abortion for likely disabilites such as Downs because it basically is indicating that most of us are worthy of being born except those with certain disAbilites – so these advocates see themselves in these statistics.”

Oops! You forgot to write “disability” in CamelCase the secondTime! Now what will your disAbledFriends think of you? What’s become of your politicalCorrectness?

Seriously– I am sick and tired of hearing about people who are somehow afraid of being the victims of retroactive abortion. Enough.

MedsVsTherapy, I have been arguing for days with better trolls than you. Go away and take your fanatical opinions with you.

-By the way, I have a genetic defect myself and I do not feel threatened by abortion for Down’s Syndrome (or is it downsSyndrome). You and your friends do not speak for everyone, you just think you do.

–theNameLess.

Exactly. Here in the U.S., you generally are able to abort with no reason for justification. Yes, there are a handful of caveats, but generally, this is the case. Modest differences and twists on law occur because health is regulated by the states, not by fed govt.

So, if you want to abort you fetus because you have detected that it is female, not male, that is OK, and is a documented recent phenomenon in the U.S. (PMID 18378890). I don’t know whether this is the trend in the U.K. yet.

The disAbilities community is beginning to be alarmed about abortion for likely disabilites such as Downs because it basically is indicating that most of us are worthy of being born except those with certain disAbilites – so these advocates see themselves in these statistics.

The same-sex community is getting alarmed every time some new finding comes out that supports genetic basis for same-sex attraction, since the suspected likelihood is that people may abort a child on the likelihood that it will be same-sex attraction.

So, no, you don’t need to meet a certain justification to have an abortion in the U.S. You just need to cover the cost of the procedure.

Good point! There are many people out there who have no chromosomal abnormality, yet are a huge burden to everyone else. Can we kill them, also? At what point can we kill off our elders when they are no longer productive, and require lots of medical care simply to keep them gurgling along? It is such a hassle to make the occasional visits, change their diapers, etc.

Why do we pick on the unborn?

See you in another thread!