Comment Post
(score: ) by topic of abortion from video comments on May 28, 2017
Re: Dear future mom ...
The video is clearly intended to evoke the topic of abortion, hence why it refers to future motherhood and to the fear many mothers experience when they receive a prenatal diagnosis. The reason why this video is inappropriate is because it is misleading and exclusionary. It asks the question 'what kind of life will my child have?' but then only gives one scenario. The assurances that it does give - e.g. that the future child will be able to live alone in an apartment, to work, to travel etc - only apply to some people with down syndrome. Many people with down syndrome (like one of my relatives whom I love very much) have profound intellectual and physical disabilities as a result of the extra chromosome and therefore need full-time care and face severe challenges with communication and daily life. To tell prospective parents that their child WILL grow be able to rent an apartment etc etc is pure fabrication. Based on my relative's experience, I wouldn't be able to assure parents that their child will grow up to talk, get dressed independently or cross the road safely alone, let alone travel or live alone.
Down Syndrome is a spectrum of many different experiences and abilities, and prospective parents need to be given full information, not just the best possible outcomes. This video erases the complexity of Down Syndrome as a chromosomal disorder - and it marginalises and ignores those people whose lives have been most severely impacted by their extra chromosome, by pretending they don't even exist. As always, anti-choice advocates are more focused on protecting non-sentient, non-feeling fetuses than they are actually standing up for people with disabilities. Like so many others (over 90% of women with intellectual disabilities, according to some statistics), my relative has been the victim of sexual assault in residential care. They have also been physically and financially abused. But few people are trying to improve the disability care sector or to help victims. THAT is brutal, and our whole society is complicit.
So go on, continue to try to make women feel guilty by falsely attributing interests and rights to fetuses, presumably motivated by some archaic religious belief. But given that fetuses have no awareness, sentience or any other morally relevant characteristics (especially at the stage pre-natal testing occurs) women shouldn't feel the slightest bit guilty for having any abortion(s), regardless of their reasons. All of us, however, should feel horribly guilty that our society routinely ignores people with severe intellectual disabilities and offers them sub-standard 'care' services where they are too often assaulted, abused, neglected and exploited.