TIL calmly and rationally discusses the abortion of fetuses with Down's syndrome, "People with Down's don't have a lot to live for. Many are alive only because their parents want to feel good about having "saved" a life. The cold hard fact is that raising someone with Down's is detrimental to ALL." (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
546 ups - 0 downs = 546 votes
493 comments submitted at 15:16:04 on Jul 11, 2014 by AltonBrownsBalls
How nice, another pro-eugenics thread.
Seriously, do these people not realize they sound like borderline nazis?
The problem is that down-syndrome babies are already aborted, do you still call this eugenics? according to that thread, 90% of downsyndrome pregnancies in the UK are aborted. Are these people nazis? This isn't an issue that is black and white, like you suggest.
I think the eugenics comes in when people cross the line from "a lot of women do that, and that's okay, there's a pretty good case for it" to "there's no reason to carry a Down's-syndrome fetus to term." Essentially, instead of being pro-choice on the issue, they're being pro-death. And when someone supports systematically preventing a type of person from being born, that's eugenics by definition.
Were there really that many people in that thread advocating for forced abortion of down's syndrome fetuses? It seemed to me like it's mostly people saying they think people should abort them because reasons, not that they should be forced to.
It's not really eugenics if it's voluntary. It's on par with other animals abandoning weak and malformed offspring in the wild. They do it because it is adaptive to not waste time and resources on them.
It's not really eugenics, it's a natural, evolutionarily-ingrained reaction.
They were not. They were, however, saying it's a mistake to not abort a Down's fetus. They're not eugenicists in the fascist sense of the term, but they are arguing that all of society should engage in eugenics. The same thing that supporters of aborting mentally handicapped fetuses have always asked for -- respect for the mother's/parents' decision -- they are urging us to deny to people who don't make that choice.
It's one thing to say "if I were going to have a child with Down's, I would abort," or even to say "I think it makes sense for people to abort Down's fetuses." It's another thing entirely to say, as people do in that thread, that real living people with Downs who they know would have been better off if they were never born. In my book, that's not a call anyone gets to make for anyone else.
Well, I'd argue that aborting Down's Syndrome fetuses is still not eugenics since DS people almost never reproduce.
Eugenics is generally defined as "the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population." Aborting DS fetuses is not doing this because it's not being done with the intent of improving the gene pool since their existence will generally have no effect on it. People are aborting DS fetuses in order to avoid the personal and societal costs that come with them (along with a "they're better off not being born").
Perhaps the sentiment you're talking about comes from a resentment of the societal cost that usually comes with Down's Syndrome people. Unless parents are wealthy, they will use a non-insignificant amount of government assistance for that DS person. I have no problem paying for services for disabled people, but I can understand the resentment when the parent knowingly allows that burden to be placed on everyone else.
In America, the costs of a child with severe down syndrome can easily bankrupt an upper class family. A child with severe down syndrome needs round the clock care.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. My parents spent more sending me to college than they'll ever have to spend on my brother (who has a similar disability). That isn't to say that raising a child with Down's Syndrome or any developmental disability is a task to be taken lightly. But from reading some of these comments you'd think it was an endless train of misery. It'll be more headaches than your average kid -- but it's not gonna bankrupt you. Come on.
Your brother needs round-the-clock care?
That's why I wrote regarding a person with severe down syndrome. Yes it will in America given the medical costs. And it's not just until they turn 18, its for their whole life.
More Comments - Click Here
I have a cousin with Down's Syndrome (she's 38 now, and lives in a different state than her parents, has a full time job, and shares an apartment in an assisted living building with other women her own age), and friends in their thirties with a five year old daughter with Down's Syndrome. Neither family is bankrupt, and both are fairly solidly middle class.
Also, I'm not sure of your definition of round-the-clock care here. Does the five year old need supervision? Of course. She's five, and she does have developmental delays. But she's able to ride the bus with other children to her (subsidized, private) school, and she's able to entertain herself at home as much as any child (she loves to read, play on her tablet, and of course watch television). She has some behavioral issues, and her parents do need to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't get into trouble. But it's not like some 24/7 struggle. More like parenting, with a little extra caution.
Your cousin doesn't have severe down syndrome then.
I think you're on the wrong track here man. Consider why proponents of eugenics want to improve the genetic quality of the human population. Certainly one of this reasons is so there are no disabled people to care of, an economic concern.
Just because such an economic concern is also a motivation for eugenics doesn't mean that having such a concern is necessarily eugenics.
Meh. Semantics.
>they're being pro-death
Aren't they just stating that they support the choice of these women and expressing their approval? Does supporting the choice that a downs fetus was aborted, or taking the personal stance that they would abort a downs fetus make them "pro death"?
>And when someone supports systematically preventing a type of person from being born, that's eugenics by definition.
But there are plenty of other examples of people being born with extreme disabilities, things that doctors are not currently able to see. If we stop these babies from being born, would this be eugenics, if we made an initiative to find out about these disabilities before babies were born, would the initiative be "Eugenics" based? The argument I see made here is that having a downs baby would be too stressful and detrimental, so they would support the choice to abort the fetus.
Reading through the comments there seems to be a number of people saying that it's irresponsible/selfish to ever let a ds child be born.
Well it very well can be. Obviously there are severe degrees of Down's Syndrome, but Down's Syndrome isn't renowned for having people suffering from it become independent and successful. Having a child with severe Down's doesn't just effect you and the child, it effects everyone you're close to, it effects any healthy children you have already, or may have, it effects the systems that have to support the child, especially since they will most likely outlive you and be forced upon your other children, family, or an already overtaxed system.
When you find out your child will definitely have Down's Syndrome and decide to roll the dice that it will be mild enough that they can be independent, you are putting the independence and happiness of your entire immediate family at risk.
Not in the mood to re-dig through that comment section, but there were definitely people straight up saying all Down Syndrome babies should be aborted. A lot of people in that thread are just acting like it's a black and white decision when it's really not necessarily so clear cut. You can actually see the line that /u/QuelqueChoseRose mentions in their comment being crossed multiple times in different threads within that comment section. Pretty awful overall.
> but there were definitely people straight up saying all Down Syndrome babies should be aborted.
Just because the think they should be aborted doesn't say that they are for forced abortions.
>You can actually see the line that /u/QuelqueChoseRose[1] [-1] mentions in their comment being crossed multiple times in different threads within that comment section. Pretty awful overall.
I can't tell what you are trying to say here, quote exactly what you are referencing and give examples.
http://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/2aflfn/allaboardthedownssyndromehatetrain/
This thread had a few good examples. Like I said, I'm not going to go back through that thread to dig up evidence for you or anyone else. Enjoy.
Edit: oh also about your second point. Yeah that probably wasn't the clearest phrasing ever. Don't care enough to rephrase. Sorry.
>This thread had a few good examples. Like I said, I'm not going to go back through that thread to dig up evidence for you or anyone else. Enjoy.
You can't just pop this in and expect me to find what you found, so far every link there linked to a comment already linked here, and none of them say that there should be forced abortions, just that they are of the opinion that aborting those with downs syndrome is a good thing.
>oh also about your second point. Yeah that probably wasn't the clearest phrasing ever. Don't care enough to rephrase. Sorry.
If you don't care enough to articulate yourself, then no one should care enough to listen to what you are saying or take you seriously.
You're the only person that's asked me to elaborate. I am stating what I saw, and what I'm pretty sure everyone else saw, and quite frankly, I don't give a fuck if you don't get it. This is Reddit, your comprehension of the thread is not required of me. Also nobody in this comment tree is talking about forced abortions except for you; you just threw that in your own comment.
More Comments - Click Here
Is there anything inherently wrong with wanting a healthy child? This is a serious question, because as a future parent I'd much rather provide society with a highly functioning person than a down syndrome baby. Seems like a legit choice, and I don't understand why I'd get judged for aborting a problem and instead going for a strong, independent person.
> Is there anything inherently wrong with eugenics?
yes. because who decides who gets to stay alive and who gets killed? that's why most normal people stay the fuck away from the idea.
> because who decides who gets to stay alive and who gets killed?
The parents. They're the ones who get to spend 18+ years raising children, so I think it's fair to let them choose to abort children they don't want to raise.
Obviously Nazi-style government imposed eugenics (and murder of adults) is wrong. But letting parents selectively abort? Nothing wrong with that.
[deleted]
I'm having trouble believing that..
You mean they were sterilized as if they were cats just because they had sex?
[deleted]
More Comments - Click Here
Yes. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/california-female-prisoner-sterilization
As late as 2010, in California, we have proof that they were forcibly sterilizing women prisoners.
Not everything in life is black or white, unlike what a lot of people on here would like to believe. There can be some nuance to this discussion. But as someone who is pro-choice, I think that means couples have the choice to do what they think is best. Now, when someone starts talking about doing that choice for someone else, obviously that's a problem.
But that's not an inherent issue with the concept of eugenics itself. It's an issue with suggested implementations of the system.
> But that's not an inherent issue with the concept of eugenics itself. It's an issue with suggested implementations of the system.
no. eugenics is literally selection of who gets to survive or reproduce for the "improvement" of the human race. it is inherent in the idea that selective reproduction (or execution) will "improve" humanity and it requires that someone choose what kind of person is an "improvement" and who isn't.
if we are talking about eugenics, we are also talking about its implementation and who makes that choice. the two are inseparable. no one should ever be making that choice. eugenics bad.
If you don't want to raise a child with a certain disability, that is your choice, and nobody else's. From my understanding, eugenics is referring to a societal expectation for certain types of people to be weeded out of the genepool. If you made the choice to abort a baby with Down's Syndrome because you don't think you'd be able to care for the child, that's your choice. If you tell everybody that Down's Syndrome babies should be aborted regardless of circumstance (this is happening a lot in the TIL comment section), that's eugenics.
Fair enough. Thanks for the explanation, and agreed that case eugenics is not cool if it implies telling others how to live.
I was in the TIL thread, and I wondered if it would be in SRD so I came back here and lo and behold here it is (disclaimer: no popcorn pissing happened, I commented but had no idea this was on SRD when I was over there).
Nobody is calling abortion eugenics, but they're certainly sliding into an uncomfortable gray area full of all kinds of confusing out of context analogies / polemia vaguely implying euthenasia.
It starts here, and let's watch the escalation.
>Good.
Yeah, I mean, I don't have a problem with people choosing to abort a fetus that will grow into a person with a life of hardship.
>As a brother of someone who had down syndrome i completely agree. Total waste of life and he's completely drained my parents emotionally and financially.
Wait, so you wish your brother was never born? Is that just a pro abortion remark or are we escalating here?
>Holy shit, not expecteting that to be the popular opinion, but I tend to agree.
Wait wait what exactly are we agreeing with? I was cool with the abortion thing.
In a moment of self-awareness, redditors say:
>Have you forgotten who reddit's vocal demographic is? ... Libertarian, social-darwinistic narcissists?
OK, ok, so that's where the bold crown jewel of this thread enters the fray.
>You jest, but as someone working in the mental health field, I can tell you with certainty that a life of mental illness is no life at all. Imagine being trapped in a clumsy body, unable to articulate your feelings to those around you. Unable to even tell the person five feet next to you that you have to shit, and subsequently soiling yourself. Imagine waking up every morning having pissed the bed, because you were unable to get out of bed at night. At the end of the day, all these people have to do is waste away in front of a television or looking out a window, and that's no life at all.
At this point the replies start degrading into ones that are unclear about whether they're pro abortion, pro legally forced abortion (a type of eugenics), pro euthenasia (again, a type of eugenics) or what on earth else is going on, with apt and highly upvoted metaphors like "If I had a dog with cancer I'd play ball with him but put him down" and no further context provided, yet people's throats get jumped down when someone assumes there's a connection between that remark and euthanizing adults.
I feel there is a gray area, and the gray area is what in the hell is the subtext of what these people actually believe?
I'm going to go do something positive now like read other drama threads like that guy who trolled the guy with that fight.
> what in the hell is the subtext of what these people actually believe?
It seems pretty clear to me that the main gist there is that severely mentally handicapped people are a drain on families and society and if we can prevent that from happening, we should.
And what should we do to prevent that from happening? Because if you're going to say legal abortions I'm all for that but believe me, brother, that thread gets weird.
I admit I didn't get too deep into the thread.
Yes, legal abortions, forcing DS abortions will never fly.
It's a controversial area when someone knowingly and otherwise-preventably(?) places such a burden on society. When someone chooses to give birth to a DS baby, they know they're going to be using a significant amount of social services paid for by everyone else. I really don't see how they can blame people for being somewhat resentful of that decision.
I do not see these comments implying support for forced abortion. I highly doubt they would say that they would support it if asked, but I could be wrong. Regardless you appear to make the fallacy that since the comments slip into deeper and deeper morally ambiguous territory, that what ever you have designated that destination to be, is what they actually believe, as well as most who commented before them.
Do I make a fallacy? I'm actually saying I'm very confused about what the hell it is they're implying, because clarity and maturity aren't hallmarks of TIL. Let me confirm your "I doubt they'll admit that" with highly upvoted gems wherein they admit no such thing like this one (second disclaimer -- I replied to it -- before I found the SRD thread).
http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2aevur/tilthatover90ofpregnanciesintheunited/ciuix4u
>I can get my cancer-ridden dog to have one last hurrah with the ball and stick; doesn't mean he still doesn't need to be put down.
It amuses me that someone interprets that the only reasonable way they can (which is that the dog is analagous to the person and the cancer to down syndrome) and then they get shouted down with "That's not what we meant at all!!" True, they overreacted and were childish. The thread is just a bloodbath of ambiguity and stupidity.
>It amuses me that someone interprets that the only reasonable way they can
I'll admit that is an odd way of putting the argument, and could be interpreted in the way you think, but the other people clearly didn't interpret it the way you did.
>Well, no. He was stating that just because his dog would experience moments of happiness, that does not justify the pain and misery it would experience the rest of the time
http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2aevur/tilthatover90ofpregnanciesintheunited/ciujm5j
and granted, this post was pretty charged given the context of who the other user was replying to
>So we've gone from terminating pregnancies of fetuses with Downs to suggesting that people with mental disabilities be "put down" like "cancer-ridden dogs". Wow, you're pretty fucked up.
Also this is one post among many, one off weird comment doesn't justify your implication of the opinions of the commentors.
Eh, I got a little heated by the immediate analogies about "putting animals down" in a thread about human beings.
Good break down of the initial shitstorm you see when you go there.
I feel like I'd normally side with their point of view but the way they project themselves is pretty ridiculous. It made me rethink my own opinion of the matter.
Presumably the majority of those abortions are a personal choice.
The parents debated whether they thought they were capable of raising a child with down's and decided they were not. Of course there are going to be some who do it for less noble reasons, embarrassment at having a "broken" kid, etc, but they're not being done because the parents think people with down's are a detriment to the species.
The 90% rate isn't because of a human cleansing movement that aims to eliminate things like down's through abortion, it's just a dark reality that many parents don't want a special need child. Not because they think special needs kids should be wiped out for the greater good, but because they're selfish or feel incapable of raising a special needs kid.
Saying you don't want the kid however, is different than saying someone else was right to abort the kid because it would have brought down the quality of humanity.
so:
Personally don't want/think you don't have what it takes to raise a down's kid? Not a nazi.
Think it's great when people abort down's kids because they're "detrimental to ALL"? pretty close to nazi.
> The 90% rate isn't because of a human cleansing movement that aims to eliminate things like down's through abortion, it's just a dark reality that many parents don't want a special need child.
Why is this a dark reality? What is so dark about aborting to avoid hardship that you cannot handle? Wouldn't it be more dark if people had to have these children because society views it as evil otherwise? That these parents would be living with children they don't want?
>Think it's great when people abort down's kids because they're "detrimental to ALL"? pretty close to nazi.
But no one is saying they support forced abortions, they are just noting how life for one with Downs appears to be bad for the child and every one around them. Are you saying supporting a parents choice based on these premises is "nazi" because they feel that they've made the right decision for their own lives?
Making the a statement
>The individual suffers. The parents suffer emotionally, physically, mentally and financially. Society has just another mouth to feed with welfare.
Does not appear to be a "Nazi" statement, on the contrary the truly morally wrong parts ("Society has just another mouth ...") of this appear to be more libertarian and capitalist based, but even then those parts are just fluff to the statement, not the core argument. They aren't talking about making the human race pure, they are talking about the strain these people put on everyone and themselves.
I don't know what kind of argument I expect to support the decision that sounds reasonable, but the way every redditor in that thread discusses it just disgusts me
No no, doing it is a woman's choice, and therefore perfectly acceptable. Saying that it was a GOOD choice makes you a pro eugenics nazi... I think
What? Surely everyone who does it thinks it's the good choice.
A lot of pro eugenics nazis in the UK then?
If you think it's objectively good (and not just bad for the child, you or your family), then you're a pro-eugenic Nazi. If you're a mother that wants to abort their Down Syndrome baby because they think it would be a waste of society's resources, then I guess you would be a pro-eugenics Nazi.
You'd be pro-eugenics, but not necessarily a Nazi.
I think you should roll it back a little and stop assuming people who think differently are all ill-intentioned fascists. It's not that big of a jump to go from 'my child will suffer if it is born' to 'the children of my child will suffer if they are born' or 'the child of this third party will suffer if it is born'. That's hardly on the same level as raving about how all the Jews need to die because they're inherently inferior now is it?
Naive pro-eugenics people/teenagers are boring. Especially the "don't call Godwin's Law, please ignore how very close we are to actually being Nazis" types. Yawn.
I feel like you're doing that thing where you dismiss something else in order to feel superior just for having dismissed it.
There's nothing "naive" about considering whether you should abort a child with a debilitating illness. At most you disagree with it.
I'm sorry that these decisions don't enthral you. Entertainment clearly being their primary purpose.
It's not that we've dismissed it without even considering it, and only you are enlightened enough to rise above the emotional sheeple and their kneejerk reaction. Yes, I have thought about this; I'm dismissing you, not your naive ideas. It's been done before, and like I said, it's boring.
>There's nothing "naive" about considering whether you should abort a child with a debilitating illness. At most you disagree with it.
Read my original post. You'll find that not too many are opposed to liberal eugenics -- basically everyone here is pro-choice, and I don't think many are opposed to parents having accurate information about their child's genetics. The problem is when you cheer on these individual choices on the grounds that they're beneficial for society, which was my point to begin with.
More Comments - Click Here
unless nazis are genetically predisposed to have babies with downs syndrome, I guess 90% of the uk are just nazis. Good to know.
Only half of them can get pregnant and make this decision, so we should revise that down to at least 45% being Nazis.
Come on now, eugenics was popular way before the Nazis. If anything, the Nazis made eugenics less popular.
The Nazis are the reason eugenics is such a taboo topic today. "The Nazis did it, therefore evil." Fun fact, eugenics was the core concept of Planned Parenthood when it was originally founded.
Reductio ad Hitlerum!
Not defending eugenics or anything, but just saying "the nazis did that thing" doesn't mean the thing is bad. The Nazis did lots of things.
>We don't think mass murder is bad because Hitler, Stalin, or other bad people did them. We think those people are bad because they committed mass murder. A thing being bad stands on its own as bad. It would be like...
>Bob: I want to commit genocide.
>Alice: The Nazis committed genocide.
>Bob: Really? What was I thinking? I can't believe I was going to do something the Nazis did.
^Source
(inb4 godwin's law bot)
He's banned from here IIRC, well not banned but the mods have to manually approve the bots posts like they do with meta bots.
Gotcha.
They only sound that way to dumb people who don't understand affirming the consequent.
Nazi implies eugenicist, eugenicist doesn't therefore imply Nazi.
Calling someone a bad word doesn't win you the argument, you know.
>Calling someone a bad word doesn't win you the argument, you know.
.
>They only sound that way to dumb people
I never said you couldn't call names, just that name calling doesn't win arguments.
I supported what I said. People who cry nazi! like that one word encapsulates their entire argument usually don't bother with further explanation.
Eugenecist is already a bad word. You don't need to falsely equate it with Naziism.
Not convinced, especially if aborting a down's syndrome foetus is considered eugenics here.
I'm not sure it is either. But there ARE people in that thread openly saying they support eugenics.
Eugenics is a very wide umbrella. There's a stigma attached to the term where people think of Nazism and racism (as you can see here), but there are more benign forms like selective termination of foetuses with debilitating illnesses.
I agree that there are some very grey areas. I would argue that an individual's choice to selectively terminate is not eugenics. When that individual choice is extrapolated to a group, and turned into an argument for society as a whole, that's when t becomes eugenics. So saying that a mother can choose to selectively abort is ok, but saying that ALL mothers SHOULD choose to sectively abort, that's dangerous waters.
Godwin strikes again!
I remember once arguing with someone on reddit about how prohibiting certain people from having children was wrong and I got downvoted like crazy. What is the matter with these people?
its ok because hitler did nothing wrong obviously
actually, I posted and read a lot of that thread today when it was at about 1k upvotes total, and the shitfest began when it was linked to SRS and other subreddits. The Good People Brigade rushed in, and upvoted/discussed only on the most controversial posts: two posts on hundreds are of shitty people who said "good" and "a waste of life", while all the others are people who think they'll keep a DS baby and they explain why, while others think they won't keep a DS baby and explain why.
The thread's tones where a lot more peaceful before the links.
Considering that half of them are nazi apologist I don't think they care. If I see another TIL nazis were not that bad thread I won't do shit because it pops up routinely around here.
No shit, if you go towards the bottom of that strain, there is someone who writes a paragraph about all of the good shit the Nazis did, then follows up about the US eugenics program.
The Nazis wanted to exterminate the non-Aryan population because they thought of them as inferior. These people want to abort babies that most likely will live an unhappy life and be a burden on everyone involved, to put it bluntly. There's a difference between what the Nazis did and what these people want to do.
EDIT: Sorry, Aryan, not Anglo-Saxon
I'm pretty sure they spent more than a few years trying to bomb the Anglo-Saxon population into smithereens.
Anglo-Saxon =/= Aryan. Anglo-Saxons are the Germanic tribes who colonized Britain from the 5th Century.
Yeah I have a feeling the Nazis didn't have a good grasp of ethnicity, since Aryan is what Indian Hindus and Eastern Iranians have called themselves for thousands of years. Iran literally means "Land of the Aryans."
Not trying to defend the Nazis, but the word "Aryan" was used to refer to Indo-Europeans by academics before it was co-opted by racists.
Source: http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowedinframe=0&search=aryan&searchmode=none
Yeah I know. It's reasonable because Indo-European culture and language seem to have originated in India and Eastern Iran.
Actually they didn't. Most modern historical linguists think that Proto-Indo-European speakers lived on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, in modern-day Russia and Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis
You might be thinking of the Indo-Aryan languages, a branch of Indo-European:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_languages
No, this is simply not true. They wanted to create a nation exclusively for the Germanic people. Look up lebensraum.
Wait, you're saying the blitz didn't happen?!
I have to hand it to you, most people who flagrantly deny the actions of the Nazis in the face of overwhelming historic evidence go for Holocaust denial, well done for being hilariously wrong in an original way.
Don't start putting words in my mouth, asshole. I know full well what the Nazis did, including the blitz on the UK. I was only commenting on their ultimate goal.