>ravi narayan wrote:
>
>> > "I have always supported a womans right to choose, but that gets harder
>> > and harder to do, the deeper one explores what is really happening. It
>> > is in my own enlightened self interest to reject what can potentially
>> > kill me."
>> > --Marta Russell
> > > http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/9811/1029.html
> >
> > i do not understand this. how is it meaningful to talk about self
>> interest before there is a self? once i am born and my self exists
>> it is clear to me that i am thankful for my existence. but if the
>> fetus (that turned out to be me) was aborted, then there seems no
>> meaning in talking about my happiness or regrets because there is
>> no "me" and there never will be.
>
>Well yes in the individual sense. But I am disabled -- so if society
>aborted disabled fetuses in toto as a class/group of fetuses, I would
>have been wiped out as a matter of due course. Is that clearer?
However, according to the social model of disability that you advocate, it is not biological qualities of fetuses but social relations that disable individuals (temporarily or permanently or progressively), so it follows that it is impossible to "wipe out" the disabled through selective abortion without also abolishing disabling social relations. Even the healthiest who can best approximate the ever-changing fantasy of "normality" cannot but become disabled if they live long enough, since our world doesn't make it easy for the elderly to thrive. Your fear that selective abortion may "wipe out" "disabled fetuses in toto as a class/group of fetuses" seems to return us -- against your professed intention -- to a biological model of disability, much as the fear of some gay men & lesbians that the discovery of "gay gene" may lead to selective abortion & genocide of "homosexual fetuses" betrays a biological model of sexuality, despite gains made by historical approaches to understanding sexuality.
There is, however, a possibility that the incidence of some -- though far from all -- categories of physical conditions may decrease through prenatal diagnosis & selective abortion. Must we fight against this possibility, motivated by your fear? If so, the same fear logically demands that we fight against medicine (curative as well as preventive), worker-safety regulations, consumer-safety regulations, better nutrition, democratic education, egalitarian socio-economic development, etc. also, since all of them are known to contribute to the decrease in many kinds & degrees of disability.
Yoshie