Beeson & Singer/ prenatal diagnosis

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Wed Aug 8 16:15:26 PDT 2001


"My point is that the prejudices are transmitted, and condoned. There are pressures to have "perfect" babies and many many people will abort at the sign of a cleft foot. It does happen. So while we might like to think these things do not go on, for the people who have lived with disability all our lives, we know better than to live under such illusions." --Marta Russell

if that's not suggesting that because some may have "trivial" reasons then all people have trivial reasons, I don't know what is. many many people abort over a cleft foot? huh?

the point is to deal with the prejudices, etc., not to get rid of abortion b/c it might be used in ways we don't want. and i don't think we need to delimit people's ability to engage in third-tri abortions or take advantage of techniques designed to determine if a child has a life threatening disease. i had a baby who, along with one other baby, was born with some bizarre mysterious illness, a virus infection that no one could identify. we, the parents, were petrified and i was pretty sure, after about 5 days crazed from lack of sleep, i got a little freaked out and concluded from the fact that team after team of doctors were stumped and my kid wouldn't nurse that he was going to die. if i could have known if he'd have an illness which would mean death in the first year or toddlerhood, i'd really rather avoid that situation. i'd just rather not carry to term. it's not because i want a perfect child but because i don't want to go through the agony. and i suspect that's the way a lot of people feel.

call me a selfish, hopeless, heartless bitch.

and i say that even knowing that my kid lived, as did the other baby, and they're both happy and healthy. hell, when he finally started nursing he doubled his weight in a week. just call me jugs! :) my point: even knowing that there's a great deal of uncertainty in predicting thse matters, the experience is harrowing enough that i want the option and i sure don't want to delimit abortion rights for the minuscule number of superficial creeps out there who'd have an abortion because they don't want to deal with down syndrome or a cleft foot.

people abort for very real reasons that don't seem trivial to me. it's relative, i suppose. and i understand your concerns. this is a difficult issue, but, again, i don't think that people who choose to abort because their child might be severely disabled, has a very costly illness, etc are trivializing the issue. (not to mention that i hardly _ever_ hear people talk like that anyway).

i understand what you're saying when you talk about careless, thoughtless attitudes such as contained in the statement, "i don't care if it's a boy or girl, i just hope it's healthy". but see Yoshie on that.

i think we have to make a distinction between the beliefs people register on the radio program you mention and what they'd actually do.

the point of my story the other day was to bring you back in time, to when i was born, to a time when my mother's concerns were very real and serious to her. they dissipated after she announced that she was pregnant. they got by. but that doesn't make her concerns trivial. they were agonizing for her.

and, thirty years later, i think we've made some progress. fewer and fewer women have to deal with what she dealt with --the public judgment, etc.

kelley

At 01:12 PM 8/8/01 -0700, Marta Russell wrote:
>You are hopeless Kelly -
>Jim characterized my objections to selective abortion, which is
>eugenic abortion, as being trivial. Obviously I don't think that is trivial.
>Then you make a leap over to your same old line.
>You really just want to pick a fight over some non real thing you have
>concocted in your brain.
>
>If this is any indication of communication, the human race is doomed.


>Marta
>
>kelley wrote:
> >
> > this, of course, doesn't address the fact that marta thinks that many
> > abortions are performed for trivial reasons. i really don't see how you can
> > escape the fact that it's also the case the anti abortionists think the
> > same thing. this is absurd. going through a late term abortion, for
> > example, is excruciatingly painful and takes days. i really don't think
> > people go through this for trivial reasons and it's a slap in the face to
> > the people who do to suggest such an outrageous thing.
> >
> > it's truly absurd to suggest that anyone has abortions for trivial reasons.
> > futhermore, if i want to have one because my method of daily birth control
> > doesn't work, tough titties. abortion IS a form of birth control.
> >
> > >Gordon Fitch wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Jim Farmelant:
> > > > > ...
> > > > > And I remain puzzled how Marta can still regard
> > > > > herself to be pro-choice in regards to abortion,
> > > > > since she apparently thinks that many if not most
> > > > > abortions are done for trivial or otherwise morally
> > > > > and politically unacceptable reasons. And Nat Hentoff
> > > > > as I recall does call himself "pro-life" on the abortion
> > > > > issue.
> > > >
> > > > She probably distinguishes between the right or freedom to
> > > > do something, and the value of doing it. This seems to me
> > > > like an almost primordial intellectual move for non-
> > > > totalitarians, so I am puzzled at your puzzlement.
>
>--
>Marta Russell
>author, Los Angeles, CA
>http://disweb.org/
>Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract
>http://www.commoncouragepress.com/russell_ramps.html



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