My wife and I did an NIPT test for our daughter to test for Down. There was no question - my wife was all on board with abortion if it came back with a third chromosome. You know what, that's her choice and right for carrying the fetus. To force her to carry a fetus, who's condition itself has a 80% chance of miscarriage and wildly broad spectrum capabilities post-birth, to me is a form of slavery. Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, North Dakota, and Louisiana won't be on my list of states to live anytime soon, especially if we consider another kid.
While I don't think going to another state to get an abortion is all the hard for someone with resources, the lunacy bin will expand to all sorts of social constructs in those states.
I know someone whose sister, in her 70s, is still caring for her Down syndrome daughter who is in her 50s. Small child in an adult body. Adult diapers, temper tantrums, the whole bit. It truly has been lifelong servitude for this woman, the lifetime of her child.
It is interesting how attitudes change. When my mom was pregnant (she had health issues which may have contributed to this) her doctor and nurse implied that if there was something really wrong with me or my sister, we would just be fed sugar water and basically die in the hospital nursery. Because there was no abortion, and no testing for these things, and caring for a severely handicapped child would have killed her. When I was pregnant with DD, I had a whole phone conversation with the public health people about genetic risk - this was standard. And because I was older, I had the amniocentesis. They asked first if I would have an abortion if the results were bad, because they wouldn't waste the resources on someone who would keep the pregnancy anyway. There was no pressure to have the amnio and then to have an abortion if the results were bad, it was totally up to me. Same for DD, she had risk factors, no problem having an amnio, and the abortion was available if the results were bad. Luckily they weren't and Mango is fine.
To me this restrictive attitude harks back to the 50s, but I can't see a doctor and maternity nurse starving a severely handicapped baby these days, that ethic has gone. In my deep dark thoughts I wonder if it would come back if maternity wards started seeing a lot of really damaged babies?
And I also think of all the genetic diseases where there are tests. If a couple are both carriers for it, their odds are 1 in 4, every pregnancy, of having a baby with something really bad - sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs are 2 obvious examples. Before genetic testing a lot of couples chose not to have any children, because the odds were too high and the diseases were too bad.
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the lunacy bin will expand to all sorts of social constructs in those states." I would guess a lot of those constraints will be even more restrictive access to birth control, and both men and women being even more restricted in having the relevant tubes tied. Because the basic attitude seems to be that women are on earth to have babies, and men are on earth to impregnate them, and nothing can be allowed to interfere with that, even if those concerned don't want to.
If you haven't guessed yet, the whole things massively pisses me off. ;-(