Livre d'Or

*deep breath* This is complicated. There are lots of different things going on here, and I think I wasn't clear which of them I was talking about. Also, it's an extremely emotive topic for me, so I may not handle it as dispassionately as I would like to.

I agree that there is a distinction between a foetus expected to be born disabled, and an actual disabled person. It's the same as the distinction between a healthy foetus and an able-bodied person, in fact. I also agree that it would be unreasonably judgemental to blame someone who felt they couldn't handle the task of parenting a disabled child. I strongly doubt I could do it, myself. I further agree that if someone genuinely wants to commit suicide for any reason, including disability, then it is not moral to try to compel them to live.

In my opinion, there is not a moral difference between aborting because of a disability, and aborting for any other reason. The specific thing I am arguing against is the type of pro choice argument which says it is cruel to bring a disabled child into the world, that it is for the child's sake to make it not exist at all rather than being disabled. I think it's important to be honest and say clearly that a choice to abort in that situation is for the sake of the parents, because they couldn't cope with that child. There's a difference between: this particular person doesn't want to go on living, having this particular disability; and making the generalization that life with such a disability isn't ever worth living for anyone. Of course the first case can't apply with an unborn child, and the second case is morally wrong and harmful to actual disabled people as well as to the potential one that would be killed.

As for curing disabilities, well. There are some disabled activists who feel that pre-birth cures are tantamount to genocide, because they would result in no disabled people ever being born. I personally wouldn't go that far but I do respect that argument. I think there's a philosophical difference between selective killing versus preventing people with a particular condition from being born by curing the condition.

I think I can best explain this in terms an idea I got from Ballastexistenz, a really strong writer on disability: People are not interchangeable. If the foetus is cured of whatever its defect is, that person still gets a shot at life. If that foetus is killed, the only outcome is that an altogether different person will be born instead. The flaw in this reasoning is just how much you regard an unborn child as a person at all. Since I regard a foetus as less than human in the sense that I do admit some circumstances where killing it is the least worst option, whereas that is definitely not the case for a person (other than if they want to die). So one could argue that foetuses are in fact interchangeable even though people aren't.

As for i don't think it's a particularly good idea to reproduce more disabilities, I think that's the point where I actually disagree. It's eugenics (I don't think that you can describe a philosophical position as "evoloutionary"). Disability is a social construct. It's a value judgement that some types of bodies are disabled and others are able bodied, it's a value judgement that the second category are better. This is a tricky line to maintain without getting into ridiculous PC bullshit, but I would prefer to err in this direction than in the direction of assuming disabled people are of lesser worth than others.