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An influencer couple announced that they aborted their pregnancy because the fetus had Down syndrome. This upset a lot of people including some fine congressmen.
However, it's actually very common. Screening for genetic disorders is generally performed between 10 and 20 weeks, giving plenty of time for a reasonably early choice. "As a result of these elective terminations in the U.S., there was a 37% reduction in the numbers of babies with Down syndrome born in 2018. This means that in recent years there were 37% fewer babies with Down syndrome than could have been born". In Iceland, almost all such diagnosed pregnancies are aborted after testing.
People with Down syndrome are clearly generally capable of living "happy" lives. They have the equivalent intelligence of an 8 to 9 year old. Most 8 to 9 year olds seem happy enough to me, and it would not be a horrible curse to live decades in such a condition. Perhaps we might ask if such a life is fulfilling, but a young child can't comprehend what that means; as well ask your dog if he's fulfilled by sniffing butts and digging holes.
For the caretakers of course, life may not be so rosy. Taking care of a small child indefinitely, knowing all of the joys and sorrows of adulthood that they will never experience, does not sound fulfilling, to say nothing of the physical and monetary toll. It's therefore unsurprising that most parents choose not to condemn themselves to such a future.
God in His infinite wisdom creates babies with far worse afflictions. Most people would agree that it is ethical, perhaps mandatory, to abort nonviable children who will live only hours in agonizing pain after birth. Down syndrome, as a patently survivable condition, lies on the edge of this boundary.
What frustrates me is not that women abort foetuses who will inevitably develop Down's syndrome. That's a defensible decision.
What frustrates me is that women will do this, then turn around and say that eugenics is Nazi ideology.
I think most people are not intelligent enough to and/or do not have the will to see how coherently their various opinions fit together into a larger picture, including second-order effects. The average person who supports people being able to abort Down's syndrome fetuses yet views eugenics as fundamentally wrong is a person who simply does not make the connection that those two things are related in any important way. It's not that they realize the two things are related but have a logical reason to support the abortion but not other kinds of eugenics. It's that they don't realize the two things are related to begin with.
Why do they not realize it? Because they are not in an information environment where they are regularly exposed to the idea that the two things are related. And, lacking the spark to figure it out on their own, they continue to not realize it.
There's an easy way to resolve this if one takes the term eugenics to carry an implicit meaning of an external authority or pressure on the parents.
Which given the definition of eugenics you can often find has something like this in it.
It does seem like a valid interpretation that it's an external force doing it for their Greater Cause as opposed to the parents own decision regarding what QOL they are willing to accept in raising a child.
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