The Student Room Group

Would you abort your 'child' ?

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Original post by Rachelj16x
No , I couldn't do it I'd feel guilty for the rest of my life even if I knew I had good reason


What did you mean exactly? good reasons for abort a child in general or in terms of downsyndrome?
You talk about "established medical experts", but if they are what you say that they are, then why do they change their minds so much? Let me give an illustration: Back when my older brother was born, all the "experts" were strongly advising pregnant women to have a cesarean - it was quicker, and the babies had beautiful, round heads at birth, rather than horrid, squished heads. Then, the research comes out that actually, those ugly-headed new-borns had brains which developed much better. So suddenly, these professionals were all changing their minds, and giving different advice. Another example: when a small handful of ppl preached the benefits of eating very healthy food (the benefits included having a better gut biome, not being subject to the many, many auto-immune diseases that have started cropping up everywhere due to poor diet, etc.,) all the "expert" nutritionists laughed at them. How could your diet mean you had a clearer mind? What was this rubbish about auto-immune diseases, anyway? Today, these same people are conducting research to find even more of these benefits which they had scorned before. So you see, "medical experts" change their minds. What they recommend is not necessarily the best thing.

As a footnote, my brother was predicted to have down syndrome, when my mum was pregnant with him. All the experts tried their best to persuade her to abort. She refused. And guess what: my brother is not one bit like a downs person! So that would have been one, precious life wasted, cut off in a cruelly early stage of life.
Original post by Treblebee
You talk about "established medical experts", but if they are what you say that they are, then why do they change their minds so much? Let me give an illustration: Back when my older brother was born, all the "experts" were strongly advising pregnant women to have a cesarean - it was quicker, and the babies had beautiful, round heads at birth, rather than horrid, squished heads. Then, the research comes out that actually, those ugly-headed new-borns had brains which developed much better. So suddenly, these professionals were all changing their minds, and giving different advice. Another example: when a small handful of ppl preached the benefits of eating very healthy food (the benefits included having a better gut biome, not being subject to the many, many auto-immune diseases that have started cropping up everywhere due to poor diet, etc.,) all the "expert" nutritionists laughed at them. How could your diet mean you had a clearer mind? What was this rubbish about auto-immune diseases, anyway? Today, these same people are conducting research to find even more of these benefits which they had scorned before. So you see, "medical experts" change their minds. What they recommend is not necessarily the best thing.

As a footnote, my brother was predicted to have down syndrome, when my mum was pregnant with him. All the experts tried their best to persuade her to abort. She refused. And guess what: my brother is not one bit like a downs person! So that would have been one, precious life wasted, cut off in a cruelly early stage of life.


You could argue the same for any branch of science; gravity is still technically a theory but (to quote Richard Dawkins here) I don't see you jumping out of any high rise buildings to test it out. What you call scientists 'changing their minds' is actually revising their theories to fit with any newly discovered evidence. The fine details and intricacies of evolution are hotly debated amongst the top dogs in the field and ideas of how exactly evolution happened change a lot and have changed a lot but you accept evolution as a fact don't you? This is how science works; it changes with the discovery of new evidence all the time. Without the scientific method we wouldn't have many many good things that we do have today as a result of science.

Your footnote is more of an argument pro-life than pro-choice than anything; whilst good science itself is mostly infallible and can be replicated; doctors are only human and practicing medical professionals (not talking about researchers here) do make mistakes sometimes.
My point was not that the scientists weren't as "expert" as they get; rather, that you can't just swallow anything they say. Maybe, just maybe, you know better...

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