Has Iceland Eliminated Down Syndrome Through Abortion? | Hacker News Reader

Has Iceland Eliminated Down Syndrome Through Abortion?

snopes.com

15 pointsnocoder19 comments

I know when my wife and I found out we were having a baby. The first appointment we had with a doctor (in the U.S.) was a screening for literally anything we were at risk for.

We ended up telling some people we we're doing that and they freaked out (my parents included). We really don't understand why everyone doesn't get these tests. We're both Libertarians, but even agree the government should probably offer these tests free to reduce the burden on society (as the test we did cost around $250 - checking for downs).

More importantly though, we didn't understand why people freak out. The sociatial pressures not to get test(s) like this done are insane. Even one (of our several) doctors / nurses were trying to convince us from doing it... Sure I understand some people think abortion can be bad, but isn't bringing a troubled human being in the world just as bad (rhetorical question)?

> but isn't bringing a troubled human being in the world just as bad

I am a person with a congenital disorder, Spina Bifida, and it's usually recommended to do an abortion if such anomaly was discovered at the early stages of pregnancy. But I can tell you that I'm glad my parents chose the other way and I'm glad that I'm alive. Sure, life can be tough at times, but can anyone really say that life is easy?

So I agree that there's no easy answer to that question.

I'm not even sure it matters that you are libertarian. It is just common sense to me that you would test for something like this because even if you weren't thinking of abortion of a child has a disability the they will require different type of care from the minute they are born, and in some cases even earlier.

So basically the apparently at least partially nonsense CBS report says, of things that can actually be confirmed, "Iceland has less Down Syndrome babies born", and then tries to tie it to abortion, and THEN tries to insinuate abortion is morally wrong and then the Icelandic are bad people.

Wtf.

This reply is nonsense. The reason nearly no babies are born with down syndrome in Iceland is because their lives are ended before their born, the abortion rate is nearly 100%. That's directly related to abortion.

The fact that many find eugenics to be morally wrong isn't nonsense either.

It doesn't actually make the link between low Down Syndrome occurrences and "oh, they aborted them all." It does say that they do abort many of them.

What I'm trying to say is, it does not discount a more natural link of better healthcare and nutrition which may lead to less down syndrome pregnancies in the first place, and zero discussion is given to this.

Thats a very good point, although I believe downs syndrome is a genetic issue rather than healthcare and nutrition issue. However the point remains that if the incidence of downs is very low in the country, combined with an abortion rate that is e.g on average for a European country then a case could be made that abortion is not the driving factor for the low incidence of DS in the general population.

Do a lot of down syndrome children end up having children of their own?

Otherwise if down syndrome was spread by a single gene, it would have died out pretty naturally on its own, right?

(disclaimer) I admittedly don't know much about genetics.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. It's a legit question for someone who does not know, as I did not before looking it up.

From the mayoclinic:

Most of the time, Down syndrome isn't inherited. It's caused by a mistake in cell division during early development of the fetus.

Translocation Down syndrome can be passed from parent to child. However, only about 3 to 4 percent of children with Down syndrome have translocation and only some of them inherited it from one of their parents.

It's not a genetic disease

Down syndrome IS a genetic disorder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/down-syndrome/...

I think he/she was shooting for ‘inherited’ instead of genetic.

When I was a child, I remember to regularly see other children with disabilities. Recently, I figured that I see almost no children with real mental/physical disabilities any more. Then it dawned upon me that they are probably all "killed" before birth when the doctors detect their problem. Can't tell exactly what I feel from a moral standpoint.

Or perhaps you are no longer in an environment where you see them. Children with disabilities still exist but do you frequent places where children in general go? I see them often at theme/play parks, swimming pools and at my childrens school. I don't see disabled children at the club's, bars I frequent or in my workplace but I don't see non disabled children either.

Further we are better at catering for people with these disabilities and their families. Some of the soft play areas I took my children to when they were very young were often designed with autistic and disabled children primarily in mind and we saw many families who would use the facilities with both disabled and non disabled children, the only real difference was the age of the children, disabled children tended to use the facilities for longer than non disabled children e.g. by 4 or 5 years old my children were less interested in sensory rooms whereas disabled (especially the most severely disabled) children would use these rooms at 10 or 11 years of age (possibly longer).

The test mentioned in the article is also available in the UK and the option to terminate a pregnancy when is child has a significant health issue or disability is also there.

I am a father myself in Frankfurt, Germany, where we have one of the highest relative number of children compared to the rest of the (rather childless) country.

As someone else mentioned, we are also getting better at treating disabilities in children through better healthcare and parental nutrition. Cerebral Palsy, for example, can be congenital where something happens to the child in the womb or acquired through brain injury as a child, both of these can be prevented (or likelihood reduced significantly) with better medical care, there is also genetic predisposition which cannot be prevented (currently) by modern medicine. So it doesnt mean all children with cerebral palsy (and this is a very apparent/visual disability) are being aborted, it may mean we are better at preventing it occurring in the first place.

Spina bifada is prevented by ensuring that the mother has enough folic acid. I have an uncle with Spina Bifada (he is in his late 60's now) but it is so easily preventable in first world nations (folic acid is readily available as a supplement) that it is likely due to better healthcare and not abortion.

There are so many other changes in healthcare attitudes such as knowing that drinking alcohol/smoking while pregnant is not healthy and can impact on the unborn child that we take for granted, but 50 years ago they prescribed guinness to expectant mothers because of its supposed high iron content.

TO assume it is all down to aborting unhealthy children is to deny the advances that we have made with modern healthcare.

No doubt in my mind, future generations will look back at this time of modern day eugenics in horror.

Aborting a child is a decision for the parents, some abortions occur because the child has health issues sometimes because the parents are not in a position to raise the child. It is not about eugenics but about the choice of the parent/parents who will be responsible for the child. So no future generations will not look back in horror because we allowed people to decide whether they were ready to raise a child, future generations are likely to look back and think "thankfully they allowed this to be an option" because we are currently over-populating a planet with finite resources.

If I wanted to read Snopes, I'd hang out on /r/politics.

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