Would you terminate a pregnancy if the pre-natal test was positive for DS?

[HillGoose]

no that's eugenics. If I was a woman and pregnant and didn't want the child because it had a disease, I would just kill myself. It's not okay to only kill the child for something it can't control but then for yourself to go on living.

If you're going to kill your child over something they can't control, you should kill yourself too.

[HillGoose]

Why don't all the "yes" votes move to Nazi Germany? I mean, they really believed in that kind of thing there!

[HillGoose]

all the 'yes' people should build an artificial island made of garbage in the ocean, name it Pen Island, move there, and found their own neo-fascist hellhole on it instead of pushing the notion that eugenics are okay on the rest of us.

[HillGoose]

all the yes people believe in Nazi eugenics and will be punished in hell for it.

[HillGoose]

No, Nazi eugenics was killing people already born with Down Syndrome. No one here has supported that.

This scenario is comparable to Iceland, not Nazi Germany.

Iceland is no better. It's still eugenics and God will see the people who kill those with disabilities burn in hell for it, rightfully.

[HillGoose]

Never (not a left-winger), and doing so should be a felony.

Assuming that this is a special rule and not just part of a wider abortion ban; how would this be implemented?  Say that a person decided to have an abortion independently of any Downs diagnosis which comes through after they've made the decision: would you criminalise them?  To do so would seem to be wrong in my eyes; and to me is a big reason why you can't start criminalising based on things like this.  It also would likely create a situation that is nasty for the child who's mother has made a decision that she doesn't want to look after the kid: and that either means that the kid has to go through a care system that's very hostile to children generally but especially children with special needs; or it'll grow up in a family environment that may well not be overly friendly - especially when you add in the fact that children with syndromes like Downs require lots of hard work to bring up correctly and many people, I'd include myself in this, aren't suitable for the job.  To not do so would also seem to be against the spirit of what you support as well though...  Plus it begs the question that if Downs gets this protected class: what other disabilities should be similarly protected? 

That's why I think that there's a very big difference on this issue between the personal question of whether you would do it and the legal question of whether or not it should be illegal.  I think that the former is a complex issue that none of us will know what we'd do until it happens to us - DC Al Fine brings up exactly the same point from a totally different perspective and its one that I think is very interesting - and the legal side of things which I think is slightly more clear cut in that when you start to ban people from having abortions for particular reasons you run the risk of criminalising people who've made the decision entirely separate of that diagnosis.  Its certainly not something that I'd seek to ban nor do I think that its possible to ban without adversely harming some women unfairly.

people who kill others based on a disability will burn in hell.

[HillGoose]

How is that any worse than aborting a baby based on some other more arbitrary reason?  (Ie not rape or danger to the mother)

How is a teenager aborting a baby with a disability worse than aborting a "normal" baby?

because it's eugenics.

eugenicists are scum and anyone who believes in any kind of eugenics will burn in hell.

[HillGoose]

if God doesn't put eugenicists in hell, then God is evil and needs to be overthrown.