Yes, we need to be realistic.
There are few mentions of club feet as a problem, so compare that with the bombardment in the media in the USA, and people will be only too aware of how 'bad' autism is supposed to be.
there was a baseball pitcher in the states that pitched with a club foot,
jim mecir, he's in his late 30's and used to pitch with the oakland a's and florida marlins. just becuase you have a club foot does not mean doom for everyone. that's a shame that people are aborting children just becuase they aren't perfect. i guess we can say goodbye to autistics.
and reminds me of that teacher, who says autism is a defect, and they should be prevented :evil: . no wonder i didn't get along too much with her. but i surived.
edit: jim mecir is his name, here's the page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Mecir. he was born with two club feet.
This is another thing which makes me weep for humanity! :evil: How can this happen in a supposedly cilvilised society? It seems like the authorities are killing otherwise-healthy babies, simply because they don't want to spend the money on helping them.
If a club foot can easily be rectified, then there is no reason to abort these babies! In my view, it should only be done if the mother's life is at risk.
Jane Fisher, director of the charity Antenatal Results and Choices, defended the right of parents to terminate pregnancies when defects were found.
“This is not part of a move towards designer babies,” she said. “These are difficult and painful issues.”
Jane Fisher's views are sick. Where will all this end?
Any case of abortion past the mid-point of pregnancy is SICKENING and cruel in extreme and is generally illegal, for good reason. I'm not right-to-lifer, but this kind of thing makes me want to protest. 28 week old premmie babies have a very good chance of survival without lasting impairment if they are cared for in a special care nursery, rather than discarded. SCNs in hospitals are full of such treasured babies.
I think the reason why some parents decide they don't want a baby who has a minor birth defect is that they fear that the defect could be a sign of more profound "abnormality" in the baby, and on this point I've got to admit this can be true in many cases. I've also got to point out that most of my favourite people are "abnormal" or at least unusual. If people who have extra digits were all aborted I can think of one wonderful person (not an aspie) who I know who wouldn't exist.
One of our kids was born with minor birth defects requiring surgical correction. This is no minor inconvenience, surgery does have risks and social costs. But what would society have lost if we had aborted this child? It would have lost a very intelligent, loyal and funny child who has a gift of truly original creativity along with an ability to think logically and self-teach useful technical skills. A really special person would have been lost.