Should people with down syndrome be allowed to reproduce?

Suppose a couple is on public assistance and has help from parents just to survive, but they want to have their own kids to prove they are like everyone else and better off having been born and deserving of life.

There is a 33% chance their first born will also have down syndrome. Of course they will not abort.

Their firtility is low, but a drug can make it happen.

Should they be allowed to have kids? If so, how many? Should the tax payers support them? Should the grandparents have to help with that too, even if they objected to the pregnancy?


If someone objects, does that mean they are like Hitler, or that they feel the DS couple is better off dead? My progressive friends accused me of such when I said they need to be financial independed before they can have kids.


Discuss.

 

They said they value freedom and think I have a mental illness or social underdevelopment for having my view. I told them I think most Americans agree with me.

 

This is so simple. The diagnosis of a medical condition does not itself provide government a right to require invasive medical procedures absent a crime such as abortion or sterilization, nor can it dictate personal or intimate matters like birth control. . If an adult is not adjudicated as legally incompetent, and they have not committed a crime, they have an unfettered right to have sex, and bear kids. You can't get the law upheld constitutionally, even if you pass it. Whether you choose to take away their public assistance as a public policy matter is a different question.

You can't require a condom, or the 'pill' or that they abort simply based on a diagnosis.

 

No. They are not capable of raising a child. By definition, their IQ says they are legally incompetent by the measurement of adults.

Most individuals with Down syndrome have mild (IQ: 50–69) or moderate (IQ: 35–50) intellectual disability with some cases having severe (IQ: 20–35)

70 is the level of a 3rd grader. Can a 2nd grader or kindergardener raise a child correctly - or even at all? No.

They also should not be allowed to vote.

 

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in which the Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, "for the protection and health of the state" did not violate the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision was largely seen as an endorsement of negative eugenics—the attempt to improve the human race by eliminating "defectives" from the gene pool. The Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

 

The word 'expressly' has neon lights, that made me do some research. Virtually legal mind has viewed that is one of the worst decisions of the century, so lets see whether the pattern since 1927 has been towards throwing every developmentally disabled person under sterization knife to save a taxpayer dime as you are pushing, or to restrict much further the reach of Buck v Bell, and in what ways shall we?
https://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/supreme-court/1981/85-n-j-235-0.html

https://law.justia.com/cases/illinois/court-of-appeals-first-appellate-district/2008/1062263.html

https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/conservatorship-valerie-n-30745

What do ya know! Due process, equal protection claims and privacy/ intimacy rights undiscussed in 1927, have been getting some serious legal credence every single step of the way with this issue for over 50 years!

'Expressly overturned' just means appellate courts did not publicly rip the testicles off that decision but they have been neutering the damn thing just as efficiently.

 

It was the correct ruling. Your leftwing view that everyone should get anything they want for free - and someone else should pay for it - doesn't cut it with me.

The two cases you cited have no relevancy as in both cases the petitioners were requesting the court to create a non-existent law and both cases were against adults. In the case I cited, there was exact state laws involved. There were none in the two cases you cited.

Due process, equal protection and privacy/intimacy rights all could be protected, while at the same time having mandatory sterilization of those adjudicates as mentally incompetent due to organic and incurable brain defects to the degree the person could not safely raise a child to a degree of certainty.

Due process would simply be required full judicial procedures with appeals rights to make certain the true evaluation had been done and was a certainty as to accuracy. Equal protection simply means this standard would equally be applied to everyone. Nothing of such a law would prohibit sexuality or intimacy with others.

 

Write your law. I want to see how you write this statute in such a way that it does not does not invade a right of privacy, and satisfies due process> You had better do a good job defending an invasive surgical procedure resulting in lifelong sterilization against that privacy right, because has been held as fundamental, and that means that your statute will undergo strict scrutiny regardless of whether a suspect or quasi suspect class is involved ( avoiding that court assigned delineation in a post ADA era is going to be yet another feat) No appellate court in this land is going to allow a legislative body to rip people's ability to have children wholesale as minors without asking whether you are not by definition invading a fundamental right to privacy for the next 65 years. If I were you, I would not refer to "organic and incurable brain defects to the degree the person could not safely raise a child to a degree of certainty' because you will have a hell of a time proving what is or is not the right 'degree of certainty' throughout the natural lifespan of these people. You have no way to show a court that you can be certain that they can't raise a kid to any degree of certainty. You don't know what educational and support systems that Jane Doe will have, including a husband, relatives, friends and resources.

The reason there are no laws, is because every state legislature not only ripped forced sterilization laws up, many offered formal apologies for ever enacting them.

 

They should be allowed to reproduce by law. It's one of the most basic of human rights. That said, they should be counseled not to have kids, unless they are financially independent.

 

So you want to set up a system of laws that makes some people second class citizens.

 

How about:

In order to receive fertility drugs, the user must undergo genetic testing for a few diseases that have a high probability of being passes on and a very high probability the offspring will never be financially independent.

Also, any parent receiving extra tax payer aid must let the kid be tested. We can invent shots that sterilize. As for the parent, they must undergo said sterilization at tax payer expense as a condition of receiving continued aid.

 

I am not convinced that the tax savings is bigger then the damage it does to our cultural identity. Human actions promote a humane society. Barbaric or cruel promote barbaric and cruel societies. Now I am no liberal progressive and I am all for paying less taxes and lowering the number of those on welfare. But at the same time there are more important concerns at times. Also if something like this was instituted it sets a precedence that I am not sure we will want to spread. Because heart disease and diabetes are also genetic and cost us FAR more in taxes then DS kids having kids. But I am willing to be convinced. Can you address my concerns?

 

We are reading of the brutality of the left in advocating for Down Syndrome people to have children, noting Down Syndrome usually means the intelligence of below at 3rd grader and as low as below someone in kindergarten. Because Down Syndrome have a high chance of producing children who are also Down Syndrome, it means those children will as adults suddenly become homeless and be raped, robbed, assaulted and end up starving or freezing to death. Of course, until then everyone else has to pay for everything.

 

That's just a slogan, nothing else.

I suppose I should start a thread ranting about denying blind people drivers licenses and the brutality of making them "second class citizens."

 

What a bunch of crap. How do you counsel someone who has the IQ of a 3 year old?

 

why not. How would it be different from leftists reproducing who need me to support their condum fees?

 

A second class citizen is someone treated poorly despite producing plenty. Think of the African American slaves who did everyone's work but did not get to share in the rewards.

 

People with heart disease pay lots of taxes before dying, so they may reproduce. You don't have to be the fittest to reproduce. It just needs to be plausible your kids will carry their weight. If we already know they will only cost money, then you don't get to have kids, at least not after accepting tax payer handouts.

 

I would rather pay for their condoms than pay for their drug baby's mental health costs.

 

That is what you want but that is not necessarily what the next politician will say when you are gone. Whenever enacting a law think of the worst example of a law that can be enacted using the precedent you set. Because that is the law your children may have to live under. Is restricting people with DS from breeding worth opening that box?

 

Should a welfare queen in the inner city who has two or more kids from different baby daddies be allowed to have more children? If a stupid slut like that can have more kids on the public dime then why on earth would we stop the Down's couple especially if they are at least willing to try to raise the kid the right away instead of sitting their fat obese ass on the porch chugging wine coolers all day long.

 

Curious how no one (but myself) has even mentioned anything about the welfare of children that would be born to Down Syndrome parents. Rather just to debate whether severely mentally handicapped teenagers and adults with IQs as low at 20 (2 year old if that) should be allowed to have as many Down Syndrome and other babies they would have - with those on the low end not even having a clue how or why she keeping having babies and you wouldn't spend 1 minute raising those children.

 

I just did above although I used the example of why we allow loser sluts to have multiple children with different fathers who don't pay any child support but if anyone suggested forced sterilization of those people there would be an outcry. What exactly is the difference? Either way you have two mothers to incompetent to have children but its acceptable to prevent on of them from having children but not the other?

 

Because the "loser slut" is intelligent enough so her children do not starve or freeze to death as she is not literally mentally incompetent inherently to as low a level as a Down Syndrome parent. There also it the vastly less likelihood of her having children with horrific birth defects. It is a criminal offense in many states for a woman to harm a fetus by drugs. It should be everywhere and the punishment harsh - including locking her up to eliminate access to drugs.

 

What? Where?

WHAT!? Why would that happen???

Funny how in the Abortion Forum righties think it's TERRIBLE that women abort Down's babies....you seem to be for it...