 very confused about the logic. To be honest, I find it a little sickening that I can even get my hands on a calculated cost per Down's Syndrome birth avoided because the screening and abortion is purported to be all about quality of life, health outcomes and informed choices. But as well as this, these calculations aren't real. Create new human beings and you create disabled people.
So you have a thousand foetuses. One or two of those foetuses will have Down's Syndrome, so you terminate them and save the taxpayer some money. Even if your women take their folic acid, at least another foetus will probably develop Spina Bifida, which if we accurately detect it, we can get shot of too.
Two or three children will be born with Cerebral Palsy. But by the time we know this, or about any congenital sensory impairment, it is too late. And the awful truth is that eighty percent of disabled people make it into the world free of impairment.
Perhaps a slightly smaller proportion in the UK - that's a UN statistic which includes a significant proportion of impairments caused by malnutrition. But it's still going to be most of us who refrained from stating our intention to have a car accident, catch an infectious disease or experience a psychological breakdown at the point of birth.
I suppose the point I am trying to make - perhaps pretty badly because I have been pushing through significant fatigue to make it - is that vaccination, improved hygiene, education, the reduction of poverty and safer living and working environments are all effective ways of reducing our number. It is a reasonable principle that where people can avoid illness, injury and impairment, it makes sense to do so.
However, I suggest that the prevention of impairment through antenatal elimination is both entirely ineffective and ethically misguided. It is far better to be disabled than to not to exist at all.
I've struggled quite a bit with this post. I should have given up but it kept churning round my head and wouldn't leave me alone. I do hope it made some sense.