The Ohio State Senate just passed a bill that prohibits women from aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome. It will become law if Republican Governor John Kasich signs it—an astoundingly bad and probably unconstitutional law.
It criminalizes abortion if the physician has knowledge that the procedure is being sought due to a diagnosis of Down syndrome. Performing an abortion under such conditions would result in doctors losing their medical licenses in the state and being convicted of a fourth-degree felony charge. The mothers would not face criminal charges.
What? WHAT? Do I understand this correctly? It will still be legal to abort a completely normal and healthy fetus, but a gestating child with the abnormality that ensures a mental disability will be protected?
Based on this logic, why wouldn’t Ohio seek to similarly protect embryos with other defects, like spina bifida? Missing limbs? Conjoined twins? By all means, let’s pioneer reverse eugenics in the United States. That will turn out well.
Ohio is the third state to pass a law outlawing abortions due to fetal anomalies, Indiana (signed by Mile Pence!) and North Dakota doing it previously. The Indiana law was struck down by a U.S. District Judge in September; I can’t imagine why all three wouldn’t be doomed for the same reason: the right to abortion doesn’t only apply to mothers carrying normal fetuses.
What kind of defective minds devise such laws? Do they identify with the fetuses they are saving?
Kasich hasn’t hinted whether he was inclined to sign this incredibly unethical and demented bill into law, but when he was asked about a similar bill in the Ohio House, he had called it “appropriate.”
Oh-oh.
Ethics Alarms 
Americans will never give up their abortions.
Or their vigorous objection to them.
I need to check but I think public perception these days is actually shifting towards pro life.
Ben Shapiro makes an excellent secular argument against abortion which swayed me.
Hmmmmm, so it is ‘ethical’ to kill folks for being handicapped. I thought that sort of thing went out with Hitler.
I think the main thing Jack has a bee up his bonnet about is this
“What? WHAT? Do I understand this directly? It will still be legal to abort a completely normal and healthy fetus, but a gestating child with the abnormality that ensures a mental disability will be protected”
One of the worst things you can do imo is make your public policy inconsistent.
Really obtuse remark. It’s unethical to kill anyone. If it’s unethical to kill a handicapped kid, it’s equally unethical to kill a non-handicapped kid. Surely you can figure this out.
Allowing the reason someone wants to end the life of their child to determine whether its legal or not is bats. Does that ring a bell? You can’t abort your child if it will have health problems, but if it will be healthy and you just want it gone because you flipped a coin with your boy friend, cut away!
What they’re ATTEMPTING to do here is to prevent abortion from being used for eugenics; just as it’s illegal in a few states to have an abortion just because the fetus is a girl (although it’s still quite common anyway and not really enforceable.)
The problem with the bill is exactly what Jack outlined above. As long as abortion is legal, then there can be no legal argument against eugenics at all. Nearly all abortions are a form of eugenics favoring “wanted” children over “unwanted,” and as long as that is the case, the reason for the child being “unwanted” is not relevant. If a healthy baby can be hacked to pieces in the womb because she will interfere with the parents’ careers, then it becomes absurd to try to protect weaker or more vulnerable ones.
This leads to some very warped and awkward situations, such as the multiple cases of “wrongful birth” lawsuits, in which parents sued hospitals for failing to notice Downs’ Syndrome in time for them to kill their babies. The parents were required willing to literally announce, under oath, that they wished that their toddlers had never been born, and in some cases won millions of dollars.
The other point is: why isn’t the absurdity and hypocrisy of such a law in context obvious?
It’s “quite common” to have an abortion just because the fetus is a girl?
Evidence, please. I find this highly unlikely.
It doesn’t matter. It’s legal to have an abortion for any reason at all. Some reasons are better than others—almost all of them fail the balance test when compared to taking a human life in exchange.
Well, this is weird. By complete coincidence, we decided to watch a Netflix movie called “Red Christmas.” It’s Australian. The plot, as we gradually learned, is about a woman whose aborted Down Syndrome baby lives, and 20 years later shows up at the Christmas celebration of Christmas at his mother’s house, and starts kiliing everyone in the family with an axe and bear traps.
I’m not quite sure how it reflects on the Ohio bill…
Wait…now the mother’s OTHER Down Syndrome son, who she didn’t try to abort, has teamed up with his serial killing, vengeful brother in solidarity.
No, this DEFINITELY doesn’t do much for the bill…
Oops. Mom just shot that brother, thinking it was the crazy killer. I’m pretty sure that’s already illegal in Ohio…
Did you watch this movie by choice?
In the sense that we played it. I had no idea what it was about, or that it involved abortions and Down Syndrome killers. “Black Christmas” is my favorite classic slasher movie.
(The mother and her grown up aborted baby just killed each other.)
Couldn’t you just watchA Christmas Prince like normal people do?
It is fair to say, for better or worse, that I don’t do very much like normal people…
I knew there was a reason I liked you.
Did you ever get around to Wolf Hall? Seen Lost in Austen? Yuri!!! on Ice?
Only the first two!
Yuri!!! on Ice is the best anime about the life of elite level male figure skaters you’ll ever see.
Brava. That’s a hilarious way to put it.
Surrogacy, Necessary Post-Birth Surgery, Abortion, Custody:
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/dallas-county/surrogate-born-babys-very-life-at-center-of-legal-fight/501525191