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Originally Posted by abaya
I don't know... hence my reason for creating this thread. I am trying to figure it out for myself. My gut feeling is that it is unethical to breed out any subpopulation for the reason that they are "burdensome" and "undesirable"... because truly, where do you draw the line for that? Do you think that people with cleft palates are burdensome? etc.
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When I asked if eliminating Down's with a cure was wrong, I didn't expect anyone to respond with "I don't know." I don't see anything wrong with eliminating a disease from society, but that's problematic when you can't eliminate the disease without eliminating those people who are afflicted with it. Of course, eliminating Down's (or cleft palates, or anything else) through abortion leads to the issue of whether a fetus counts as a person, which I don't feel the need to get into, as it seems to be a separate (although related) issue. But it seems as though you are viewing the disease as a part of the person who carries it, rather than as a condition separate from the person.
I'd also like to point out that when a Down's fetus is aborted, there is often a healthy fetus created afterward that would not have existed. To some extent, refraining from eliminating people with Down's results in preventing those healthy people from being born. These "replacements" probably wouldn't have constituted a distinct community/group within society the way the Down's people would have, but that doesn't make denying their presence in society any less serious than eliminating those with Down's.