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abortion& disabled people

Actually plenty of activists would argue that genetic testing on fetuses constitutes targeting the disabled for elimination.

I have a hearing loss and a doctor once told me that I could get genetically tested to isolate the hearing loss gene and then do in vitro conception in order to select the "best" embryos.

There's also a really long and disturbing history of genetic engineering in the US that encouraged reproduction of "fit" (white, healthy, Christian etc)families and forcibly sterilized the undesirable (black, disabled, immigrants, native people etc).

And finally I add the obvious that the categories of "Black" and "disabled" are not mutually exclusive and we shouldn't talk about them as if they are.

As a side note, I think the question of whether to abort fetuses with Down Syndrome and other potentially serious genetic problems is an extremely difficult and painful one, and rather than obsess over decisions of the parents who are facing this horrible choice we should be fighting for better services for people with disabilities. I say this as someone with a mentally retarded sibling. Believe me, I understand better than I want to what's at stake here.

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