I'm so fucking sick of twitter asshats thinking they get to decide whether people like me get to live or die (I'm not down but I'm Autistic, I dread the day autism can be detected in the womb)
A lot of people in the anti-abortion camp are criticizing this post. And I get it. I’m not countering them. But one thing I haven’t seen anyone say, at least not explicitly, is how little epistemic humility this guy, and people like him, have. And this complete lack of epistemic humility results in them playing God and making inapt comparison—comparisons they cannot possibly make because they cannot rightly evaluate the two alternatives.
This man and his wife were informed that their child would have a series of medical difficulties, both physical and mental. We know that about Down Syndrome. We know that by almost any metric this is a “harder” life than someone without any such condition. But these people turn around and say “and, thus, it would be better for the child if the child actually just died now.”
But they can’t know that. They can’t actually compare existence with Down Syndrome to non-existence/death, because they don’t know what the latter entails. In order to rightly and ably compare two things, you have to know enough about them. We don’t know enough about death to ably compare it to life—even life with difficulties. So one cannot truly and reasonably say “death is better than living with Down Syndrome.”
It would be like me asking “do you prefer to eat apples or smoogaboogaloogas?” Of course, you don’t know what a smoogaboogalooga is, so you would reply “uh, I don’t know what that is, so I can’t compare it to an apple.” That’s epistemic humility. This guy and his wife have none of that, because they decided that death (which they cannot understand and appreciate) is better than life.
But even now I’m being charitable. I’m assuming a lack of epistemic humility when in reality they weren’t deciding what was “best” for the child (death vs. life). They were deciding what was best for themselves. And they decided killing their child was best for themselves.
This week, my wife and I made the very difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy due to Trisomy 21.
The choice was not made lightly. We really appreciate all of the personal stories that you guys shared with us, especially the unconditional support we received from fans with no matter what we decided.
I know some of you may be very disappointed to hear this news. We are devastated. This has been extremely traumatic for both of us, especially Ashley.
She underwent the procedure earlier this week and is on the mend. Thankfully, everything went smoothly, but emotionally we are drained.
Trisomy 21, also known as Down Syndrome, is caused by an extra chromosome. It is caused by an error in cell division, like a glitch. The odds of a baby having it is 1 in 1000.
When I first confronted this news, I was shocked but optimistic. If they’re a little slow intellectually, then we’ll make it work. I signed on to be a parent, come what may…but I just didn’t fully understand what Down Syndrome entailed.
Once we made it public, it became clear that MOST people don’t know what Down Syndrome entails (and no, it’s not the same as Autism):
50% of babies with DS have heart defects. 75% will have hearing challenges. Over 50% will have vision problems. Impaired immune function, developmental disabilities, learning disabilities, delayed physical development, poor muscle tone, structural issues with face, decreased lifespan, etc…Sadly, the list is long, feel free to look it up…Down Syndome isn’t a “blessing”, it is objectively shitty from a health perspective.
I didn’t realize just how rough it is for the child, let alone the family…more often than not, they would be fully dependent on others for the rest of their life.
The miscarriage risk is also close to 50%, which made matters worse…they may never see the light of day and it puts Ashley further at risk.
We spoke with doctors, friends, family and genetic counselors and learned that up to 90% of women terminate their pregnancy after learning the baby has Trisomy 21.
This was WAY higher than I expected, I thought it would be lower given that I hear so many say they kept or would keep the baby. I believe that’s because most terminations happen privately, it feels shameful. A lot of judgment being cast.
You never think you’d be in this type of situation until it happens to you and then things change.
To all of my fans who have weighed in on this topic who have Autism, Down Syndrome or any other conditions…we appreciate you. You matter a lot and we’re glad you’re here. I commend you and your families for having the strength and courage to push forward.
As for us, we made a difficult decision that we believe in the long-run will be beneficial for our family. Thankfully, we had a choice.
It will take a little time to move on, but we are excited to try again in the future and hopefully have a better outcome.
Love you guys & thank you for understanding. ❤️
@ScotlandTheGr8@Neuroactive51 The same underlying logic can apply to different circumstances and the point is to demonstrate that punitive action to when someone does something evil is morally acceptable. You can't forgive someone who is unrepentant of his sin which @McJuggerNuggets clearly is.
@ScotlandTheGr8@Neuroactive51 "But whoso shall cause one of these little ones who believe in Me to fall, it were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
@o_sneedy And let's not forget the start of gamergate where it was found out that corporate journos were colluding to spin certain narratives about gamers or games.
The problem with Anti-woke is that they’re too extreme
They will label anything and everything as woke which causes people to dismiss them entirely, when there are in fact provable instances of political ideologies negatively effecting game development and storytelling.
Like when Blizzard made a diversity tool that gave numerical scores for things like ethnicity, skin color, disabilities, sexual orientation, etc. it was quite literally a tokenism calculator.
Problem is they cry wolf so often over everything that now people never believe them even when it’s provable. That’s why you’ll never see me use the word “woke” it’s lost all meaning.
Goth Girl Spit is now a real energy drink that you can actually buy thanks to Echelon
Real spit was only used for "testing purposes only" and the citrus-flavoured drink has already sold out