An All New Low for Humanity

Disgusting. Ugh.

Why is it that the sociopaths of the world think disabled people come with great big targets on their T-shirts? That's just despicable. When people are vulnerable, they ought to be protected, not victimized. I hope whoever her foster parent is will be teaching her how to find help, and that there will be people who will care about her and listen to her when someone mistreats her. That is such an invaluable skill. It's sad that it's so important; but there you go...

I think they view people with disabilities like they view animals - as less than human and therefore alive for their own gain. It's disgusting.

Heh, well, some of us bite back. Not near as helpless as they might assume... You know how you don't mess with Grandma because she'll probably whack you over the head with her walker? Yeah. It's like that. Being disabled means you often face bigotry, and that can make you a pretty tough person, especially if you have got friends/family who like you the way you are and don't pity or belittle you.

You just wait and see--there are an awful lot of young disabled people who are sick and tired of being second-class citizens and aren't going to take it anymore. Things are going to get a lot better. I've talked to lots of the people in my disability group at school and that's pretty much a universal opinion. We want to be equals at work, at school, in the eyes of the law, and we want to defend each other... we want to pretty much stare the world down and go, "Yeah, so I'm disabled. Deal with it. Now get out of my way and let me live my life, my way."

This is the kind of thing that makes us mad enough to stick our necks out and try to change things. Kids like that twelve-year-old need protection and they're not getting it. That has to change.

At only 12 years old, I'm inclined to think that the abortion will have far fewer lasting effects - physically and emotionally - than carrying the baby to term. Not knowing the girl, though, it's really impossible to say with any degree of certainty.

It depends. I honestly don't know whether a twelve-year-old can safely carry a baby to term; that makes a big difference. I guess a doctor would have to examine her to figure out whether it's possible for her.

I know she's twelve; I know she's mentally disabled; but it seems to me that she should have had a say in it. It looks like her mom just fooled her into having the abortion--fooled her into thinking that this would help her have an easier delivery. That's the worst sort of betrayal. Not only did she force the girl to have an abortion, but she did it by tricking her into thinking that she was going to deliver the baby. I don't care if you want abortion to be legal or not--that's just plain despicable. That mom was taking away that girl's control of her own body, and taking away her ability to protect her own developing fetus.

That said, I think in this situation, like with most rape/incest cases, the solution is really an individual one. From my study of biology and ethics, it's my best guess that the fetus should be categorized as a human being; and that means that the rights of both the pregnant woman and her unborn child(ren) need to be taken into account. I often find it very irritating to see the pro-life side ignore the rights of the woman, and the pro-choice side ignore the rights of the fetus. There is no perfect solution, and we need to live with that and find ways to help everyone.

While I think it's wrong in most cases to have an abortion, I also think it would be a bad idea to make it illegal in the case of rape/incest. That is a very difficult situation for a woman to be in, and my first impulse is just to want to defend her and make it all better and not have it happen in the first place. If I were in that situation, I would have the baby. But I just can't bring myself to feel anything more than sympathy for the woman who finds herself pregnant due to rape and has an abortion.

That isn't the issue here, though. That abortion wasn't voluntary; it was forced through trickery. The girl is young, but she understood what it meant to have sex and understood what it meant to be pregnant. Her rights were utterly ignored, and that's wrong.