View Poll Results: Will you opt to give birth to a "defective" child?

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  • Yes.

    5 41.67%
  • No.

    5 41.67%
  • Others (Please state)

    2 16.67%
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Thread: To give birth, or not?

  1. #21
    Senior Member Lucre's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Guo Xiang View Post
    If he's born liao then too bad for me. I guess I'd be stuck with him.
    same with me, in my case, if the kid is already conceived....stuck with me too lor.
    o wilku mowa...♪

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  2. #22
    Senior Member remember_Cedric's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trien Chieu View Post
    Agree. It's hard enough to raise a healthy child. If I were the defective child, I would rather my parent aborted me than live a life full of sickness.
    What if your parents are the loving sort whom love you so much that they're willing to not only want you to survive like any normal child, and also raise you to overcome the challenges and trials, which in the end you may feel proud of yourself because of the so-called extraordinary achievement?

    We do have live examples of such success stories, don't we?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ren Ying Ying View Post
    It would depend on how severe the defection is...

    On a side note, what if there was only a 70% chance that the child will have life impairing defect but the chances of you having another child is extremely low. Would you have the child? Does changing the percentage of possible defect affect your decision? And if so, where would you draw the line?
    I think I would prefer to let the kid live (I agree to what KeongJai mentioned). It's quite painful even to think of removing a child before he/she come to understand anything. It's very sad.

    Quote Originally Posted by ByTmE View Post
    I asked The Queen of My Heart this question, and she replied that she would still choose life for her child [possibly she's thinkin' me] even with the knowledge of potential serious disability. Hm, this is coming from a woman who has actually lost a child once and now has three surviving children.

    You know, I've never had a child, so I can't fully understand the unconditional love that most parents have for their children. I think many of us are the same on this board. My parents are friends with a couple who has just one biological son; he's 25 like me but is mentally about 7 yrs old. He's endearing. The couple was married for a LONG time until the wife could get pregnant. They have another adopted son whose a couple of years older than me, both men were raised with much love and adoration from the parents.

    In some cultures, some people believe that if your child is disabled in some way, then the son/daughter is an example of some great sin the parents [usually wife] has committed. Raising that child should be your act of repentance. ::shrugs:: The family is thus shamed. Conversely, some believe the disabled child could be a gift given from God to teach them a lesson of unconditional love.
    I never know about this but now that I read it, I like it.

    I'd like to think that I am capable of the above. That is, learning to love a child who is less than perfect. However, it's hard to say for sure when one is young, single, and unburdened. I can though be positive that I would not mind having a disabled parent because as a child I have only one mother and one father. Wouldn't replace them even if I could.
    It's very sad and selfish of parents-to-be making decisions of removing the child when all they think about is the trouble they (the parents) will go through. They ain't even prepared to be parents to begin with, IMO.

    There's also some sort of saying which mentioned "The more one is afraid of trouble/problems, the more problems approach them.".
    Last edited by remember_Cedric; 04-29-10 at 01:34 AM.
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  3. #23
    Moderator kidd's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by remember_Cedric View Post
    It's very sad and selfish of parents-to-be making decisions of removing the child when all they think about is the trouble they (the parents) will go through. They ain't even prepared to be parents to begin with, IMO.
    Not all parents who choose to abort only thought of their own convenience. If the child turn out to be totally unable to support himself/herself, what is he/she going to do when the parents left this world? Some parents just don't want their kid to come out into this world suffering.
    什麼是朋友?朋友永遠是在你犯下不可原諒錯誤的時候,仍舊站在你那邊的笨蛋。~ 王亞瑟

    和諧唔係一百個人講同一番話,係一百個人有一百句唔同嘅說話,而又互相尊重 ~ - 葉梓恩

  4. #24
    Senior Member remember_Cedric's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kidd View Post
    Not all parents who choose to abort only thought of their own convenience. If the child turn out to be totally unable to support himself/herself, what is he/she going to do when the parents left this world? Some parents just don't want their kid to come out into this world suffering.
    Yes, certainly I can understand that (I can see that POV from Jaded's post). I meant to say, I disapprove the act of aborting the child when the parent-to-be's concern is about their own conveniences instead of concern for the child's growth.
    What can I say? I'm still standing! No weapon against me shall prosper! I am more than a conqueror!!!

    I don't care to sit by the window on an airplane. If I can't control it, why look?

  5. #25
    Senior Member Guo Xiang's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by remember_Cedric View Post
    Yes, certainly I can understand that (I can see that POV from Jaded's post). I meant to say, I disapprove the act of aborting the child when the parent-to-be's concern is about their own conveniences instead of concern for the child's growth.
    The parents are very important too. If they give birth to the child and keep it just so to be concerned of the child, but not for themselves when that's actually of more importance to them, it can lead to frustration and... abuse.

    Why force yourself to do something you don't want to, simply because it's less "selfish"? Can the child be considered selfish for wanting to be born to "inconvenience" (for a lack of better description) the parents? Because when this child is born, it doesn't only concern the child itself, the parents are within the scope.
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  6. #26
    Senior Member xJadedx's Avatar
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    For me, the main factor is the child later quality of life. If I know with certainty that my child will not have a decent quality of life, then I would choose not to bring him/her into this world (i.e., diseases like Tay-Sachs, or other diseases in which the child just plain suffers from the moment he/she is born). It's pointless and cruel to make your child suffer needlessly when you know for certain that they will.

    Now, with that said, there are certain conditions where such thing is unclear. The main one is autism and mental retardation. It is very difficult to say what the child's life will be later on, simply because depending on the degrees of these conditions, the child could have a close to normal or sub-par life. In this case, I would be hesitant to abort the child, simply because he/she may still have a decent chance at having a good life. As a parent, I'd try to do my best to provide the scaffolding for my child to make the best of their conditions.

    Another thing to consider is that, aborting your child because of these reasons may lead to a very slippery slope. It can be argued that because a child with severe autism will not have a decent quality of life, thus making is sensible to abort that child. But the same can be argued for so many things - i.e., susceptibility to depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, etc. Another thing is, you could have a perfectly normal child who will grow up and still feel miserable for whatever reason. It'd be very hard to draw the line.
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  7. #27
    Senior Member KeongJai's Avatar
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    If my first was disabled, I'd have another child at least - hopefully I wouldn't be so unlucky to have multiple disabled children.
    And teach them to look after each other. That solves the problem of what happens when I'm gone.

    I know I'm understating the effort required, but I'm pretty sure I can make the sacrifices required. There's heaps of people dealing with worse in the world e.g. Most of Africa, and I'd like to think I'd be able to survive in that situation too.

  8. #28
    Senior Member Guo Xiang's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by xJadedx View Post
    For me, the main factor is the child later quality of life. If I know with certainty that my child will not have a decent quality of life, then I would choose not to bring him/her into this world (i.e., diseases like Tay-Sachs, or other diseases in which the child just plain suffers from the moment he/she is born). It's pointless and cruel to make your child suffer needlessly when you know for certain that they will.

    Now, with that said, there are certain conditions where such thing is unclear. The main one is autism and mental retardation. It is very difficult to say what the child's life will be later on, simply because depending on the degrees of these conditions, the child could have a close to normal or sub-par life. In this case, I would be hesitant to abort the child, simply because he/she may still have a decent chance at having a good life. As a parent, I'd try to do my best to provide the scaffolding for my child to make the best of their conditions.

    Another thing to consider is that, aborting your child because of these reasons may lead to a very slippery slope. It can be argued that because a child with severe autism will not have a decent quality of life, thus making is sensible to abort that child. But the same can be argued for so many things - i.e., susceptibility to depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, etc. Another thing is, you could have a perfectly normal child who will grow up and still feel miserable for whatever reason. It'd be very hard to draw the line.
    Yes, for autism it'd depend on the severity, that I agree with.
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  9. #29
    Senior Member remember_Cedric's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Guo Xiang View Post
    The parents are very important too. If they give birth to the child and keep it just so to be concerned of the child, but not for themselves when that's actually of more importance to them, it can lead to frustration and... abuse.

    Why force yourself to do something you don't want to, simply because it's less "selfish"? Can the child be considered selfish for wanting to be born to "inconvenience" (for a lack of better description) the parents? Because when this child is born, it doesn't only concern the child itself, the parents are within the scope.
    Well, if the parents "discard" the children because they are afraid of having the child being their burden, I'll pity the child who is gifted to such parents.

    I think the concept of raising a child should be better received by a parent before it could be determined as "force yourself to do something you don't want to". If the child is just something (that sound like a chore) afterall, that's very sad. Of course, I don't meant to expect the parents to be any sort of saint but at least make humane (and sensible) decision because that is a child, a life, a human who is about to come to this world yet his/her entrance got denied because of a reason called "inconvenience". And, what if I say, such mutation is the parents' fault?

    I know a mother who is/was a construction worker whom the son is as old as me. The son is mentally very dim. If you show him how to do something, he may know or he may not know how to do it after a while. You need great patience to teach him to do something. If he is unlucky enough to run into baddies and get beat up, he'll only curl in a corner and yell helplessly despite he is physically strong enough to fight back. He can't and don't know how to defend himself. His mother is all he has. But I think now, he is leading (and managed to) a very simple life, not sure about defending himself though. Still, he sticks around with his mom like a shadow. He only join a special school after he graduated from elementary.

    There's also another one - a girl who is a down syndrome victim who had a mother (the hardworker sort too) whom came a long way to help her lead an ordinary human life. But I'll save that longstory. My point is, these life examples tell about what parents love is about and it also tell that, a defective child doesn't mean they deserve to save a human space by departing from this world before they officially arrive.

    BTW, who wouldn't expect that sometimes a defective is because of the parents? The parents could do a math of probability with genetic testing. Try a pedigree tree and sort out the possibilities of a defective child.

    Quote Originally Posted by KeongJai View Post
    If my first was disabled, I'd have another child at least - hopefully I wouldn't be so unlucky to have multiple disabled children.

    And teach them to look after each other. That solves the problem of what happens when I'm gone.

    I know I'm understating the effort required, but I'm pretty sure I can make the sacrifices required. There's heaps of people dealing with worse in the world e.g. Most of Africa, and I'd like to think I'd be able to survive in that situation too.
    I think there's a chance to know if the child will be defective through genetic testing?
    Last edited by remember_Cedric; 04-29-10 at 05:21 AM.
    What can I say? I'm still standing! No weapon against me shall prosper! I am more than a conqueror!!!

    I don't care to sit by the window on an airplane. If I can't control it, why look?

  10. #30
    Senior Member KeongJai's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by remember_Cedric View Post
    I think there's a chance to know if the child will be defective through genetic testing?
    Yeah I know. Isn't that the basis of this topic? Point was, if the first one was disabled, I'd have more than one child anyway and that shoots the "what happens when the parents pass?" argument.

  11. #31
    Senior Member Lucre's Avatar
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    this reminded me of a story featured in the news sometime back. i dont quite remember where or when, but it goes like this.

    when a pious woman learned that her grandchild was most probably gonna be born defective, she prayed very hard for her, do penance until the child was born, and the child survived. after the child was born, they again diagnosed of complications that might develop in the baby...so the grandmother prayed very hard again, and the child actually grew up healthy, perfectly normal.

    well, that might have been a miracle itself, or for the skeptics, a grossly inaccurate diagnosis.

    now, if the parents had gone ahead and not give the baby a chance, then the kid would lose an opportunity to live even. and the fetes is alive, imagine one day im sick and all, and people decide to 'end my pain' by deciding for me to kill me ~ im not sure if i would like it.

    some of us have a harder life to lead ~ that is true....but its unlikely that the fetes had strong wishes to die because its having a hard time to survive.
    o wilku mowa...♪

    The only thing I need to know is that I don't know anything.

  12. #32
    Moderator kidd's Avatar
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    Read this news last friday. This mother chose 'yes'.

    http://divaasia.com/article/8993
    什麼是朋友?朋友永遠是在你犯下不可原諒錯誤的時候,仍舊站在你那邊的笨蛋。~ 王亞瑟

    和諧唔係一百個人講同一番話,係一百個人有一百句唔同嘅說話,而又互相尊重 ~ - 葉梓恩

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