selective abortion: eugenics
it sounds like hypocrisy, but with selective abortion the woman is not defining what's acceptable in her body, she's deciding what kind of people are desirable to bring into the world. it's a different motive, and therefore different ethics
@dangerdyke This still sounds somewhat confused to me, so my attempt:
leaving the abortion decision to the pregnant person: cool, good
a specific abortion: might depend on the situation
Although I also think that deciding to bring a person into the world means you should influence the person at least in some ways (take your prenatal vitamins people!), so maybe I actually disagree?
@dangerdyke Well, no, you just made a general post about morality though, which kind of implied much more than that.
And I also think that I wouldn't prevent a person from having an abortion if they wanted it purely for the reason of not wanting to have an autistic child, even if I thought what they were doing wasn't right. Although I'm not sure you disagree on that.
@dangerdyke I weakly disagree with the former and strongly with the latter.
The majority of people ignorant about the topic will react negatively to autism in their children, but I'm very unconvinced they would directly want autistic people not to exist (although I see how the former semi-implies the latter as a practical consequence).
But I think that there are other ways than these two, in particular making people understand the neurotypical/neurodivergent distinction better. And I know this is harder and slower than outlawing one of the things you suggest, but this outlawing creates quite a lot of collateral damage I'm really worried about. :/ (obvious for abortion I hope, for prenatal testing it has many more applications than just "helping to decide on an abortion") Not to mention that growing up neurodivergent in a family that isn't supportive also can have quite severe disadvantages.
Sorta related – you might enjoy "Cocoon" by Greg Egan.
@dangerdyke Although I use "enjoy" in the loosest possible sense. <_<"
