For the sake of the children
Tracy started a very thoughful discussion on partial birth abortion Wednesday over at Anti-Strib. I bring this up because there were some comments made in the discussion that tie into what I am about to talk about.
MN Education Reform News Scholars Notebook tells us that the MN Legislature is considering the possibility of mandating mental health screening for all pre-school children. This would require that all children be screened at least once before the age of 3. BEFORE THE AGE OF 3 PEOPLE!!!!! The "logic" of this plan is to try to identify "at risk" behavior as early as possible and administer the appropriate medications to control said behavior. What kind of behavior you ask? From EdWatch MN:
"An eligible child is one who has “been removed from child care, Head Start, or preschool for behavioral reasons or is at risk of being so removed” or “been exposed to parental depression or other mental illness.”
So if your child gets suspended for misbehaving, "drug 'em". Parents have depression "drug the kid"....the worst part is this is part of the No Child Left Behind Act!
Then we had two letters to the editor of the Fishwrap from Tuesday where the authors are advocating that government mandate pre-screening of all infants for genetic diseases. The "logic" for this intrusion??? It's "for the children"....which leads me back to the abortion discussion. Along the course of discussion, one of the commenters mentioned that if there is testing that shows that the fetus has a "terminal illness" (the example was hydrocephalis) then maybe we should allow a 3rd trimester abortion. My problem with that is where do we stop? Do you test for Tay Sachs disease (a genetic disorder that effects people of Jewish lineage)? How about sickle cell disease? Or hemophelia or AIDS? If we test for these kinds of diseases, do we test for physical or mental handicaps? If we do that, do we choose to abort babies who have Down Syndrome? Where does it stop?
I got pregnant (late in life) with the Junior Logician. As part of my pre-natal care, I was given the option to test for Down Syndrome in utero. I chose not to in part because of the risks to my unborn child and partly due to the fact that I felt that if I did have a Down Syndrome child (which was a distinct possibility due to a number of reasons) I would handle it. I want to stress that this was an optional test!
What strikes me as odd about this is that the same people who are advocating the intrusion of government in this medical condition are the very same ones that demand that government stay out of it when they choose to kill their unborn child! Where is the logic in that?
Update: This via the Chicago Sun Times.....genetic manipulation to determine the gender of your baby. Again, just where does this end?
posted by The Lady Logician at 7:06 PM permalink
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