Dealing with Down

a spinozist view on selective abortion

Abstract

A foetus with the Down syndrome may grow up into a reasonable human being, able to take part in social cooperation and live a happy life. In other words, it seems that such a handicap doesn’t necessarily preclude a meaningful, useful and satisfying life – neither for the disabled, nor for his or her family. But, with the current improvement and generalization of pre-birth screening techniques allowing us to detect the Down syndrome at the first semester of the pregnancy, discriminations and phobias are about to be born again, undisguised in presumably
reasonable and legitimate individual choices. It might even reach - in a socially acceptable way – one of the goals aimed by eugenic laws: the destruction of the so-called “Mongolian idiocy”. We’ll try to comment this ethical issue on the basis of Spinoza’s philosophy.