People with downs are a world away from the Hartleys though. They can actually have a good quality of life as long as they have the right support, with many being surprisingly independent. As long as they have the resources, life skills, and support network I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to have kids (granted that sounds like it's an extremely rare occurrence anyway).
I have some mixed feelings on fundies intentionally having really fucked up kids, like anencephaly and other completely fucked conditions where a kid is gonna have no quality of life. On one hand women should be free to carry on pregnancies same as they should be free to get abortions, on the other people like the Jaxon Strong parents are scummy as fuck and absolutely are just exploiting their potato for pitybux in between making him have seizures.
I wonder if any of these people started only doubling down on the Jesus after they had a fucked up kid as a way to try and cope?
It seems like if a person is of age and is fairly independent then there is no real reason that they shouldn't be allowed to have kids? Like people with DS often lead pretty full lives and are often just as or more responsible than other people around them who may or may not be "normal" (i.e: there are no laws against the cows documented on this site having kids for example).
I'd hope that the discussion would be regarding two Downs people though because two people on the same emotional and mental capacity level seems ok, while a person with Downs and a person who didn't have any kind of diminished capability could be a bit fucked up...
Just as fucked up as a couple giving birth to a baby that they knew would be severely disabled and then using that baby to beg for pocket change actually.
I think there are some idealistic and unrealistic notions about people with DS in this thread. You’ll notice in the article about the DS couple wanting kids that it’s the parents of the DS couple, parents who love and know them better than anyone, saying it’s a very bad idea.
while DS kids and adults are worlds away from Hartleys and certainly can lead happy lives, they are not able to lead unsupervised, independent adult lives and to me that means kids are a bad idea. Being able to take care of yourself is the foundation of going on to be a parent and being wholly responsible for another life. DS ppl cannot care for themselves and therefore cannot safely care for children. Basically whoever cares for the DS adult woukd also have to care for any child.
In college I had two friends working on degrees in special education and they worked at programs for adults with DS. The absolute best case scenario for DS adults was supervised group home living with a menial job tailored to them. It may not be obvious but when you see a special needs person working in a place like McDonalds or a grocery store there is also a paid life skills adult on the job with them, watching (sometimes at a distance) to be sure they are handling the tasks and doing ok. I always thought it was a bit strange to pay an average intelligence adult $11 an hour to watch a special needs adult work a job for $6 an hour. The state usually pays for this as part of a day program through Medicaid.
The hardest thing for parents for DS adults is the worry of what will happen to their child once they are dead, because they will always need someone to care for them.
DS adults also have much shorter life spans than average. If they are lucky they will live to 40-50 but heart defects and a whole host of other medical issues are very common with DS.
If anyone is interested I could power level about a retarded woman (who was comparable to a very high functioning DS person) who had five kids. Long story short, the state and various relatives ended up with custody of all of them. Once the children weren’t babes in arms she lost interest, they were like dolls to her. She also required a team of social workers and aides in the home who basically did most of the care for the children until the neglect got to the point of removing them (again). It was a viscous cycle because it is illegal for the state to sterilize any handicapped person so she kept having children. (The father of the last child was at the same intelligence level she was via a childhood head injury. Idk about the father of the previous children).
The worst part was the children suffered the most, they were nightmares. Even with state intervention the effects due to poor prenatal self-care, neglect, inability of the mother to stimulate/interact appropriately, physical abuse occurromg when the mother got frustrated (and she got fusrtrated a lot) led to children who were already in special needs and behavior programs before kindergarten.
Edit: Tl;dr Nature makes DS males sterile for a reason. DS adults are not capable of caring for themselves much less a baby.