But "liberals" always want to try. Imagine the mental and logical gymnastics one must go through in order to believe that it's all right to abort a "normal" baby, but not one genetically deformed:

Mr. Imparato said he was disturbed to learn recently that in several states with legislative efforts to restrict abortion rights, groups like Planned Parenthood often lobby for an exemption for women who learn their child would have a disability.

But he said that the person who alerted him was a Planned Parenthood lobbyist who was herself troubled by the tactic because it seemed to run counter to the progressive political agenda that supports both choice and tolerance of human difference.

“You’ve got these two basic liberal values on a kind of collision course,” said Rayna Rapp, an anthropologist at New York University who has studied attitudes toward prenatal testing.

[Late afternoon update]

In the interests of comity here, and despite the quotes around the word "liberals," per a(n anonymous) complaint in comments, I'll amend the opening sentence to "But some liberals always want to try."

So tolerance of human differences trumps choice?

But, every human has some difference from all others. Shouldn't that then render choice moot?

Always fun to watch liberal ideaologies collide.

I get the feeling that evolution-wise, a number of variants of liberalism are a dead end assuming one practices what one preaches. The only thing that could keep these going long term is a heavy dose of hypocrisy or a steady stream of gullible people.

What constitutes a "disability"? Hardly anyone would advocate an abortion on the sole ground of, say, a malformed foot. But if you're talking things like profound mental retardation that would require lifelong institutional care, I do not think the issue can be characterized as tolerance of differences. At some point, the expected quality of life becomes so poor for both the child and the family, the only justification for opposing an abortion is theological. So I do not see a conflict in liberal values (or any other values) between a generic restriction on abortion and an exception in cases of severe fetal impairment.

At some point, the expected quality of life becomes so poor for both the child and the family, the only justification for opposing an abortion is theological. So I do not see a conflict in liberal values (or any other values) between a generic restriction on abortion and an exception in cases of severe fetal impairment.

You seem to be missing the point. You have it exactly backward. The "liberal" aren't arguing for a generic restriction on abortion with exception. They're arguing for a general right to an abortion with an exception that mothers must carry "disabled" children to term, in the name of "diversity."

Yes. Quote from the article:

And many are finding that, while they support a woman’s right to have an abortion if she does not want to have a baby, they are less comfortable when abortion is used by women who don’t want to have a particular baby.

IOW, these "many" are only pro-choice if the choice is made strictly on some grounds external to the fetus. They are uncomfortable with basing abort/not-abort decision on some criteria of the fetus.

A more interesting conflict is waiting in the wings.

Let us presume (and it seems likely according to recent evidence and the loud protestations of the gay 'community') that homosexuality is genetically predetermined. It isn't difficult to imagine that interested couples could undergo screening for pregnancies with high probabilities of producing offspring with strong predisposition to homosexuality. How will liberals handle the inevitable wave of abortions following that development?

Please note that I am NOT advocating such behavior, but I cannot imagine that it wouldn't take place, and not simply among 'unenlightened' conservatives. I cannot wait to watch the gay advocates and the feminists go after one another hammer and tongs.

Popcorn anyone?

I get the feeling that evolution-wise, a number of variants of liberalism are a dead end assuming one practices what one preaches.

Except that modern human society has taken humanity from Darwinian evolution to something much better. After all, the main mechanism of evolution is early death. People no longer have to die because they aren't immune to malaria; or because they lose fights with homicidal alpha males; or because they cannot survive a starvation diet. That is the awful reality of evolution and it's a good thing that we can be spared from it.

The "liberal" aren't arguing for a generic restriction on abortion with exceptions. They're arguing for a general right to an abortion with an exception that mothers must carry "disabled" children to term, in the name of "diversity."

Except that the vast majority of liberals do no such thing. There is no contradiction between arguing for a right and having qualms about how it might be used, which is as far as it goes for most advocates of abortion rights. The article says that Planned Parenthood often argues for the right to terminate a pregnancy in case of serious birth defects; only a small minority argues otherwise. It's the blanket abortion opponents who really work to condemn all parents to the risk of children with Down's Syndrome.

This is no more than a symptom of your case of OCD -- obsessive condemnation of Democrats. You're so eager to expose bad priorities that you disregard most of what your own sources say, keeping only the fraction that confirms your antipathy.

Well, I didn't say anything about Democrats. I was referring to "liberals" with cognitive dissonance. As the previous commenter noted, get out the popcorn for when they figure out how to tell propensity to be gay in the womb.

Well, I didn't say anything about Democrats. I was referring to "liberals" with cognitive dissonance. As the previous commenter noted, get out the popcorn for when they figure out how to tell propensity to be gay in the womb.

Obsessive condemnation of Democrats, compulsive denigration of liberals, it's all really the same character flaw. All of this "get out of the popcorn" talk is really just childish gloating.

You're also trying to weasel out of what you said, changing it from "liberals always" to "liberals who".

I don't know how significantly liberals are divided on this, and Rand sure as hell doesn't know. But there is a healthy period of "cognitive dissonance" in a community when a new angle on an issue arises, when people discuss it and come to consensus. Obviously the same facts and values that justify abortion in general apply regardless of the status of the fetus, and we have no reason to doubt most other pro-choice people agree.

The right often desperately looks for minor points of contention like this, exaggerating them into all-out religious schism, to cover for the frankly schizophrenic nature of conservatism. A cast of murderers and torturers waving the banner of a "Culture of Life," holding that fetuses are people but grown human beings who get in their way are not. Rand, once again your post is an avalanche of irony and absurdity.

Liberals? A staggeringly large stretch, in mu opinion.

After reading the article, it seems to me that a human being named "SARAHLYNN LESTER, 32" finds herself facing a moral dilemma.

My wife and I did not do genetic testing since we had agreed that we would not abort a Downs baby and luckily both of our children are fine (well, relatively speaking that is -- they are normal pain in the @$$ children).

Personally, I oppose abortion yet I also believe it is not within the state's legitimate authority until a fetus becomes independently viable apart from the mother (somewhere in the 2nd trimester) AND I also believe using the criminal justice system to lower abortion rates is simply ineffectual.

In any event, the dilemma Ms. lester describes is a very real dilemma having little to do with "liberalism" as a political movement.

You're also trying to weasel out of what you said, changing it from "liberals always" to "liberals who".

Since I had "liberals" in quotes (just like that), I'm not sure how you can be so sure to whom I'm referring, and how large the class is.

Bill, would you be happier if I said "mindless worshipers of diversity" instead of "liberals"?

I dunno about that.

I do know that a decision whether to abort a Downs fetus does place parents in a dilemma. What about near-sightedness? Higher genetic risk factors for diabetes or depression? Left-handed-ness?

The extreme case is China where a "one child" policy has led to wholesale abortions/infanticide of female offspring -- a genuinely outrageous situation.

If they were liberals, they wouldn't be telling other people how to live their lives. These 'liberals' sound suspiciously like 'conservatives'.

The "popcorn" discussion amuses me.

It cuts both ways however.

Consider the following digression:

Even with my conservative leanings, the following subplot in a movie I saw once amused me. A very liberal family in New York had one black sheep son who was a rabid conservative, and the rest of the family didn't understand him at all. Later in the movie, he had some medical work done, and it turned out that the blood supply to his brain had been constricted. Once he again had full use of his brain his political positions were all promptly liberal. It made me laugh. (Of course the joke works either way--would everyone recognize that?)

So, by analogy, what if it turns out that we can predict conservative or liberal tendencies before birth? Going down the rather bloody minded path, liberals who are more willing to have abortions would be much more likely to abort conservative babies than conservatives would be to abort liberal babies. Now the conservatives are faced with the situation where their support for the unborn is going to drive them out of power forever. Or perhaps if the tendency is genetic in such a way that children are more likely to have their parent's views, the conservatives will counter by having lots more kids.

Hmmm... I may have the nugget here for a sci-fi story in the spirit of "The Marching Morons."

There is a recent (possibly ongoing) case of a 17-year-old Irish girl who, because of laws undoubtedly heavily influenced by the Catholic church, is going to be forced to bring to term a foetus with anencephaly. In other words, she is going to have to go through the pain and trauma of birth to bring into the world, briefly, a creature without a functioning brain; one which cannot by any rational standard be called a human being.

That sort of obscenity is the sort of thing that happens when your rules are inflexible.