The Struggle To Be Normal: Characters, And Moral Dilemmas

There are several parents who carry genes that are responsible for inheritable forms of ID, intellectual disability. Receiving the news that your child is at risk for being born with an intellectual disability can be devastating news for any parent. These parents are faced with the difficult decision to either carry their child to term or seek an abortion. This decision not only affects the child and the parents, but the society the child might potentially live in. These parents face many ethical and moral dilemmas and their decision will most likely affect them for the rest of their lives.
The documentary entitled “The Struggle to be Normal” is a film that presents five vignettes that display the ethical dilemmas that confront society with
Ethics can be defined as a set of moral principles or “the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). “Roe v. Wade was a landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman’s legal right to an abortion. The Court ruled, in a 7-2 decision, that a woman’s right to choose an abortion was protected by the privacy rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” (Roe v. Wade, 2009). While abortion is legal, is it moral to end a pregnancy? Part of making this decision is to consider the child. It is not their fault they have ID. He/she did not choose to have a form of ID regardless of how mild or severe it is. There is a huge moral dilemma with this decision. Does that mean a child should not have the opportunity to live because they are maybe not good enough or is the parent really saving them from the struggles in life? Some think it is immoral to kill an unborn child because it is stopping the growth of a human. There is an ongoing debate on whether an unborn baby is a human or not. If a parent does decide to abort they will have to live with the fact they “killed” their child just like the one family shown in “The Struggle to be Normal” film. It does play a huge factor on their moral conscious. Does it make them a bad person? These are just some thoughts that might go through a parent’s head while making this
Luckily there are now laws in place that protect and educate people with ID. This was not true during the 1800s and most of the 1900s. The Willowbrook institution is an example of the horrific conditions child with ID went through. “Public shock and outcry regarding abuse and neglect of residents at the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island in New York City exploded as organized parent protests and media exposes ignited mass awareness. Willowbrook was designed for 4,000 people. By 1965, it had a population of over 6,000, the largest state-run institution for people with developmental disabilities in the world.” (The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities, 2013). Clearly America did not always have the correct laws in place to properly care for these individuals. According to the scholar Peter Mittler, he says “The needs of people with intellectual disabilities have often been overlooked in programmes designed to reach disabled people in general. But we now have enough knowledge and skill to ensure that their needs are more fully met in the future” (Mittler, 1995). Today we now have special education services like IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This act “mandates a sequence of events schools must follow to identify and educate children with disabilities” (Heward, Alber-Morgan, & Konrad, 2017). FAPE is also in place. FAPE stands for free and