Some forms of motor neuron disease are genetically linked, but I have no indication that my kind is. No other member of my family has had it. But I would be in favour of abortion if there was a high risk.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The problem with motor neurone disease is they don't know when it starts. People go into hospital having fallen but get wrapped up and sent away, unless they're seen by an incredibly astute doctor. It is only when several things begin to go wrong that it'll be diagnosed.
Maybe I don't have the most common kind of motor neuron disease, which usually kills in two or three years.
It could be - and it has been argued, in my view rather plausibly, though neuroscientists don't like it - that neuroscience for the last couple hundred years has been on the wrong track.
Your moral stance depends on what you think is being aborted. If you don't believe it to be a person but part of a woman's body, of course you will be pro-choice. I would be virulently pro-choice if I didn't believe it to be a person.
I don't have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I'm happier now than before I developed the condition.
The neuroscience area - which is absolutely in its infancy - is much more important than genetics.
Too many people use abortion as a form of birth control. And that's very wrong. I could never, ever have an abortion.
I am pro-choice, but I don't consider that inconsistent at all with pro-life - there's no way that having an abortion, ever, is an easy decision, and it more often errs on the side of absolutely wrenching, not to mention physically debilitating.
The doctor who diagnosed me with ALS, or motor neuron disease, told me that it would kill me in two or three years.
Hundreds of people are undergoing gene therapy today. There are no known neurological issues.