Friday 19 September 2008

A puzzle.

 
Here's a conundrum.  An older woman becomes pregnant for the 5th time just months after getting a very highly ;paid powerful job. She is an outspoken anti-abortion campaigner.  She decides to have an amniocentesis test to discover whether the foetus is 'normal'.  She discovers that it is not.  The logical inference is that she can only have had the test so that if necessary she could prepare her family for a future with a disabled child. 
But then she doesn't tell her family and when the infant is born and her elder daughter worries that the baby looks as if it possibly has Down's Syndrome she tells her that they will have to wait and see.  So the initial inference was wrong because she didn't use the time and knowledge to help her other children come to terms with having a disabled sibling, in fact she prevaricated even when the evidence was before their eyes.
 
So, why did she have the test?  Is it because she knew that two of every five amniocentesis tests lead to loss of the foetus? 
 
Welcome to the principles of America's potential Vice President.

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