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If you knew a woman who had 8 children already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you prevent her from having another child?

Joe, this story has been going around the web (and elsewhere) for ages. Some add that the mother was an unemployed servant girl, some that the father was syphilitic as well. Problem is, if you look at any standard biography of Beethoven, you can see that it is a pack of lies, to give you the word with the bark on it. Almost nothing in it is true. Beethoven was his father's second child; his mother had had one child by a previous marriage, who died in infancy. Beethoven's elder brother died at only six days of age. So there were NO previous children with any diseases (death of infants within the first few days was so common at that time that no cause was ascribed). His mother never had syphilis; she died of tuberculosis. His father didn't have syphilis (he was however a serious alcoholic & that eventually destroyed his career as a court musician.) The rumors of syphilis arose from the fact that Beethoven began going deaf about the age of 30, and syphilis was a common cause of deafness at that time. But of course that has nothing to do with his mother's situation.

A lie will get round the world before the truth has its boots on, but there are plenty of good arguments against abortion without using this false one.