Women's Bioethics Blog

[Guest guest]

This is another thought-provoking concept: *whose*

choice is it, truly, when a woman aborts a baby based on faulty information?

http://womensbioethics.blogspot.com/search?q=down+syndrome

Wrongful Life? March 13,2006

Yesterday's NYT Magazine included this story

about " wrongful life. " The article talks about cases in which

parents who give birth to severely disabled children were not informed of the

fetus' status in time to procure an abortion--and they sue the treating

physician.

The story quotes Adrienne Asch, who notes (here and in a number of

thought-provoking journal articles) that there is a moral difference between

abortion for general reasons that apply to the pregnant woman (her life plans,

her health, etc.) and reasons specific to that particular fetus. On her

view, women have the right to choose whether and when to give birth--but they

ought not have the right to choose to abort on the basis of fetal

characteristics. One argument against prenatal testing is that it's the

beginning of a slippery slope--today it's Down syndrome, in some places it's

(already) sex, tomorrow it might be intelligence or height or some other

characteristic. Basing abortion decisions on a single characteristic is, Asch

and her coauthors claim, confusing the part with the whole--seeing only that

characteristic and nothing else. They also note that, in many cases, parents

may be basing their decisions on an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of

what it's really like to raise a disabled child. Moreover, they say, entering

parenthood isn't like (and shouldn't be like) shopping: we should take what we

get.

Another question worth considering, mentioned only

briefly in this article, is whether there already exists a pro-abortion bias in

the medical community in cases where genetic abnormalities are identified

through prenatal tests. If this bias does exist--and my sense is that it does,

at least in the minds of some physicians--are women really free to choose?