Is It Wrong to Abort Down Syndrome Babies
Op-Ed Contributor
The Ethical Case for Having a Baby With Down syndrome
Dr. Kaposy is a bioethicist.
My wife's ultrasound turned up something aberrant in the baby's heart — an otherwise innocuous feature that correlates with genetic conditions such as Down syndrome. A series of tests confirmed that our son indeed had Downward syndrome. We were given the selection of abortion, but my wife, Jan, already regarded him equally our baby, and a few months later Aaron was born.
The first days after the diagnosis were hard. We idea virtually our son's futurity, and our future. Nosotros went through a period of grieving. Merely we soon came to take that Aaron would have Down syndrome, and to accept him as a member of our family. Past the time Aaron was born, it was a joyous occasion. Today, almost ix years after, Aaron is an affectionate boy with blond hair and a crooked smiling. He is passionate about hockey (we're Canadian after all) and about animals. If he could grow upwards to be annihilation, he would probably be a veterinarian.
Many parents make a different choice. In the U.s., an estimated 67 percent of fetuses with prenatally diagnosed Downward syndrome are aborted. In Canada, the rate could be even higher, though there aren't any reliable studies on it. This has get a front end in the American ballgame-rights debate, and bills accept been passed in North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana and Louisiana (and introduced in Utah) that make it illegal for a doc to perform an abortion considering of a positive prenatal test for Down syndrome.
My wife and I are pro-choice and oppose placing limits like these on abortion. Even so, I wish more people would include children with Downwards syndrome in their families. For this to happen, nosotros don't need new laws; we but need more people to choose to have such children.
I understand the emotional turmoil that a prenatal diagnosis can bring. Just after parenting Aaron through difficulties and joys and seeing the curiosity and delight he brings to our lives, I wonder why more than people do not cull to bring children similar him into the world.
People with cerebral disabilities are, of form, ordinarily field of study to ridicule, even by political leaders. I don't hateful just President Trump — President Barack Obama once fabricated an offensive joke about the Special Olympics (he apologized). People with Down syndrome have tried to counter bias against them by speaking out about how they contribute to their communities. Just acceptance in our communities seems scarcely possible without acceptance into our families.
Having a baby with Down syndrome may seem too demanding to some prospective parents. It may seem that those of united states who choose to have children with Downwards syndrome are either irresponsible or saintly. From my feel, however, such parents tend to be utterly normal and levelheaded people.
Parents of children with Downward syndrome have written extensively almost their lives and have contributed to many research studies, as have people with Down syndrome themselves. These sources tell usa that the lives of people with Down's syndrome tend to become well. Their families are as stable and every bit functional as those that include simply children who aren't disabled.
So why is there such reluctance to have children with Down syndrome? One caption shows up repeatedly when parents recount the early days afterward receiving their child'south diagnosis. They feel a sense of loss because they no longer dream that their child volition go married, go to college or start a family of their own one mean solar day — in other words, that they will not run across the conventional expectations for the perfect center-class life. In fact, some people with Down syndrome do accomplish those things. Nonetheless, hopes and dreams of perfection might be a strong motive for parents to cull abortion.
Later on the initial phase of grief, however, parents of children with Down syndrome tend to exit behind concerns most perfection, and embrace a new outlook that values acceptance, empathy and unconditional love of their children. And researchers note that those parents feel pride in their children.
Perchance the question to enquire is: Why do we have children at all? Almost parents would agree that it is not simply and then that they can replicate a conventional arc of a successful center-class life: college, marriage, real estate, grandchildren. If those are the reasons to abort fetuses with Down syndrome, they seem disappointing — they are either self-centered or empty in their narrow-minded conventionality. Aaron volition probably not become a veterinary, and that's O.K. Childhood dreams often harmlessly go unrealized. He could still get a unlike job working with animals, and that would make him happy.
Prenatal tests enable our capacity to choose, to some degree, the children we volition raise. And those who are pro-choice typically embrace this autonomy in reproduction.
But the concept of autonomy can be understood in different ways. In one sense, information technology only means being free to choose, without infringement by the government. Simply, in a richer sense, it means choosing in accord with one'due south ain values.
If you lot value acceptance, empathy and unconditional love, you, too, should welcome a kid with Down syndrome into your life.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/opinion/down-syndrome-abortion.html
0 Response to "Is It Wrong to Abort Down Syndrome Babies"
Post a Comment