Pressure to abort for prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis
[This article is a transcript of “Pressure to abort for prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis” courtesy of volunteer Ben Tomlin. If you’re interested in volunteering to transcribe more of our content, please complete our volunteer survey.]
Destigmatized abortion increases the pressure for women to abort. If abortion is supposed to be a morally neutral option, then it makes sense to expect women to abort if we conceive in difficult circumstances. The circumstances could be conceiving while in poverty or in an abusive relationship, or any number of situations, but the pressure becomes especially clear when we conceive children with disabilities that can be detected prenatally.
For example, when discussing options with a woman who receives a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis, a significant number of physicians and genetic professionals will self-report that they emphasize the negative aspects of the diagnosis in order to subtly encourage her to abort, or some of them will just straight tell her that she should abort. Similarly, in this study, when genetic counselors talked to women about what options they would have should they receive a prenatal diagnosis, 37% mentioned the option to continue the pregnancy, whereas 86% mentioned the option to abort.
In his recent article on abortion and ableism, Charles Camosy brought up the same problem. Camosy cites several pieces of research regarding ableism in the medical community, notably including the fact that physicians consistently rate the quality of life of their disabled patients worse than the patients themselves do. It is not difficult to imagine how such an outlook would affect physicians advising parents who have never had any particular experience with disability.
We’ve published a couple of accounts from parents, in their own words, about the kind of discrimination and pressure they experienced from the medical community when they did not want to abort their children with Down syndrome. These parents also talk about the comments they received even after their children were born, suggesting they must not have gotten the prenatal test; otherwise, surely, they would have chosen abortion.
This experience, and the frustration and anger over it, is not unique to parents who hold anti-abortion views. This article was written by a woman who supports abortion rights. She talks about the inappropriate questions she received long after her son was born from doctors and therapists and teachers. Essentially, they wonder why, in a world where prenatal testing is common and abortion is accessible and destigmatized, anyone would choose to carry a pregnancy of a child with a disability.
Of course, this line of thought is horribly ableist and dehumanizing to people with disabilities. It also speaks to the kind of stigma women can experience when we don’t want to abort in a society where abortion is morally neutral.
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