Today's Washington Post is reporting on a new test that can detect Down Syndrome earlier in a pregnancy. As early as 11 weeks after conception, as a matter of fact:
Screening women before the second trimester allows those who might opt to terminate a pregnancy to make that decision when doctors say an abortion is safer and less traumatic. It also gives those who want to continue the pregnancy more time to prepare emotionally for their child's condition, and provides earlier reassurance to those whose babies are healthy, avoiding weeks of anxiety...
The story goes on to discuss the inevitable moral and political issues that go along with this — namely the aborting of fetuses predicted to have Down Syndrome.
I used to think I understood my position on most everything related to the abortion debate. Then it was my turn to have a child.
For a number of reasons, my wife's doctor monitored her closely at the very early stages of her first pregnancy. She was having ultrasounds long before many women do. I remember the first one, although I can't remember the exact number of weeks — at that point, while no discernible human shape could be detected, there was a heart beating away a mile a minute. And, sure, a lot of people had had a lot of babies before, but for us it was still pretty damn cool.
That thing was alive in there.
And my rock-solid pro-choice stance quickly turned squishy. We could agree to abort that beating heart if we chose to (yes, I know technically only my wife could, but that's not relevant here). Some might not like to hear it said this way, but the fact is we had the right to kill that living thing that is today my preschool-age son, who's learning to cut carrots and has already picked out the girl in his class that he will marry.
And yet I understand that many people are not in the same situation we were — it's not generally happily-married, fairly well-off couples who are having abortions. So I stick to my pro-choice stance. While my moral compass tells me abortion is wrong, it also tells me that creating a law that dictates this decision to others, a decision that will affect every moment of the rest of their lives, is not necessarily right.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I used to be solidly pro-choice in my politics. Ending the pregancy because the foetus had Down's Syndrome, or spinabifda was no big issue for me. Of course, being a man, I had a certain distance from the issue, but given that abortion politics was a big issue in the '80's and I was active in politics in the '80's, I did what I could to advance what I thought was a reasonable cause.
My wife and I lost one foetus, and we both realized the fragility of life developing in the womb.
Like you, I view abortion as morally wrong.
But what really changed my viewpoints on the matter was a web-site here about a Haifa woman and her daughter, Galia, who suffered from autism as well as a series of disorders that killed her (I think) when she was a teenager.
I leave you the site to look at and only point out that in ending a pregnancy, a woman never knows WHO she is killing.
http://www.signsfromheaven.com