Well... it was bound to happen. I agree with George Will on something. George Will's son, Jon, has Down Syndrome.
In his Newsweek column, he discusses a recommendation by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that all women be offered a test to pre-screen if their child has Down Syndrome. While George Will's language is slightly inflamatory, I agree with his point:
The ACOG guidelines are formally neutral concerning what decisions parents should make on the basis of the information offered. But what is antiseptically called "screening" for Down syndrome is, much more often than not, a search-and-destroy mission: At least 85 percent of pregnancies in which Down syndrome is diagnosed are ended by abortions.
I am vehemently pro-choice. Yet I work every day with people with disabilities, including Down Syndrome, and am fairly troubled by this trend. In extended...
Again, I am pro-choice. But I question requiring all women be given a screen for Down Syndrome. George Will makes a vital point:
Jon was born at the end of the era in which institutionalization of the retarded was considered morally acceptable, but in what was still an era of gross ignorance: In the first year of Jon's life, a network-television hospital drama featured a doctor telling parents of a Down syndrome newborn that their child would probably never be toilet-trained. But ignorance lingers. There are doctors who still falsely counsel parents that a Down syndrome person will never read, write or count change. Such doctors should not try to get between Jon and his USA Today sports section.
People with developmental disabilities now rarely live their adult lives in institutional settings. Home and Community Based services through Medicaid fund adults to live in the community in their own homes or apartments or in small group homes. Most states have strict laws protecting the rights of adults with developmental disabilities to make their own choices and be treated with dignity and respect. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) gives children the right to be included and educated with their same age peers in public schools.
The screening means nothing, as there is no cure for Down Syndrome:
Medicine now has astonishing and multiplying abilities to treat problems of unborn children in utero, but it has no ability to do anything about Down syndrome (the result of an extra 21st chromosome). So diagnosing Down syndrome can have only the purpose of enabling—and, in a clinically neutral way, of encouraging—parents to choose to reject people like Jon as unworthy of life.
This is not just a knee-jerk antichoice reaction-- I am vehemently pro-choice and feel the same way- if there is no cure or no way to help the eventual child through in utero treatment- why screen?
So a question to Kossacks:
How should this issue be handled? I think my beef is with ACOG for recommending screening that is unnecessary. Maybe I'm frustrated by the lack of infomation available about disabilities.
This does go back to one important progressive argument: if you want to make abortions more rare, put in place supports (like early intervention for children with disabilities, fully funded Special Ed, etc.) for children and families.