Counselors are often made available to pregnant women who are being tested to see if their babies have health issues. Author Paige Comstock Cunningham quotes writer Elizabeth Crystal saying:
“Within the medical literature there is a clear assumption that counselors are there, in effect, to help patients through the difficult process of agreeing to be tested and agreeing to abort in the event of a diagnosed defect….”
Elizabeth Kristol. “Picture Perfect: the Politics of Prenatal Testing” First Things 32 (April 1993): 24
Quoted in Paige Comstock Cunningham, Esq. “The Supreme Court and the creation of the two-dimensional woman” in Erika Bachiochi. The Cost of “Choice”: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion” (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004)
The implication is that a woman who has an amniocentesis or other test and discovers that the baby has a handicap will abort, and the counselors are there to guide her through the process. As you can see by reading other quotes in this section, women often feel coerced into aborting babies with defects, as medical personnel pressure them to do so.
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