Rayna Rapp, who herself aborted it down syndrome baby, discusses abortions of disabled fetuses:
“New developments in reproductive technologies assist in the quest for the perfect baby not only by genetically creating “better” children but also by detecting and eliminating fetuses deemed abnormal and defective. In a world where babies are bred for desired characteristics, having a healthy, normal baby becomes nothing less than a duty. While it may appear that medicine simply offers procedure such as diagnostic ultrasound, fetal electrocardiography, and amniocentesis as options for those who desire them, the fear of producing a child that falls outside the boundary of “normal” compels many women to seek premonitory information regarding the status of the fetus. As one of [Rayna Rapp’s] interviewees explained regarding her tests, “if he was gonna be slow, if he wasn’t gonna have a shot at being President, that’s not the baby we wanted.”
Rayna Rapp “Moral Pioneers: Women, Men, and Fetuses on a Frontier Of Reproductive Technology,” and Hoffman et al., Embryos, Ethics and Women’s Rights, 110, from Kathy Rudy. Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: Moral Diversity in the Abortion Debate (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1996) 11
Incidentally, abortions for fetal anomaly are almost always late-term abortions – the tests that detect problems such as down syndrome can only be performed in the second trimester.
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