Moms As Genetic Outlaws

PARRAMATTA, Australia—Society increasingly demands perfection, and babies diagnosed with problems are aborted more often than not. Some women, however, resist the pressures and bear children who suffer disabilities.

The stories of a number of these women are brought together by Australian researcher and activist Melinda Tankard Reist in a book titled, "Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics." First-person testimonies comprise the bulk of the book.

The experience of some of the women also raises doubts over the medical profession. Some received grave diagnoses regarding their unborn children. Later, these children were born, either without any problems, or with handicaps that were much less serious than predicted. Some doctors even refused to help women who refused to abort children who were diagnosed with disabilities.

In fact, with increasing frequency women's desires are ignored.

Also looming is another, more insidious, danger with genetic testing. Screening and abortion become merely a part of the routine prenatal program. Women, then, can become
victims after innocently going along with the attitude of "doctor knows best." Only too late do they discover that their own interest and preferences are passed over in favor of the conventional wisdom of perfect children, says Tankard Reist. And once they wake up to what is going on even well-educated women can find the going difficult if they choose to go against the preferences of medical experts.

Often the information given to women is slanted in such a way as to encourage abortion. In many cases parents are not directed to groups that would help them to understand better the nature of the disability involved. That in turn makes it difficult for them to know how their child might fare or what support is available.

The eugenic mentality behind the practice of aborting handicapped children is sometimes more blatant. One survey of obstetricians in England and Wales, for example, found that a third of them require a woman, even before she undergoes prenatal diagnosis, to agree to abort a pregnancy if the child were found to have a problem.

Zenit.com 5/27/06