Schiltz on abortion and Down's

By way of a follow-up to my recent post on adopting babies with Down's Syndrome, here is an interview with my friend, Prof. Lisa Schiltz (St. Thomas) -- who has a son with Down's -- on the pressure put on parents to abort children with Down's.  Here is a taste:

Q: Why do you think it has become socially acceptable to abort a child with Down syndrome?

Schiltz: Because, unfortunately, it has become socially acceptable to abort any baby who disappoints the expectations of the baby's parents for any reason, as the increasingly common practice of sex-selection abortion indicates.

Down syndrome just happens to be a disability that is easily identified through prenatal testing.

Not only have many come to accept that a woman faced with such news is justified in aborting her child, some now go further and insist that she has a duty to abort.

Bob Edwards, the scientist who created Great Britain's first in vitro fertilization baby, gave a speech a couple of years ago at an international fertility conference in which he said, "Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children."

This is frightening. It signals an erosion of societal consensus about our collective responsibility for vulnerable people.

Society will increasingly believe that a mother who forgoes an easy abortion and chooses instead to give birth to a disabled child should not look to the community for help. After all, it was her "choice."