Ruth Marcus is being praised as “courageous” today for penning a deeply personal opinion piece in the Washington Post where she reveals that she would have aborted her unborn child had her prenatal testing uncovered the likelihood that her child would be born with Down Syndrome.
I have had two children; I was old enough, when I became pregnant, that it made sense to do the testing for Down syndrome. Back then, it was amniocentesis, performed after 15 weeks; now, chorionic villus sampling can provide a conclusive determination as early as nine weeks. I can say without hesitation that, tragic as it would have felt and ghastly as a second-trimester abortion would have been, I would have terminated those pregnancies had the testing come back positive. I would have grieved the loss and moved on.
Marcus, WaPo’s deputy editorial page editor, lays out a clinical and sober analysis of current laws making their way through state houses and courts that would put restrictions on abortions for the sole purpose of exterminating a nascent life if it has a diagnosis like Down Syndrome.
The argument is logical if one holds to the tenuous moral basis of Roe v. Wade: that a woman has the sole power to determine the worth of the unborn child developing in her womb and the decision to end the life of that fetus is protected by her “right to privacy.”
That was not the child I wanted. That was not the choice I would have made. You can call me selfish, or worse, but I am in good company. The evidence is clear that most women confronted with the same unhappy alternative would make the same decision.
In laying out her argument though, Marcus seems unaware that she is dancing very close to the line of endorsing eugenics. – READ MORE
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