A Thinking Reed

The rise of eugenic abortion

Written by

Lee M.

in

Disturbing piece from George Neumayr (via Amy Welborn):

Each year in America fewer and fewer disabled infants are born. The reason is eugenic abortion. Doctors and their patients use prenatal technology to screen unborn children for disabilities, then they use that information to abort a high percentage of them. Without much scrutiny or debate, a eugenics designed to weed out the disabled has become commonplace.

Not wishing to publicize a practice most doctors prefer to keep secret, the medical community releases only sketchy information on the frequency of eugenic abortion against the disabled. But to the extent that the numbers are known, they indicate that the vast majority of unborn children prenatally diagnosed as disabled are killed.

One of the more troubling things Neumayr points out is how the threat of “wrongful birth” suits provides incentives for doctors to recommend abortion of fetus that are disabled, or even may merely run the risk of having a certain disease:

In some cases, the aborted children aren’t disabled at all but are mere carriers of a disease or stand a chance of getting one later in life. Prenatal screening has made it possible to abort children on guesses and probabilities. The law and its indulgence of every conceivable form of litigation have also advanced the new eugenics against the disabled. Working under “liability alerts” from their companies, doctors feel pressure to provide extensive prenatal screening for every disability, lest parents or even disabled children hit them with “wrongful birth” and “wrongful life” suits.

In a wrongful-birth suit, parents can sue doctors for not informing them of their child’s disability and seek compensation from them for all the costs, financial and otherwise, stemming from a life they would have aborted had they received that prenatal information. Wrongful-life suits are brought by children (through their parents) against doctors for all the “damages” they’ve suffered from being born. (Most states recognize wrongful-birth suits, but for many states, California and New Jersey among the exceptions, wrongful-life suits are still too ridiculous to entertain.)

In 2003, Ob-Gyn Savita Khosla of Hackensack, N.J., agreed to pay $1.2 million to a couple and child after she failed to flag Fragile X syndrome, a form of mental retardation caused by a defective gene on the X chromosome. The mother felt entitled to sue Khosla because she indicated on a questionnaire that her sibling was mentally retarded and autistic, and hence Khosla should have known to perform prenatal screening for Fragile X so that she could abort the boy. Khosla settled, giving $475,000 to the parents and $750,000 to the child they wished they had aborted.

Had the case gone to court, Khosla would have probably lost the suit. New Jersey has been notoriously welcoming to wrongful-birth suits ever since Roe, after which New Jersey’s Supreme Court announced that it would not “immunize from liability those in the medical field providing inadequate guidance to persons who would choose to exercise their constitutional right to abort fetuses which, if born, would suffer from genetic defects.”

According to the publication Medical Malpractice Law & Strategy, “court rulings across the country are showing that the increased use of genetic testing has substantially exposed physicians’ liability for failure to counsel patients about hereditary disorders.”

The publication revealed that many wrongful-birth cases “are settled confidentially.” And it predicted that doctors who don’t give their patients the information with which to consider the eugenic option against disabled children will face more lawsuits as prenatal screening becomes the norm. “The human genome has been completely mapped,” it quotes Stephen Winnick, a lawyer who handled one of the first-wrongful birth cases. “It’s almost inevitable that there will be an increase in these cases.”

The combination of doctors seeking to avoid lawsuits and parents seeking burden-free children means that once prenatal screening identifies a problem in a child, the temptation to eugenic abortion becomes unstoppable. In an atmosphere of expected eugenics, even queasy, vaguely pro-life parents gravitate toward aborting a disabled child.

Comments

10 responses to “The rise of eugenic abortion”

  1. Joshie

    I would be interested to see what those “sketchy numbers” actually say.

    Meilander, in his Bioethics, uses the possibility of eugenic abortion to discourage pre-natal testing altogether, since Christian mothers-to-be are apparently too short-sighted and selfish to be able to resist aborting their unborn children who might have some sort of physical or mental disability.

    Sorry if I seem cynical, but articles like this just seem like backdoor attempts to outlaw abortion outright or pass tort “reform” that strips consumers and patients of any rights to hold corporations, medical or otherwise, resposible for their actions.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    Those are legitimate concerns, I think. And I agree that the rightness or wrongness of abortion (and the appropriate regulation thereof) should be argued up front.

    What I find disturbing about stuff like this, though, is the implication that the disabled would be better off not having been born and/or the notion that parents are entitled (obligated??) to give birth only to “normal” babies. The baby as consumer product, so to speak.

    Reply
  3. Phil

    Neumayr is apparently saying that it is better for some of us to be born with Tay-Sachs disease or without a complete brain (anencephaly)? Just who would he wish that on?

    It is fallacious to say that the disabled would be better off if they were not born. Just where would they be while they enjoy their better state?

    You can love the disabled person and at the same time hate the disability. Nobody is advocating genocide for the disabled.

    What makes a healthy infant a consumer product? Who would choose to have an unhealthy infant?

    Reply
  4. Joshie

    All these are disturbing ideas no doubt. But are they really happening on a widespread basis? And are they really linked to malpractice suits, as he claims?

    My HS government teacher always used to tell us, “your opinion doesn’t amount to a hill of beans unless you have something to back it up.” Well, as scary as it sounds, he has nothing. And he comes off sounding pretty misogynistic to boot.

    Reply
  5. Joshie

    whoops, I think I misread your post Lee. Anyway, yeah. True dat.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    For what it’s worth, I’m working as a chaplain at a hospital right now, and I’ve been told by staff members that parents frequently abort children for a variety of reasons related to prenatal testing. Some of them seem understandable to me, or at least evoke my strong sympathy–children who would be bedridden for their whole life, or unable to feed, dress, or care for themselves, for example. Others make me quite angry–aborting a fetus that’s lacking a pinkie finger because it’s ‘imperfect,’ to cite one extreme (but real) example.

    Of course, these aren’t stats, so make of them what you will.

    Dave

    Reply
  7. Marvin

    In a similar vein, Reinders’ book The Future of the Disabled in Liberal Society points out that our definition of “fully human” is self-assertion, the ability to choose between competing goods, points of view, whatever. The severely disabled lack the cognitive functioning to be “fully human” in the liberal sense of the word. Reinders wonders whether, in the future, people who knowingly bring severely disabled children into the world won’t be subject to financial penalties and social disapproval.

    Reply
  8. Maurice Frontz

    We might remember that some of the fiercest defenders of Terri Schiavo’s right to continue to receive life-sustaining care were the “disabled.”

    You are right, Lee – abortion should be argued up front. But once you state unequivocally that “choice” is the value that determines your actions, you must follow it through to the letter. You MUST choose in every circumstance, since there is nothing that will prevent you from being God. One of the signs that abortion might be a wrong is the fact that it leads to such acts, which can only be described as acts of utter hopelessness and despair.

    Marvin, you are right about social disapproval. Just try having more than two or three kids in this society, and you’ll discover that the social disapproval extends even to “healthy” children.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    “In 2003, Ob-Gyn Savita Khosla of Hackensack, N.J., agreed to pay $1.2 million to a couple and child after she failed to flag Fragile X syndrome, a form of mental retardation caused by a defective gene on the X chromosome. The mother felt entitled to sue Khosla because she indicated on a questionnaire that her sibling was mentally retarded and autistic, and hence Khosla should have known to perform prenatal screening for Fragile X so that she could abort the boy. Khosla settled, giving $475,000 to the parents and $750,000 to the child they wished they had aborted.

    Had the case gone to court, Khosla would have probably lost the suit. New Jersey has been notoriously welcoming to wrongful-birth suits ever since Roe, after which New Jersey’s Supreme Court announced that it would not “immunize from liability those in the medical field providing inadequate guidance to persons who would choose to exercise their constitutional right to abort fetuses which, if born, would suffer from genetic defects.”

    Sad. And people wonder why rising insurance premiums are out of control.

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    I have a child inside me with a brain. The reason I do is because my doctor failed to do his job.
    I am now in the third trimester.
    I can not have a termanation because our goverment insurance will not cover it.
    I am forced to carry to term.
    Laws made to protect others have locked me in a corner.
    Set around all day and blog each other about that.

    Reply

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