I read a report about a new test that can be done on pregnant women that can test for the most prevalent type of down syndrome. The study doesn’t spell it out, but it does say that what we may be facing is a world without down syndrome people.
Well the affect of this test is pretty obvious; it will lead to more abortions because couples will not want to have a child with down syndrome. It’s not like this test is going to offer an opportunity to correct the condition, just to notify the person about it.
I was talking about this test with a woman I know, she also happens to be a Special Ed teacher, and she said that she had a similar test done when she was pregnant, they told her that her child was going to be down syndrome, and when the child was born he was completely healthy. She said that even knowing that the child would be downs, she did not want to abort the pregnancy, but the nervousness that it caused was overwhelming. However, so many other people would unfortunately have aborted after such news. In her case it would have been doubly sad because the test was wrong. How can we depend on such tests as the base to such a huge decision? How accurate can these get? And really who are we to say that a child with a special need is not perfect in his or her own way?
I, as a religious woman do not believe in recreational abortion. I define recreational abortion as - a woman who decides to be promiscuous, gets pregnant accidentally and decides to abort the pregnancy simply because she doesn’t feel like having a child. On a side note, the term “pregnant accidentally” is the biggest joke in the book. An accident is when the outcome of an action is unexpected; pregnancy is the natural effect of sexual relations. When it comes to be a life threatening situation for the mother, and it is a choice of mother or baby, an abortion is the proper thing to do. And in cases of Rape or incest a competent knowledgeable halachic (Jewish law) authority needs to contacted.
To judge someone else is not the right thing to do. And I am not trying to judge, just to bring something to light that some people may not have heard about, and to bring something to the front to be discussed that may otherwise not be discussed. It is a difficult topic for sure, but we need to ask ourselves these important questions.
So really is this a good thing? Is this how we want to use the amazing powers of science? To simply get rid of that which may not seem perfect our human eyes?
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