It is my hope that this click-baity title will resonate with a sense of poetic justice. Last year I had an interesting conversation with a friend. He had never been introduced to the idea of genetic counseling, and after a conversation broadly introducing the idea of genetic counseling I made the claim that it is a form of eugenics. In the very base of the language, “screening”, where a screen is synonymous to a sieve, implies that something is being selected out, and what lives are terminated reflect implicitly assumed white supremecist, capitalist, and ableist ideals.
In some of these cases, tests indicate that a fetus will be stillborn, that the birth will seriously endanger the person who is pregnant, or in a stickier situation that the fetus will have a terminal illness that kills them as a newborn. I include these examples to acknowledge that reasons to pursue an abortion are highly individual and nuanced; I do not claim to fully understand nor do I shame any individual who makes such a decison. That said, at a social level there is a disturbing phenomenon of screening for and aborting fetuses flagged as having non-terminal disabilities such as down’s syndrome, and there is a lack of recognition that individuals participating in this phenomenon are responsible. On the contrary, these abortions are largely justified and even framed as a heroic deed on two grounds: reducing burden on parents, and reducing suffering of the child.
