Writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Renate Lindeman says it’s time to take the issue of prenatal screening out of the abortion debate once and for all. Lindeman’s two daughters have Down syndrome. She says pregnant women are not receiving unbiased, balanced and complete information about Down syndrome, and so are not making fully informed choices.

Lindeman would like to see complete information made available before couples are even asked whether they wish to screen. An excerpt:

Singling out a condition by offering routine screening and enabling selective abortion sends a strong value judgment about potential quality of life. Trying to predict the future based solely on their genes opens the door to discrimination, anxiety, fears and underestimating social and environmental factors in maintaining health. Progress that was made over many generations, in terms of inclusion and equal rights, could be lost in less than one.

… At the end of the day, when I look at my daughters, April and Hazel, both living with Down syndrome, I don’t see the genetically flawed children that prenatal screening is trying to eliminate. I see kind-hearted, happy children who are giants in loving and living, who enrich our human genetic diversity and who teach me and everyone they meet what it is to truly feel.

See related article.

Lindeman is a spokesperson for “Down Syndrome Belongs” of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

But there aren’t enough doctors to provide counseling to pregnant women

From the Montreal Gazette:

An article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal warns doctors that they may face more wrongful birth lawsuits if they don’t offer prenatal screening for chromosomal abnormalities to all pregnant women.

But one of the article’s authors says Canada needs to drastically increase the number of doctors who can provide counseling to go along with the prenatal tests. Guidelines issued by Canada’s professional obstetrical and genetics associations last year recommended that pregnant women of all ages be offered prenatal screening for genetic anomalies.

“We need to have strategies in place to rapidly double or triple the number of doctors per population in Canada, because we should be doing this counselling because the guidelines dictate it must be done and doctors have to be given the time to do it,” said Jeff Nisker, one of the study’s authors.  “And the only way for that to happen is for there to be more doctors taking care of pregnant women.”

“This is not a short conversation. This is a very, very long conversation,” he said. Nisker is a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and oncology at the University of Western Ontario.

Among the article’s “key points”:

• The new guidelines emphasize obligations of respect for reproductive autonomy and respect for disabled people; however, tension exists between these obligations because clinicians may be legally liable if prenatal screening is not offered. Research into the implications of the guidelines on Canadian clinicians, pregnant woman, disabled people and the general public is required.
• Canadian professional bodies should work together to provide information to clinicians about informed consent, nondirective counselling and sensitivity to both people with disabilities and pregnant women.
• Professional societies should offer courses that include a discussion of the new standards and resulting counselling obligations.

Writing in National Review Online, editor Kathryn Jean Lopez assembles some of the nastier things that have been written lately about Trig Palin (like he must be so glad he wasn’t aborted). She concludes that Trig’s public presence is bringing repressed post-abortion pain into the open, prompting widespread hostility.

Lopez says that getting to know Trig has been good for America. An excerpt:

Before this election, most Americans did not know that upwards of 90 percent of children diagnosed with Down Syndrome are never born. Now we know. Now we can offer more support to our friends and neighbors living with this challenge. Now we can do something to make sure we let people know they have our support before they eliminate a child who can bring them great joy, amidst the challenge.

Mind you, if we elect a president tomorrow who went out of his way in Illinois to oppose protecting newborns from infanticide — what an outrage it would be to give newborns the same right as older infants, then-State Senator Obama said — we will be taking a bit of a step backward, too, in the fight for a culture of life, though I do believe it will have been more out of ignorance than out of acceptance of that radical and barbaric position.

Or so I hope. And Palin, whatever happens tomorrow, has brought with her to the campaign trail a pleasant change — a witness and an awareness and a blessing. God bless her as she raises Trig, in or out of the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.

On CNN’s House Call, Dr. Sanjay Gupta says children with Down syndrome are living longer and contributing to the workforce, thanks to early intervention and therapy, but they still face ‘frustrating stereotypes.’ He says some parents who receive prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome feel pressured by their doctors to have abortions.

Statistics show that up to 90 percent of American parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to terminate the pregnancy.

In an interview, Dr. Brian Skotko of Children’s Hospital in Boston says termination pressure by doctors is often caused by misunderstandings on the part of doctors. He says doctors are not adequately trained in delivering prenatal diagnoses and often insert their own personal opinions, overemphasizing negative information or actively urging parents to terminate. Skotko offers information about challenges faced by parents of infants with Down syndrome, and shares resources that are available for them.

Gupta airs an earlier report by correspondent Ted Rowlands (video here) in which parents of a young girl with Down syndrome say they felt their doctors were pressuring them to have an abortion. Another couple, who won’t give their names, say they aren’t ashamed of their decision to abort despite their feeling that “there are a lot of people out there who look down on what we chose to do.
”

From the Washington Post:

New prenatal tests employing “gene chips” are already in use, identifying more pregnancies with potential problems and raising concerns that test results will increase abortions, while confusing and needlessly alarming many couples.

Some say they “mark another step toward a society that seeks to weed out aberrations in the quest for the perfect child.”

Proponents say the tests can identify abnormal DNA more sensitively than those available previously, allowing parents to alleviate worries or learn about potentially devastating syndromes early enough to terminate the pregnancy or arrange postnatal care.

But critics say the tests have not been thoroughly validated and threaten to produce a flood of murky, misleading results that will subject emotionally vulnerable couples to unnecessary anxiety, perhaps prompting some to abort healthy pregnancies.

Some worry that the technique could be used to hunt for the rapidly growing list of genetic markers that merely signal an increased risk for cancer, diabetes, mental illness, obesity, addiction and other conditions later in life. Someday, similar tests could perhaps even vet fetuses for traits associated with beauty, personality or intelligence.

… Advocates for the disabled worry   (more…)

Writing in the National Review, Kevin Burke says some of the public hostility and criticism aimed at Sarah Palin may stem from “collective grief, shame, and guilt from personal involvement in the abortion of an unborn child.”

An estimated 133,000 American women receive a “poor prenatal diagnosis” or PDD each year, Burke writes, and 90 percent of these pregnancies end in abortion.

Against that backdrop, Gov. Palin’s message that she and her husband joyfully celebrate their son Trig may strike at a deeply repressed and painful wound in our culture, Burke writes. An excerpt:

Seeing the Palin family, in a very visible public forum, with an uncompromising and public pro life philosophy arouses deeply repressed feelings in post abortive parents, as well as media members, counselors, health care professionals, politicians and others who promote abortion rights, especially the abortion of children with challenges such as Down Syndrome. These powerful repressed feelings of grief, guilt and shame can be deflected from the source of the wound (i.e., abortion) and projected onto an often uncharitable focus upon the trigger of these painful emotions…the Palin family.

… The Palin family’s decision to once again affirm the value of the unborn child, and support a decision to give life confronts the collective grief, guilt and shame of all who have participated in any way in the death of an unborn child.

What we can hope and pray is that Sarah Palin’s story does not continue to feed a disgraceful media feeding frenzy fueled by our post-abortive culture and instead becomes a beacon of hope and healing.

Kevin Burke LSW is the co-founder of Rachel’s Vineyard, a post-abortion healing ministry of Priests for Life.

From the Wall Street Journal:
New prenatal testing technology is allowing doctors to get increasingly detailed information about the fetus during pregnancy, yet many conditions diagnosed prenatally are rare and poorly understood.

Most doctors have little genetics training and lack basic information about the conditions they might diagnose. As a result, more couples are facing agonizing pressure, anxiety and stress during pregnancy.

The Journal traces the story of Parker Carden (above), who was diagnosed with a rare and potentially fatal condition in utero two years ago. His mother, Jennifer Carden, resisted arguments by her husband and her doctors to terminate the pregnancy. It turns out that Parker does have a medical condition, but not the one that was prenatally diagnosed.

Already hospitalized three times, Parker’s medical odyssey has stretched the Cardens’ finances and put a huge strain on their relationship.

See also WSJ sidebar: More prenatal testing brings new worries

“We’re in the business of making diagnoses, not creating anxiety,” says Lisa Schafer, president and CEO of Signature Genomic Laboratories. “But the reality is that when you enter the world of medical science, you don’t always get clear results.”