Andrew Adeola
There has been a recent push by abortion proponents in Ohio to ban abortions if the rationale for termination is to avoid having a baby with Down syndrome. Since Gov. John Kasich was elected in 2010, he has signed a number of laws aimed at restricting the decision to abort a fetus. The breadth to which he or the state may exercise political influence and authority to enact a poorly thought-out bill that circumscribe necessary abortions is a matter of ongoing dispute.
As defined by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, a woman has the legal right to seek an abortion until the fetus becomes viable. Under the ruling, no state has the constitutional provision to regulate abortion during the unviable stages of gestation.
The only exceptions permitted by the court are laws proven “sufficiently important” in the sense that the abortion would violate afforded protection to a woman’s health or prenatal life. The decision of what is determined to be sufficiently important is left to the state’s appraisal.
There is no law in Ohio banning abortion based on motivation. Nonetheless, the proposed legislation threatens to do just that by circumventing the Supreme Court’s decision. If approved, the law would create an awful precedent for future restrictions on women’s health and privacy in the state, and perhaps many other (red) states.
Can a law that bans abortion based on motivation — specifically, to avoid predispositions to genetic anomalies such as Down syndrome — be considered sufficiently important?
Whether or not you agree with my stance, our opinions are subjective and can matter only if they are supported with logic and reason. Here are my reasons:
The proposed legislation encroaches on parents’ and women’s health care decisions and autonomy. It challenges their freedom and capacity as a rational individuals to make informed personal decisions that guide their lives — decisions no one but them will be forced to live with.
Moreover, the bill aggressively singularizes all parents, women and their situations, and does not take into account the factors that contribute to the decision to abort; it also does not reflect the unique circumstances of those it would affect.
More importantly, the bill interferes with medical decisions after diagnosis. When physicians discover an aberration in their patients, they are faced with a medical decision and are legally obligated to inform the patients or those who make their health care choices of the diagnosis and offer the patient the potential measures for resolving or managing the anomaly.
Operating physicians sometimes have to remove a limb or organ surgically from a patient, or perform a fetal surgery. In both scenarios, necessary actions are taken to avert some vulnerabilities.
Under the proposed Ohio legislation, a teenage parent who barely can take care of herself or an assiduous mother whose lifestyle does not permit diligence in parenting would be denied an abortion if either chose to abort an anomalous fetus with known predispositions to Down syndrome as a preventive measure. They would be deprived of their right to exercise a preemptive and calculated decision intended to avert deleterious and likely fatal results — a decision proponents of the bill seem unable to fathom or simply do not care for.
Perhaps proponents of the bill might justify banning abortions of fetuses predisposed for Down syndrome because they devalue or discriminate against those with the disability.
The problem with this reasoning is that it misconceives the reason people abort fetuses showing traces of mutations. The lives of those with the disability are not being devalued or discriminated against. Instead, parents are trying to prevent a genetic anomaly from occurring. Why allow a genetic accident to occur when it is preventable?
People with Down syndrome are not so much devalued, but embryos with the mutation are, with respect to the desire of the parent. Therefore fetuses with this syndrome are not being devalued in light of their potential for well-being, but the opportunity to have a fetus that does not have the mutation is.
This bill is nothing but a restrictive law that punishes parents who know they are unfit to parent a child with Down syndrome. Should we then feel dignified that in an effort to prevent a perceived evil, we created another by forcing the vulnerable to allow circumstances that make them feel indignity? That reasoning doesn’t appear “sufficiently important.”
