The Abortion Issue

The issue of abortion has always been controversial in around the world, but when the issue is in your own neighborhood it hits home. The United States has been struggling with the rights of abortions since the infamous decision of Roe v. Wade. However, with the increase of technology the many questions of the mother's rights are being shifted to the notion of the "cult of perfection".

D. I. Bomage writes an article entitled, Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion: A Result of Cultural Turn? this was printed in the June 2006 issue of Law and Medicine. Bomage begins the article with a brief overview of the current advances of medical technology in the area of prenatal care. Tests have become more sophisticated and are able to identify such conditions as, Down's syndrome, club foot, cleft lip, cleft palate, congenital heart defects, and neural tube defects. Furthermore as medicine advances so does the list of identifiable chromosomal disorders in fetuses.

Of course the ability to identify such defects is a medical miracle, but the results are not so tasteful. Studies have revealed that if the prenatal test is positive most women chose to have an abortion, regardless of the defect and if it can be surgically treated. Mark Evans, a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the US says that, "most couples whose results show their child would have a serious chromosomal defect choose to terminate the pregnancy".

The medical advancements have shown tends in selective abortion, "between 1982 and 1992, the number of babies born with cleft lip fell by 43% and the number of babies born with club foot fell by 64%, even though both cleft lip and club foot are rectifiable surgically". The trend has been explained in "terms of cost effectiveness or the avoiding of a poor quality of life for a child with disabilities".