OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

The Ethical Case for Having a Baby With Down Syndrome

By Chris Kaposy
April 16, 2018

My wife’s ultrasound turned up something abnormal in the baby’s

Prompt 1
heart — an otherwise innocuous feature that correlates with genetic How does the
conditions such as Down syndrome. A series of tests confirmed that our writer start the
5son indeed had Down syndrome. We were given the option of abortion, essay? Why
but my wife, Jan, already regarded him as our baby, and a few months mentioning his
son?
later Aaron was born.

The first days after the diagnosis were hard. We thought about our son’s future, and our future.
10We went through a period of grieving. But we soon came to accept that Aaron would have
Down syndrome, and to accept him as a member of our family. By the time Aaron was born, it
was a joyous occasion. Today, almost nine years later, Aaron is an affectionate boy with blond
hair and a crooked smile. He is passionate about hockey (we’re Canadian after all) and about
animals. If he could grow up to be anything, he would probably be a veterinarian.
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Many parents make a different choice. In the United States, an estimated 67 percent of fetuses
with prenatally diagnosed Down syndrome are aborted. In Canada, the rate could be even
higher, though there aren’t any reliable studies on it. This has become a front in the American
abortion-rights debate, and bills have been passed in North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana and
20Louisiana (and introduced in Utah) that make it illegal for a doctor to perform an abortion
because of a positive prenatal test for Down syndrome.
Prompt
What is the meaning of pro-
My wife and I are pro-choice and oppose placing limits like these choice and why is it important
for the writer to mention it?
on abortion. Nonetheless, I wish more people would include
25children with Down syndrome in their families. For this to happen, What new laws meant by the
we don’t need new laws; we just need more people to choose to writer? What is it for?

have such children.

I understand the emotional turmoil that a prenatal diagnosis can

30bring. But after parenting Aaron through difficulties and joys and Prompt
From line 28 onwards, pay
seeing the curiosity and delight he brings to our lives, I wonder attention to the use of signal
why more people do not choose to bring children like him into the words that signify contradiction.
They mark the transition from
world. they say to I say. Identify the
‘they say I say’.
35People with cognitive disabilities are, of course, commonly
subject to ridicule, even by political leaders. I don’t mean just President Trump — President
Barack Obama once made an offensive joke about the Special Olympics (he apologized). People
with Down syndrome have tried to counter bias against them by speaking out about how they

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 contribute to their communities. But acceptance in our communities seems scarcely possible
40without acceptance into our families.

Having a baby with Down syndrome may seem too

45 demanding to some prospective parents. It may seem that
those of us who choose to have children with Down syndrome
are either irresponsible or saintly. From my experience,
however, such parents tend to be utterly normal and
levelheaded people.
50
Parents of children with Down syndrome have written
The author’s son Aaron
extensively about their lives and have contributed to many
research studies, as have people with Down syndrome themselves. These sources tell us
that the lives of people with Down syndrome tend to go well. Their families are as stable and
55as functional as those that include only children who aren’t disabled.

So why is there such reluctance to have children with Down syndrome? One explanation
shows up repeatedly when parents recount the early days after receiving their child’s
diagnosis. They feel a sense of loss because they no longer dream that their child will get
60married, go to college or start a family of their own one day — in other words, that they will not
meet the conventional expectations for the perfect middle-class life. In fact, some people with
Down syndrome do accomplish those things. Nonetheless, hopes and dreams of perfection
might be a strong motive for parents to choose abortion.

65After the initial phase of grief, however, parents of children with Down syndrome tend to
leave behind concerns about perfection, and embrace a new outlook that values acceptance,
empathy and unconditional love of their children. And researchers note that those parents
feel pride in their children.

70Perhaps the question to ask is: Why do we have children at all? Most parents would agree that
it is not only so that they can replicate a conventional arc of a successful middle-class life:
college, marriage, real estate, grandchildren. If those are the reasons to abort fetuses with
Down syndrome, they seem disappointing — they are either self-centered or empty in their
narrow-minded conventionality. Aaron will probably not become a veterinarian, and that’s
75O.K. Childhood dreams often harmlessly go unrealized. He could still get a different job
working with animals, and that would make him happy.

Prenatal tests enable our capacity to choose, to some degree, the children we will raise. And
those who are pro-choice typically embrace this autonomy in reproduction.
80
Prompt 4
But the concept of autonomy can be understood in different The writer concluded the essay
ways. In one sense, it simply means being free to choose, without with a conditional statement.
infringement by the government. But, in a richer sense, it means Use deductive reasoning to infer
the label the writer slapped on
choosing in accordance with one’s own values. people who take the opposite
85 side.

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If you value acceptance, empathy and unconditional love, you, too, should welcome a child with
Down syndrome into your life.

Chris Kaposy, an associate professor of bioethics at Memorial University of Newfoundland and

Labrador, is the author of “Choosing Down Syndrome: Ethics and New Prenatal Testing
Technologies.”

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