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an Ohio bill [would] ban abortions in cases where a pregnant woman has had a positive test result or prenatal diagnosis indicating Down syndrome. Physicians convicted of performing an abortion under such circumstances could be charged with a fourth-degree felony, stripped of their medical license and held liable for legal damages. The pregnant woman would face no criminal liability.
Several other states have considered similar measures, triggering emotional debate over women's rights, parental love, and the trust between doctor and patient.
The Ohio bill's chief Senate sponsor, Republican Sen. Frank LaRose, said Republican lawmakers accelerated the measure after hearing a mid-August CBS News report on Iceland's high rate of abortions in cases involving Down syndrome. The report asserted Iceland had come close to "eradicating" such births.
[...] Doctors and medical students are fighting the measure.
Parvaneh Nouri, a third-year medical student at Wright State University, told lawmakers it would do little to stop abortions but could stop information-sharing between patients and their doctors.
“It destroys the trust of our patients, for which we have worked tirelessly over generations of physicians to cultivate,” she said.
Indiana's version of the law has been blocked by a federal judge while North Dakota's law has gone unchallenged due to the state's only abortion clinic not performing abortions after 16 weeks. An Oklahoma bill that would prohibit abortions based on any genetic abnormalities did not reach the state Senate.
Previously: Down Syndrome Births Nearly Eliminated in Iceland
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday September 26 2017, @02:36PM (2 children)
"The report asserted Iceland had come close to "eradicating" such births."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FakeBeldin on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:33PM
We've had that discussion before. Iceland itself has not eradicated anything, it's its inhabitants choosing aborting when considering the options. [snopes.com]
Iceland offers free pre-natal screening for down syndrome. Doctors are required to tell pregnant women that they can be screened.
Some of them do. Some of those that do, get the unfortunate news that there is something out of the ordinary, such as Down syndrome.
As it turns out, of those that do opt for prenatal screening, AND that screening finds Down syndrome, a large percentage choose abortion.
Quoting snopes:
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday September 26 2017, @05:19PM
When they say "Iceland has almost eradicated such births" you should read it as "babies with Downs syndrome are aborted".
Now I, in particular, think that's probably a good thing. Let's analyze this as if it were a financial problem faced by a corporation:
If the mother, who has the greatest sunk investment cost, thinks it's time to stop throwing "good money after bad", she's probably right. Were she to give birth, would the state be willing to take the entire cost of raising and caring for the kid? (Even that is asking her to spend more on what is at best a dubious investment.)
That said, Iceland *is* a special case, due to the extensive inbreeding of the population. But you don't get rid of Downs syndrome that easily, as it continually recurs via spontaneous mutation. It's rather like hemophilia that way. It's a severe enough disability that people who possess it don't usually reproduce, so it has an inheritance that's nearly zero. But it spontaneously recurs. (Actually hemophilia is worse, because it's most common cause is a recessive mutation. So carriers can pass it on without themselves showing the symptoms. But it's sex linked, and in a way that causes all male carriers to express the trait. Even so it's so strongly selected against that it's rarely inherited.)
So you don't get rid of Downs syndrome babies by cleaning the gene pool, because it's a developmental problem. Chromosomes improperly assorting during meiosis. And it can crop up in ANY family. Including yours.
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