One State Aims to Ban Down Syndrome Abortions

Between 60 and 90 percent of fetal Down syndrome diagnoses lead to abortion, according to an academic article reviewing research studies from 1995 to 2011 on the percentage of women who choose to terminate their pregnancies.

In ethics, disability abortions are a huge gray area.

The measure is expected to make it through the state legislature this fall, The New York Times reported. Anti-abortion activists claim that the bans protect the unborn but, when asked how they should be enforced, neither Ohio Right to Life (ORTL) nor North Dakota Right to Life (NDRTL) nor the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) immediately responded to request for comment from The Daily Beast.

The president of Ohio Right to Life, Mike Gonidakis, said the legislation was at the top of their priority list for the legislative session. Laws banning abortion based on motivation are far less common. Or did, anyway, because now the anti-abortion lobby has been targeting these bills as well, skewing legislation to serve its ends, and hijacking the movement.

The proposed bill comes at a very interesting time for the Ohio governor. He argues that “the best way to get people to choose to carry a fetus with Down syndrome to term is to make the words “Down syndrome” less scary” and “get to work building a more inclusive society”.

The executive director of Naral Pro-Choice Ohio, Kellie Copeland, agreed and said, “This is interference with a medical decision following a complicated diagnosis”.

“You go to any supermarket or mall and see these families who just happen to have a child with Down syndrome, and they will tell you how fortunate they are to have those children”, he said. They see the measure as a creeping attempt to undermine the legality of abortion, as decided by the 1973 US Supreme Court verdict in Roe v. Wade.

National and local Down syndrome associations have not taken a position on the bill.

Pro-abortion groups, however, are blasting the law as unenforceable, unconstitutional, and a violation of doctor-patient privilege. States like Kansas and North Carolina have made it illegal for doctors to perform “gender selection” abortions, and Arizona has outlawed abortions motivated by either the sex or race of the child.