A disability diagnosis should not be a child’s death sentence: Vote no on Virginia’s Amendment 1
by Mary Marslender · The Washington TimesOPINION:
Virginia voters have many reasons to oppose Amendment 1, the proposed constitutional amendment regarding “reproductive freedom.”
As a former member of the National Council on Disability and the Virginia Board for People with Disabilities and the mother of a child with special needs, I worry most about how, if adopted, the amendment would allow expectant parents to terminate their unborn children’s lives because of a fetal anomaly or disability.
The commonwealth’s official explanation of Amendment 1 fails to acknowledge this, but Virginia already has a permissive law regarding access to abortion.
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Current law allows abortion for any reason in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. In the third trimester, abortion remains permitted, but only when three separate physicians certify that “the continuation of the pregnancy is likely to result in the death of the woman or substantially and irremediably impair the mental or physical health of the woman,” according to Virginia Code § 18.2-74.
By contrast, Amendment 1 would allow abortion in the third trimester whenever the procedure “in the professional judgment of a physician is medically indicated to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.”
This language reduces the number of physicians needed to certify the mother’s condition from three to one and significantly lowers the clinical threshold for certification.
Pro-abortion medical groups would certify that virtually any woman wishing to terminate her pregnancy would suffer physically or mentally if denied an abortion.
The proposed new language of Amendment 1 would allow virtually unlimited abortion on demand at any point in a pregnancy. It would therefore also allow expectant parents to decide to abort their children late in pregnancy if prenatal testing detects anomalies or disabilities.
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The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has noted in its clinical guidance that abortions later in pregnancy frequently occur because of severe fetal anomalies or disabilities. Some of these disabilities may be fatal to the fetus at or shortly after birth, but some may not be fatal.
Regardless, by liberalizing late-term abortion in Virginia, Amendment 1 would allow parents to abort their children for practically any reason, including disability.
As it is, society continues to discard and devalue the lives of those perceived as unworthy. Systematic reviews published in Prenatal Diagnosis indicate that American parents decide to abort at least 67% of fetuses with a Down syndrome diagnosis; in European countries such as Iceland, Denmark and Britain, the termination rate ranges between 90% and nearly 100%.
As the mother of a child who faced significant health-related obstacles in her first weeks and months of life, I understand the anguish of parents who receive a prenatal disability diagnosis. Still, even if my daughter had not lived long after birth, I would never have given up the gift of bringing another human life into the world, nor would I have taken it upon myself to destroy that life prematurely, no matter the reason.
Thankfully, my daughter survived her medical ordeal as a newborn to become a thriving adolescent. On her behalf and on behalf of all vulnerable children with no one else to speak for them, I will vote no on Amendment 1 because a disability diagnosis should not become a child’s death sentence. I encourage you to vote no as well.
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• Mary Marslender is a former presidential appointee of the National Council on Disability and a disability advocate.