“Is society ready for this pregnant husband?” was the subheading of Thomas Beatie’s 2008 essay about his pregnancy. Mr. Beatie […]
The Season of NICU
We spent all of winter in the NICU. When I was 25 weeks pregnant, I went into preterm labor and […]
Disability (and) Politics: The Fetterman Fiasco of Fall 2022
In Fall 2022, conservative pundits condemned Senator-elect John Fetterman (D-PA), who had survived a stroke the previous spring, using discriminatory […]
“Help, I’m Living in My Research!”: Writing on Abortion in a Post-Roe World
In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, my friend and I were in the midst of writing our honors […]
Menstrual Advocacy Is Flowing and Flowering
When I was researching my first book, The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth-Century America (2009), one of the most frequent […]
A Return to the Abortion Handbook?
During one of my last visits with abortion activist Patricia Maginnis in 2015, she handed me The Abortion Handbook for […]
Modern Medicine Has Improved Our Lives, But What About Our Deaths?
In 1929, a young woman entered Koch Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Her symptoms may have included coughing, difficulty breathing, […]
Can every baby be a Gerber Baby? A century of American baby contests and eugenics
In 2018, Gerber made headlines for selecting baby Lucas as the winner of its Spokesbaby Contest, making Lucas the first […]
‘Phantom Catholic Threats’ and Haunted Legal Futures: Reading the Deal Over Ireland’s National Maternity Hospital
In May 2022, Irish social and mainstream media were alive with heated discussion of the terms of proposed agreements between […]
Prenatal Testing and Counseling: The New Front of the Abortion Wars?
By Ginny Engholm
As everyone who reads this blog (or is on Facebook or Twitter) is by now well aware, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Hobby Lobby case has dealt yet another powerful blow to women’s right to access contraceptives and manage their own health care, reproductive choices, and bodies. But a recent law—this one in Louisiana and regarding prenatal testing and counseling—poses yet another, but much less recognized, threat to women’s reproductive freedom. In May, Louisiana joined several other states (Massachusetts, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland) in passing a version of the Down Syndrome Information Act. This measure is part of the pro-information movement, which attempts to balance disparate groups and agendas within the Down syndrome community by bringing together both pro-choice and pro-life Down syndrome advocates in favor of providing women balanced, medically-accurate, and sensitive information about options when faced with a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. The act as intended requires doctors to give appropriate medical information about the diagnosis and the options. It also requires doctors to give referrals to genetic counselors and relevant support services when delivering a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome to a patient.
