Choice

Everyone is all abuzz about Mr. John Mc-C's decision to cast Ms. Sarah P as his running-mate. Word on the street is that she's going to do more for the pro-life movement than anyone else could have, based on her choice to deliver a Down's Syndrome child at the age of 44.

This really bothers me. If anything, it's a great story for giving women the ability to choose. There's no question that, on learning her fetus had an extra 21st chromosome, Ms. P was flooded with a million thoughts and emotions. Maybe even guilt, for having conceived at the risky age of 43. Faced with all of those thoughts and emotions, Ms. P made a choice to keep the child, despite the certainty of mental retardation and a lifetime fraught with increased risks of a myriad of medical conditions. And that's great. She has a son who is disabled but will live a happy life full of love, good health care, and support.

But just because Ms. P made the choice she did doesn't mean every other woman should legally be forced to do the same. Women have abortions for plenty of reasons. The majority of those reasons have to do with money, with an inability to provide a safe and healthy environment, with the fear of the impossibility of being both a rising career-woman and single young mother. I don't know the statistics, but I would guess that only a minority of D&C's being performed are due to congenital defects found during prenatal testing.

So who is Ms. P--a successful woman with an established career, the means to provide for a disabled child, and a loving, supportive family--who is she to tell all of female America that, since she did the noble ethical righteous thing of keeping her MR baby, that we have an obligation to do the same? Each woman is different; she has no right to use her story to say: hey look, it's hard but I did it, so you should too. For some women, it's not just hard, it's impossible. And in the care of other women, unplanned and unwanted children - especially with but also without disabilities - fail to thrive, and become scarred dysfunctional beings who struggle as members of society.

Ms. P should feel lucky that because of her good upbringing, good education, good marriage, her decision to keep her son was one that she was able to make enthusiastically and with pride. And she should be grateful most of all that, had she not been blessed with the life she has, she could have made the other difficult choice, without fear of penalty or castigation by people like herself.