{"id":239,"date":"2011-05-27T02:43:25","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T07:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/?p=239"},"modified":"2011-05-27T02:43:25","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T07:43:25","slug":"european-court-case-over-reproductive-rights-in-poland-deals-with-the-selective-abortion-of-a-fetus-with-turners-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/entry\/239","title":{"rendered":"European Court case over reproductive rights in Poland deals with the selective abortion of a fetus with Turner’s syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 26th, European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of a woman in Poland who was systematically denied the opportunity to receive and find out the result of diagnostic test for her fetus in time to selectively abort the fetus. Pro-choice activists celebrate the ruling as a victory<\/a> for the women’s right to choose.<\/p>\n

But the fetus’ condition in question is Turner’s syndrome, which is hardly a deadly disease or totally debilitating condition. According to Turtle Bay and Beyond,<\/a> a international law blog (from the Religious Right perspective, which I disagree with–but I’m just citing them for factual information) :<\/p>\n

\n

The applicant, Mrs R. R. gave birth to a girl suffering from “Turner Syndrome”, a chromosomal abnormality affecting girls, whose symptoms are generally a short stature and sterility. She unsuccessfully requested the prosecuting authorities to institute criminal proceedings against the physician involved in handling her case. Mrs R. R. claims that she has been subject to degrading treatment (art. 3) since she was unaware of the health of her pre-born child and was denied the genetic tests in a timely manner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I am preparing to travel to San Francisco in four hours so I don’t have the time to fully analyze or respond to the case, but I just want to point out that there is a complicated history of dialogues between reproductive rights movement and disability movement over cases like this, which appears to be completely ignored in the celebratory tone of the pro-choice groups’ responses.<\/p>\n

Without going into whether or not a woman’s right to choose extends to the right to selectively<\/i> abort fetuses on the basis of its real or perceived disabilities (or sexual orientation, etc.), pro-choice activists need to recognize that this is a complicated matter and take special care not to imply that people with Turner’s syndrome or other conditions and disabilities do not deserve to live.<\/p>\n

Further, if we truly believe in women’s right to choose, we need to work toward eliminating societal barriers to raising children with various conditions and disabilities or to living with such conditions. The birth of a child with Turner’s syndrome does not need to be a tragedy to be avoided at all cost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 26th, European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of a woman in Poland who was systematically denied the opportunity to receive and find out the result of diagnostic test for her fetus in time to selectively abort the fetus. Pro-choice activists celebrate the ruling as a victory for the women’s right to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,14,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}