The right to choose to abort a disabled child.

Part of the right to choose is the decision which factors count. Those who don't accept the right to choose in its full form may want the government to restrict some sorts of prenatal tests, so women who want to consider various defects and conditions will not be able to look at all the factors they would like to consider:

... Kirsten Moore, president of the pro-choice Reproductive Health Technologies Project, said that when members of her staff recently discussed whether to recommend that any prenatal tests be banned, they found it impossible to draw a line — even at sex selection, which almost all found morally repugnant. “We all had our own zones of discomfort but still couldn’t quite bring ourselves to say, ‘Here’s the line, firm and clear’ because that is the core of the pro-choice philosophy,” she said. “You can never make that decision for someone else.”

Those who support the right to choose do not have to feel dissonance here -- not yet, at least. Abortion rights respect the pregnant woman's moral autonomy, and that respect should embody a belief that the individual is best at making the decision about what will happen inside her own body (even when it means the destruction of a developing one). The new prenatal tests will test not only the condition of the unborn child but also the soundness of our respect for the autonomy of the woman. If we see a graphic demonstration of prejudice, narcissism, and eugenics instead of a difficult engagement with morality, it will shake our belief in the superiority of individual decisionmaking.

(Note: The linked NYT piece refers back to this article, which appeared in the paper on Wednesday and which I blogged about here. The new article quotes my blog post.)