WARNING: DSD and other expectant mum's beware, this one might hit a little too close to home for you personally.
Seeing both Jawbox's thread and DSDs reminded me that something else Mr. Ambrya and I are "talking about talking about" is deciding under what circumstances--assuming Ambrya 2.0 does go into production someday soon--we would decided not to continue the pregnancy if something were to go wrong. Our logic is that it's better to discuss this and make the decision before we find out there's a problem, rather than after. Because if we find out that something has gone wrong, it's already going to be a highly emotional time and by the time a lot of these defects can be detected, there's not a great deal of time left to take action before the law says you CAN'T take action, if that's what you decide to do. Better to make the decision beforehand, when it DOESN'T feel like the world is crashing down around you, so that at least you know what your course of action will be.
I really don't want this to turn into another pro-choice/pro-life debate thread. Let's assume the pregnancy is wanted and that there's every intention of keeping the baby. In other words, abortion has NEVER been a consideration before now and never would be under normal circumstances. However, you get an ultra-sound or amnio with results that indicates a problem with the fetus. What is your criteria for deciding whether or not to interrupt the pregnancy?
There are, of course, a range of possible defects, from very mild to very severe.
There's trisomy-21 (Down's syndome) which means the child will be mentally retarded, though there's no predicting to what degree.
There's trisomy-18 which means the baby has a greater than 90% chance of not surviving past its first year of life.
There's Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndome which means the baby is born with only part of a heart and, assuming it survives birth, will need at least three heart surgeries before the age of 2 and a complete transplant before the age of 15.
There's various neural tube defects, which range from Anencephaly which means even if the baby survives to birth, it won't survive more than a few hours afterward, to Spina Bifida which means the child will be physically handicapped (in varying degrees of severity.)
So under what circumstances, if any, would you interrupt? What would your rationale be?
For our part, we're both pretty firm on interrupting if it's a defect that is incompatible with life--and this includes Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, which means if the poor baby survived most of its life would be quite painful and difficult even (if!) after a heart-transplant could be arranged. But we're on the fence about defects which would result in physical or mental handicap. A lot of this is due to the fact that you never know just how severe such a handicap will be--on one hand, it would be a shame to terminate if the child has a chance of living a mostly-normal life, but on the other, if the defect is quite severe, the child could end up in a great deal of pain. And there's really no way of knowing which would be the case.