Results: Ohio Bill Wants To Make Abortion Illegal When Down Syndrome Is Detected In Fetus

When Hallie Levine was pregnant with her now seven-year-old daughter Johanna, she had no idea that the baby girl she was carrying would be born with down syndrome. Had she been aware of her daughter's diagnosis during her pregnancy, she would have chosen to terminate. Levine's story highlights how critical it is to have access to safe and legal abortion services, after it was reported that in the coming months a new bill which will make it illegal for doctors to terminate pregnancies where the fetus has been diagnosed with down syndrome is expected to be passed in Ohio. If the bill is passed, the state – which already has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the United States – will send a troubling message to prospective mothers by suggesting that some reasons for termination are more valid than others. Do you agree or disagree with this proposed bill?

This bill isn't about protecting people with down syndrome – it's about making access to termination even more difficult for American women. In an essay published by Yahoo, Levine wrote that she found the proposed bill "absolutely appalling." Women in the United States have a constitutional right to safe terminations as a result of the landmark case Roe v Wade, but this access has been slowly eroded over time. Across the United States, a number of abortion services have been defunded making access – albeit legal – virtually non-existent. Bills such as Ohio's send a dangerous message to prospective women by implying that their reasons for termination aren't valid. Do you agree that just because you do not agree with abortion personally, it is still the right for every woman to decide when and if she carries a baby to term?

Agree or disagree with this statement: We don't have to agree with the choices women make for themselves – but we do have to respect their ability, and their right, to make them.

Levine said that in the first few years of her daughter's life she had to go through several invasive surgeries, and still has more to go. Now her daughter is seven, and she loves her dearly, but still insists that if she had been given a diagnosis of down syndrome, she would have opted for an abortion. Studies vary, but anywhere from 67 percent to 85 percent of women who learn their baby has Down Syndrome terminate their pregnancies, according to a 2012 University of South Carolina review published in the medical journal Prenatal Diagnosis. Ironically, she asked her doctor several times for an amniocentesis. She talked her out of it, emphasizing that the blood screening tests she had taken boasted over a 90-percent detection rate. If you have been pregnant, did you have blood-screening that failed to detect a serious life-altering condition in your baby?

If you were pregnant and had a confirmation that the fetus you were carrying had Down Syndrome, what would you choose to do?