Abortion

I have always been strongly pro-choice in my beliefs about abortion with the argument that abortion is a horrible, awful thing that should still be a choice for the individual, rather than the state, to make. However, I had never realized that I had come to this conclusion because of what I perceived as being the only conceivable argument about being pro-choice. Life As We Know It definitely allowed me to revisit this debate with new eyes. His argument seems strongly for the individual being the only one who is qualified enough on each very unique case to make this decision and I absolutely agree with him. However, I am not sure if I would still hold as strongly to the argument that abortion is necessarily such an awful thing that should cause those involved tremendous guilt and difficulty in finding necessary treatments. Every parent's situation seems far to individual to be able to make any blanket statements.
After reading Freakanomics, which has a chapter devoted to how the legalization of abortions have caused the crime rates in America to drop significantly, I again had to question my beliefs in this debate. Although these two arguments seem to be about very different aspects of abortion they both speak to a relvancy as an important policy to pay attention to. While Freakanomics looks at all abortions, Life As We Know It is specifically focused on predetermined disabled children being aborted and this seems to be a very important distinction. However, when the concept of having less criminals effecting our economic and social structure as a country is applied to the situations that Life As We Know It is discussing I can see some overlap. Some of the sources in Life As We Know It talk about the extinction of downs kids. While I think that the word extinction is stretching it, I'm not sure if this concept is as bad as it intially appears. While it would be horrible to think of murdering people with disabilites after having been through life expereinces and grown into human beings, it doesn't seem so ridiculous to want to reduce the population of special needs children by preventing them from being born. This would lead to a much less stretched budget for the children who were born, either because of the parents decission, or because of not knowing about the disability until birth. I am by no means suggesting that all parents should be recommended by doctors to abort their children after prenatal testing, just that the guilt felt by those who do decide to abort should be less put forth by society. In the same sense that have a lowered crime rate was beneficial to society, having less disabled people to care for as a society would also be beneficial. The quality of life for people like Rachel and Jamie who do use the system would certainly improve with more housing and staff to go around.
However, using numbers to justify such a deeply personal issue seems wrong to me as well and the issue in my mind is not quite settled yet.