Hershey, Laura. "Choosing Disability." Ms. Magazine July/August 1994. pp. 26-32.

Hershey’s article begins with the assertion that fear of disability played a key role in the legalisation of abortion in the United States in the 1960s following the scares due to thalidomide and rubella. She argues, "Abortion based on disability results from, and in turn strengthens, certain beliefs: children with disabilities (and by implication adults with disabilities) are a burden to family and society; life with a disability is scarcely worth living; preventing the birth is an act of kindness; women who bear disabled children have failed" (28/9).

The "pro-choice" movement, which has been quick and vocal in its condemnation of pre-natal screening for sex selection, still supports the abortion of foetuses with predicted disabilities. Hershey argues that abortion should be a basic right, but that women should not and must not use fears and prejudices against disabilities as a means to ensure that right. She points out that throwing "foetal defect" in with rape, incest and life-endangering complications (as legal justification for abortion) speaks volumes about this culture's intense fears about disabilities.

Hershey asks whether society is trying to eradicate certain disabilities (I believe the literature suggests that, yes, society is) and questions whether that should ever be a goal. She acknowledges the concerns of the pro-choice movement that any questions about motives provides fuel for the anti-choice brigades but presents concerns by disability rights advocates that pre-natal diagnostics and abortion to eliminate disabilities represent the dawn of a new eugenics.

See also Cowan,"Genetic Technology and Reproductive Choice: An Ethics for Autonomy."