Jacob and Anya

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Jacob and Anya were high school sweethearts and went to college together.  After college Jacob got a job in marketing, and Anya went on the law school.  Two years after graduating college, Jacob and Anya were married.  They decided that it would be best if they waited to have children until after she completed her law degree.  After finishing law school, Anya and Jacob decided that it was now time to start trying for a family, since they had decided that they wanted to have three children.  They tried for over a year and a half before deciding to consult with a fertility specialist.  Dr. Adams eventually recommended in vitro fertilization, and implanted Anya with four embryos, of which two were successful.  Jacob and Anya were elated; they were finally going to be able to start their family.

            When Anya was twelve weeks pregnant, Jacob’s mother admitted to him that he had an older brother who had died before he was born who had Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.  Jacob was devastated, and immediately asked for the twins to be tested for the disease using amniocentesis.  The twins were genetically tested for various diseases in addition to Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.  While neither of the children came back as a carrier for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, one of the fetuses came back as a carrier for down syndrome.

            Jacob declared that he believed that they should terminate the child with the down syndrome, because he thought that it was wrong to knowingly have a child who would be significantly affected by a genetic disease.  He further stated that they ought to consider their healthy child who would not get as much attention, if they had to constantly care for their disabled child.   Anya did not know what to do, while she understood Jacob’s argument, she was torn.   However, she eventually decided that it would be better for their family and their future healthy child to terminate the pregnancy for the child with the down syndrome gene.  The physician would have been willing to terminate the pregnancy in the case of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, because of the hardships on both the parents and the child.  However, the physician  does not feel right about aborting a child with down syndrome, since he has a child which is developmentally delayed.  Should the doctor preform the abortion on a fetus?

--Written by Amanda Zinger