Part two of Theresa Shea's interview about her new novel, The Unfinished Child. She talks about the parallels between parents of children with Down syndrome and typically-developing kids, the relationship between choice and selfishness, and why fictional accounts of prenatal testing experiences matter.
"Even though I was an active member of our local church, it hadn’t crossed my mind to discuss the prospect of testing with anyone there. I saw prenatal testing as a routine medical aspect of pregnancy rather than a series of decisions that require wisdom and humility and bring up questions about suffering and goodness and meaning."
A priest gives a woman who planned to abort her fetus with Down syndrome the option of adoption. Jezebel accuses him of coercion. But maybe this type of action is one way out of the politicized and polarized abortion wars.
" I had treated the decision to accept prenatal genetic testing as an inconsequential matter that required minimal discomfort and no risk to my health. But I now realized that my initial decision could lead to a series of life-changing ethical, emotional, and spiritual choices that I wasn't prepared to make."
"I wonder if there's any hope of entering an age with a new story, a story that isn't as dramatic as Heath White's or Chloe Ashton's, a story that doesn't rely upon an entry point of grief, a story that doesn't need the tension of transformation."
Jimmy Jenson's story inspires me. And it makes me very sad, because across the globe people believe that a life like his is not possible for their child.
Why, at a time when more and more fetuses with Down syndrome are aborted, are we celebrating the lives of the children and adults growing up in our midst?
