To the Editor:
Your article and editorial (“Abortion and Down Syndrome,” Aug. 25), about proposed legislation in Ohio to prohibit abortions because of a Down syndrome diagnosis, pointed to the lack of prosecutions in North Dakota, the only state with such a law, but did not mention the true purpose and potential impact of the law.
North Dakota enacted its Human Rights Act to protect people with disabilities in 1983. The federal government followed in 1990 with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Nevertheless, protection from discrimination did not extend to the womb.
Until the passage of North Dakota’s prenatal nondiscrimination act in 2013, the message sent to people with disabilities was: Your disability does not make you any less of a person, but it would have been O.K. to kill you in the womb solely because of your disability.
We then inexplicably expected our state’s agencies, businesses and residents to embrace and take seriously policies against disability discrimination. We should not be surprised that wrongful discrimination against people with disabilities continues when society says that such people are so much a burden that it would have been acceptable to kill them, if only their disability had been spotted early enough.
Bans on abortion for reasons of sex selection and genetic abnormalities may not lead to prosecutions. We may never know if they stop any abortions. They do, however, give greater consistency to our laws, and legitimacy to our claims to become a more inclusive society.
CHRISTOPHER DODSON
Executive Director and General Counsel
North Dakota Catholic Conference
Bismarck, N.D.
