Comm 440 Assignment

I have been asked by my Comm 440 professor that I post a blog entry these next three weeks that has to do with what I would like to write my final article on. So here is my first blog post:

The Texas legislature debates over a bill to be passed that will ban abortion after 20 weeks gestation. According to the USA editorial board, “it would make it harder to abort unborn babies that are diagnosed with Down Syndrome.”

 This ban will force woman and couples to make big decisions on a ticking clock.

The editorial said that the law would make it harder for women to get an abortion if they find out after 20 weeks their unborn child has a “serious impairment.”

Some of the serious impairments are that they have a failure of kidneys to materialize, or the development of organs outside the body.

The debate on whether to pass the bill or veto it began July 2.

According to CNSNews.com, a 1998 study by the Department of Newborn Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, “concluded that in 1972, 1 in 1,000 babies were born with the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome.”

Between 1972 and 1974, “there was no pre-natal detection,” said the reporter.

The reporter found that between 1972 and 1994 “the percentage of infants with Down syndrome who were born decreased dramatically.”

The reporter said, “By the late 1980s, pre-natal detection was common among women younger than 35 years and detection was by several. When the (Down syndrome) diagnosis was established before 24 weeks of gestation, 86% to 87% of the parents chose elective termination of the pregnancy.”

The USA Today editorial board said that abortion is “a personal choice.”