I am a midwife Lacey, and now a community nurse, so I know what goes on in labour and postnatal wards here in Australia, and then what goes on in the community in later years.
Do you?

On no occasion in 30 years have I seen even one parent coerced to abort their disabled foetus/baby. They are simply presented with the facts, and then left to decide on this very sad situation for themselves.

It is truly awful watching them go through this difficult decision, and then even worse assisting them through the awful early induced labour, if they decide on an abortion.

Not everyone is up for the difficult job of raising a disabled child, and I know this because I visit the elderly parents of disabled children who are old and sick well before their time.
They love their child of course, but not all people are strong enough to take this lifetime commitment on.

I would never presume to say how or what I would do in this situation personally, and I would not condemn the parents for whichever way they decide to go with their pregnancy. It is their decision alone.

You have identified the problem, Suseonline. “They are simply presented with the facts, and then left to decide on this very sad situation for themselves…it is their decision alone”.
This is chilling.
The very offer of an abortion carries with it a subliminal message that the baby is not positively wanted, is not going to be warmly welcomed by family, friends and the wider community. Her baby's death will be tolerated just as easily as her baby's birth.
When a mother, struggling with the normal ambivalence and emotional vulnerability of pregnancy, receives the news that her unborn child has a disability, what she really wants and needs (and is entitled to receive) is an immediate and whole-hearted welcome for her baby and firm community commitment to support for herself and her family.
She needs to meet with other families (parents and children) who have first-hand knowledge of both the difficulties and the joys of living with the identified disability.
She needs the full "facts" in order to dispel the false stereotypes of disability that dominate our society.
The last thing any mother wants to hear, especially in a situation fraught with fear and anxiety, is "it's your choice", that she alone is to have the responsibility of choosing life or death for her baby.
Such a 'choice' implicitly reinforces her deepest fear that she is alone, that the formidable responsibility is hers alone, and so inclines her inexorably towards abortion.
Even an accompanying offer of assistance "should she decide to keep the baby" cannot suffice to undo the damage done by the offer of an abortion at a time when she needs an unqualified acceptance of her child.
I know that under the current medical guidelines nurses are instructed to provide “non-directive counselling”.
Unfortunately, the current government policy of insisting on “non-directive counselling” is in itself an insidious form of dog-whistling, cleverly designed to ensure rates of abortion of unborn children detected to have disabilities such as Down’s syndrome remains above 90%. Continuation of this programmed decimation of unborn children with Down’s under the benign disguise of ‘choice’ is unconscionable

You continue to insist on missing the point of this debate entirely Suseonline. No one - no one - is condemning the parents (apart perhaps from those who condemn parents who decide to go through with a pregnancy despite being warned their child could very possibly be disabled). Your comments innately reflect a very common attitude in our society - revulsion towards and fundamental rejection of people with a disability. And yes, I do know what I am talking about because I am the mother of a very severely disabled son, and despite all the pain caused to us by societal attitudes such as yours, my son has taught me more about love and courage and the true worth of human beings and dignity than anything else I have ever experienced. And yes, it's been tough, blody tough. But it would all be a lot easier if people like you were able to accept the fact that disability is part of the human condition, and that people with disability need to be accepted and included, not constantly given the message that it would have far better for all concerned if they had never been born.

Disability, in 2013, is not the inescapable lot of any parent and parents who chose to give birth to a disabled or retarded child have rocks in their heads.

An imperfect child is the result of an accident of nature. To force a child to have to live with serious imperfections is not the action of a loving parent.

You wouldn't do it to a dog or cat so why destine a child to a lifetime of misery and frustration to say nothing of the pathetic, tortured lives of the poor parents?

We are allowing healthy children to die from starvation and war yet we spend billions keeping imperfect children in a state of endless, needless torture.

Humans have got things arse-backwards, a not unusual situation!

Your attitudinal prejudice, David G., has disturbing similarities to the views of Dr Gerhard Wagner, head of the Nazi physicians in the 1930s. He too used the health and economic well-being of the adults and 'healthy' children to justify medical termination of the lives of children deemed burdensome:

The Nazi eugenics program was promoted as
“…saving the German people from a steady stream of new moral and economic burdens resulting from genetic illnesses… We prevent unhealthy life from being propagated, saving children and their children from new and enormous misery…”

Fundamentally, in Australia today, approval for eugenics is being given with the same two broad justifications that were proffered in Nazi Germany.

The eugenic purpose of the Nazi abortion programme was rationalized as a ‘humane’ measure: to prevent births to a group because it was alleged it would be cruel to give them birth as their lives are “not worth living”; and secondly because they are “a terrible, heavy burden upon their relatives and society as a whole."

Suffering is made to seem as synonymous with evil, and termination of the life of one who suffers as humane and good. Their claim is that they are preventing suffering by terminating lives of those who suffer.

But suffering is part of being alive—it is part of the human condition—and as fellow human beings (not cats, not dogs),we respond to it with compassion and love and solidarity—with life-affirming care—not with killing.

lacey, "But it would all be a lot easier if people like you were able to accept the fact that disability is part of the human condition, and that people with disability need to be accepted and included, not constantly given the message that it would have far better for all concerned if they had never been born"

What disability and what extent of it do you imagine is 'part of the human condition'?

What limits do you envisage? Should there be heroic rescue at birth, resuscitation and continuing medical intervention and support?

While you can do whatever you like in your own case, but you would always demand community support for the consequences of your decisions, and you have no right to inflict your views on others. Best of luck trying to convince people that gross foetal abnormality caused for example by (say) rogue genes, environment and lifestyle decisions including drug use is 'normal'.

We bless medical research for finding better diagnostic tests so that a foetus can be aborted at that stage where significant abnormality is found. Presumably you would prefer that those advances had never been made. However you still want the medical interventions that extend life where it would fail otherwise. That is cherry picking according to your own slanted view of morality.