In the portion of their reply directed to me, Professor Asch and Dr.
Wasserman helpfully develop the synecdoche argument by highlighting its
connections to stigma. I understand them to distinguish the situation of a
woman making a decision concerning her pregnancy informed by prenatal
testing from a woman making a similar decision informed by considerations
of, for example, poverty, like so: In testing contexts, it will
characteristically be the case that the woman's decision will be
distorted by the stigma associated with impairment: She will consider
only the fact that, should her pregnancy come to term, the child
would be impaired; she will not be able to attend in a satisfactory manner
to a fuller range of possible features, both good and bad, that may
characterize the child's life and her experience of being the
child's parent. The woman considering whether to terminate her
pregnancy due to, say, poverty will, in contrast, typically be able to
deliberate in ways more responsive to a broader range of relevant matters,
as the possible child's poverty will not be the only thing
she is in a position to take into account about her or his life and their
life together. Further, even where poverty or some other factor
influencing decisions about terminating or continuing pregnancy are
stigmatizing, they are not as thoroughly stigmatizing as are
impairment-related conditions, due to prevalent confusions about the
immutability of traits seen as biological rather than social.