When is a life not worthy of life?

I am working on a paper for an ethics class. I am looking at "life at the margins of life" - people who are close to death, people who are just born, but severely disabled, infants in utero who have been screened and found to have a potentially serious defect...then I found this article over at worldmagblog.com:

The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have
Prenatal testing is making your right to abort a disabled child more like "your duty" to abort a disabled child.

By Patricia E. Bauer
Tuesday, October 18, 2005; A25

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?

I have struggled with this question almost since our daughter Margaret was born, since she opened her big blue eyes and we got our first inkling that there was a full-fledged person behind them.

Whenever I am out with Margaret, I'm conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don't know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.

Imagine. As Margaret bounces through life, especially out here in the land of the perfect body, I see the way people look at her: curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed. I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living.

Click on the title to read the rest.

How many of us would abort a child if we knew that it was going to be a serious burden for the rest of his or her life? What about those parents who talk about the joy that a disabled child has brought to the entire family? Will those people who allow their defective children to be born and to live (yes, some parents let their defective newborns die of intentional medical neglect in the hospital) be shunned for bringing a less than perfect child into the world?

I find this issue extremely peturbing.

---Katie