In 1973, a few months after Roe v. Wade, McKusick published a new edition of his textbook on medical genetics. In a chapter on the “prenatal detection of hereditary diseases,” Joseph Dancis, the pediatrician, wrote: In recent years the feeling has grown among both physicians and the general public that we must be concerned not simply with ensuring the birth of a baby, but one who will not be a liability to society, to its parents, or to itself. The “right to be born” is being qualified by another right: to have a reasonable chance of a happy and useful life. This shift in attitude is shown by,
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