What do you mean 'wrongful birth?'

Part of following Jesus, it seems to me, is to be willing and prepared to push back in His name against cultural forces that attack God, His image bearers and truth. Increasingly, we see this kind of onslaught expressed against the biblical teaching of the sanctity of human life. As Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition has noted, terms like "selective reduction" -- the elimination of one or more unborn children and the saving of one or more siblings in the same womb -- and "after-birth abortion" -- the killing of newly born children -- are used as euphemisms to hide the horror of these practices.

Another such term is "wrongful birth." The term "wrongful life" also is used.

Recently, parents in Oregon won a $2.9 million award from a jury in a "wrongful birth" lawsuit. The couple sued a hospital when it failed to detect their unborn daughter had Down syndrome. They said they loved their daughter, now at least 4 years of age, but they would have aborted her had they known she had the condition. Hence the term "wrongful birth." As Christ's disciples, we reject such a notion, but it is gaining acceptance in the legal world.

I wrote an article for Baptist Press you can read here. It includes what I think are some helpful comments from pro-life bioethicists.

Joe Carter provides a helpful overview of the subject here.

His comment below is worth reading and remembering as we are besieged with such reports:

Like "selective reduction" and after-birth abortion, "wrongful life" is yet one more chilling euphemism in the culture of death's lexicon. The banality of the language and the frequency with which such stories appear makes it easy to shake our heads and move on to the next bit of news; with each story we run the risk of succumbing to "outrage fatigue." But as Christians we must never tire of carrying the Gospel-message that God cares for the weakest and most vulnerable among us.