[tri-med] The Dream of the Perfect Child

Sorry again for my absence, I am totally consumed by my research at the moment 
(thinking and researching trisomy 24/7). I do have a question though - does 
anyone have the book The Dream of the Perfect Child by Joan Rothschild? Or 
Quality of Life and Human Difference.
I can only find one review of the Dream book and it sounds great. 

This is a provocative, historically informed inquiry into the effects of 
prenatal testing on pregnancy and public attitudes toward disability. Joan 
Rothschild argues that, beginning in the 1970s, women's experience of pregnancy 
underwent far-reaching transformations as a result of the expanded use of 
ultrasound, amniocentesis, and genetic testing. Prenatal testing held out to 
women the prospect of bearing children free from inheritable and congenital 
diseases, defects, and deformities. Yet far from providing reassurance and 
increasing maternal control over the birth process, prenatal diagnostic 
practices had the unintended effect of intensifying pregnant women's anxieties 
and making the fetus, rather than the mother, the focus of medical attention. 
Testing fostered the illusion of control, while, generally, the only options 
parents had were to continue or to terminate a pregnancy. Prenatal testing also 
carried profound implications for thinking about disabilities and physical 
imperfections. It inspired efforts to screen not only "at-risk" mothers 
(usually defined as those over the age of thirty-five or those who had given 
birth to a child with a disability) but all pregnant women, and it encouraged 
an attitude among some physicians, genetic counselors, and parents that 
disabilities, far from being a natural part of human difference, should be 
avoided at all costs and that imperfect pregnancies should be terminated.

The second sounds like its written in "academicese". 
They are available on Amazon but as I would be buying from overseas it makes it 
a significent purchase and I was wondering if anyone had already read them and 
could give me an opinion?

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
                                            -- Josh Billings

Keep Looking For Rainbows!!
   _--_|\
 /Karen \
 \ _.--._ /
          v Karen, Mum to Alex (13 years, T-18 Mosaic) I really must change 
that signature!!
http://members.optushome.com.au/karens

                  Building ___ooOOoo__ Rainbows
                       www.trisomyonline.org
                  Families Helping Families On-line

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