[tri-med] Re: The Dream of the Perfect Child

Sorry can't help you. What about your local library? BTW are you 
receiving "personal emails" ? I have sent a couple to your personal 
address, but got no response.

At 04:30 PM 29/10/2007, you wrote:
>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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>28/10/2007 1:58 PM

Jocelyn, loving Nanna to Tess with Trisomy 18 aged 10 & 1/2 years

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

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