Even if one believes in abortion for any and all reasons, the dirty looks and “Why did you bring that one into the world?” attitudes should be beyond the pale. (That does, however, reflect the attitude of many toward third children in the latter half of the 20th century; Ender’s Game was not so far off in that respect.) And it presages trouble for handicapped people, as more and more people begin to believe that those who are not “normal” are better off dead.

There are endless possibilities for well-crafted and heart-rending (or terrible and sappy) movies: The father who pressures his wife into aborting a DS child on the grounds that caring for it would disrupt their family life, then becomes paralyzed in an accident and watches his wife make the same calculation. The mother who aborts a handicapped baby and explains to her other children that the child will be “happier in heaven,” then overhears those children saying the same thing to each other as she lies in her nursing home bed. Alfred Hitchcock could do it well.