Max, in his response to the above, makes an unpalatable--but incontrovertible--point, though he doesn't state it very directly: Given that the means of testing a fetus for all sorts of characteristics are becoming more readily available all the time, and given that there is no way to assess and distinguish a woman's "real" motives for desiring an abortion, it's inevitable that the procedure will come to be used by some as a kind of Home Eugenics Kit. And there's *nothing* to be done about it in a preventative sense, as Marta would desire. It doesn't deter my support for abortion rights, but it does make me shudder. Ah, the strange bedfellows wrought by science and technology...