I just watched Outlander, and it included this scene:
---backstory: The baby was born a dwarf, and Jamie notes that sometimes superstitious folk would say the child was accursed and would abandon it in the woods for the fairies to care for.
Here, the local children put the baby in the water to see if he would float, an ancient way to diagnose witchcraft. But the baby's uncle Roger rescues the child and stresses he is a child of God, and then baptizes him to emphasize the point.
Why do I bring this up? Because a few days ago I read a news story where a mother justified aborting her near term infant because it had musculo skeletal problems not seen early in pregnancy but found on a later ultrasound, and she aborted her much wanted child because the doctors said the defects might be fatal... from the description it sounds like either dwarfism or a meningocoel: both of which are not fatal.
Like the children in the story, the doctors see a life not worth living: and one does doubt that the mother was given a chance to talk to people who had coped with handicapped children who might not agree with the doctors.
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