I'm not saying "maybe you should have thought of that before you got pregnant" and clearly, my statements can't be applied to disabilities incurred during childbirth or early childhood and etc. I'm saying that if you find out you're pregnant and then find out your kid is going to be seriously unable to care for itself in any way throughout its entire life, while still pregnant, I don't think your first choice should be to decide to keep the kid a kid forever. (Yes - the article doesn't say that it should be your first choice, either. But I think maybe if you're pregnant with a kid you know you won't be able to take care of, maybe you shouldn't have that kid. It's terribly armchair-view of me, I know. People have all sorts of feelings about having children, I know. Silly me for caring about those a lot less. My position, of course, doesn't apply to all children with disabilities or even all cases covered by or discussed in the article. Sue me for not covering all bases.) Sure, parents make controversial decisions about what they want their families to look like all the time. Sure, it's really easy to have emotions about it from an armchair. Sure, we're all glad we don't have to make these choices or have these thoughts. Sure, I can say "Never ever ever" all I want and it doesn't mean I actually would "never ever ever" if I was in that situation and everyone can point that out and agree with it until we are blue in the face. Sure, what the article talks about should only be a last-case resort. Sure, it's easy to decry the mistakes of others. So what? Sure, we could argue about how much choice a disabled child has in their life at all even before their parents unilaterally decide to permanently alter their bodies in truly significant ways so why does it matter they don't have any choice in that, either? I don't care. I'm still disgusted.
Your visceral reaction still comes from a place of "there must be a better solution than this" while the article profiles people whose lives have revolved around a solution-space where "this" has become their best option. I can only speak for myself, and for myself, I had our daughter tested for genetic anomalies before we knew she was our daughter. I was deeply worried. Those tests aren't cheap, though, and they aren't covered by insurance. And lots of people still don't have insurance. And lots of people are less prepared to have a kid than you should be to shop for a car and babies happen anyway. Tragedy is often the intersection between naïveté and inexperience. Still, it unfolds. So what? So flippancy is the act of granting yourself permission for inattention. Be disgusted. That is, after all, the point of the article. But at the same time, the article also highlights a situation in which there are no good choices, and those frontiers are often the vanguard of civil society. When we pretend the hard stuff is easy we surrender choice to the slick instead of the thoughtful. Build a wall. Mexico will pay for it.