A A NYTimes article on prenatal testing and the burden of the consequent choices.

But some couples who terminate pregnancies for fetal health conditions say no one has a right to judge them. A child psychologist in Atlanta who terminated a Down syndrome fetus earlier this year said she was outraged by people who told her, “If you have to have a perfect baby, you shouldn’t be a parent.”

“I was like, `What!?’ ” said the psychologist, who is 35. “I’ve always been pro-choice, but now I’m pro-choice with a vengeance. Don’t tell me I have to have a baby with Down syndrome just because you say so.”

And Cristy Hollin of Gladwyne, Pa., is unapologetic about having invasive procedures to test fetal cells early in the two pregnancies that followed the diagnosis of her first son’s condition as fragile X mental retardation. Neither fetus tested positive for the condition, but if they had, she said, she and her husband had planned to have an abortion.

“You love your child,” said Ms. Hollin, who was told that the best she could ever hope for her fragile X son, who is now 11, was that he could one day read well enough to take a bus on his own. “But the fact is it’s really, really hard. When we went to have our other kids we said we’d be fools not to know everything we can.”