On Dec. 22, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio signed Senate Bill 164 banning doctors from performing abortions in cases in which a fetus is likely to have Down syndrome according to prenatal testing. Despite being staunchly pro-choice, I was primed to sympathize with the bill’s supporters more than ever, given my personal circumstances.

I’d just moved to Ohio shortly after giving birth to my daughter in August. My husband and I are both (very differently) disabled: he, quadriplegic; me, neuroatypical (anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders). Moreover, one of his close family members has Down syndrome. Rhetorical gestures toward “protecting” the lives of disabled individuals constitute a familiar refrain in anti-abortion justifications for legislation like SB 164, with supporters claiming to combat the systemic devaluation of the lives of people with disabilities. But the reality of how this brand of legislation uses the idea of disability to gain political traction is much more complicated.

The business of birth itself is often structured around the specter of disability. My husband and I had just been made privy to this via my own pregnancy and birth experience. An early ultrasound revealed our daughter’s possible congenital lung malformation; that, coupled with my own neuroatypicality, our family history of Down syndrome and my husband’s spinal cord injury, made us an eyebrow-raising trio for every clinician we encountered over the course of my prenatal care.

For six months, I dutifully shuffled into Southern California business parks for twice-weekly ultrasounds, nonstress tests and countless appointments with specialists, growing ever more anxious at the looming prospect of we-didn’t-know-what. Our daughter’s potential lung problem fully resolved on its own in utero — she was born asymptomatic at birth and has been ever since — but I remained designated as “high-risk,” the pregnancy now haunted by solemnity and fear.