In 2004, when my son was 3, I read an article in The New York Times that deeply upset me and has stayed with me. In it, Amy Harmon wrote about fetal genetic testing and the hundreds of “defects” that, even then, could be predicted before birth (this technology has since evolved rapidly, as we know). If an abnormality is detected, parents must make the decision whether to continue with the pregnancy or abort. One woman, with a genetic condition that caused her to have an extra finger, which she’d had surgically removed, chose to end two of her pregnancies because tests detected her fetuses’ having the same condition. This instance is the extreme, but it is by no means an exception.

I support legal abortion and am not criticizing women who have made the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy because of a disabled fetus. There are situations in which the life of the child would be so painful and short that abortion would be the most compassionate option.

I do believe, however, that aborting a fetus with a disability should not be a given. In his book “Far From the Tree,” Andrew Solomon theorizes that families might abort fetuses if their sexual orientation could be determined. What he is touching upon is that there is sometimes a social and prejudicial component in the decision making. (We already know this danger is real; gender-selective abortions still take place in the hundreds of thousands in India and China each year, and in lesser numbers in dozens of countries across the globe.) Genetic testing should be given for the purpose of preparation and decision-making, not as a tool for predicting the quality of a child’s life.

The right to legal and safe abortion is a core element of American feminism and the struggle for women’s rights. This puts me in a strange position. When I think about this issue, I feel my very existence questioned. As a disabled woman, I have been told flat out, “I’d rather be dead than be like you.” Even the Dalai Lama has said that aborting a fetus with a disability is understandable. How do I begin to hold this contradiction in my mind? That I am a valid, beautiful human being — as are all my friends, some of whom have much severer impairments — and that I also support women’s right to choose, a right that logically must extend to a woman who ends a pregnancy because of the prospect of an extra finger? I don’t know the answer, but somehow, I believe the treatment I received as a disabled woman who chose to conceive — the disrespect, the testing, the constant questioning of my capacity to give birth and to be a mother — and my response to it fit into this equation.

Some days, I look at my son, who is now 14, and I want to pull my hair out. O.K., most days. Here I am tempted to compile a list of the ways he makes my life difficult and tedious. But that list is unnecessary. That’s not because my son is perfect, but because he’s perfect to me. Because I love the person he has become, not the person I wish him to be.