An article in yesterday’s Boston Globe entitled, “The problem with an almost-perfect genetic world,” included this:
Supporters of abortion are especially wary of wading into a discussion over the ethics of prenatal testing, lest they be seen as playing into the opposing side in the fraught national debate over abortion rights.
The topic was a November 10 announcement in The New England Journal of Medicine of reliable prenatal screening for handicaps that can be conducted earlier in the pregnancy.
This means moms will be able to abort defective babies sooner rather than later, which is good. (Although we’re told abortions are safer than eating an ice cream cone, early abortions must be 110% safe as opposed to 100% later.)
The fact that pro-aborts don’t want to talk about this surprises me and is useful information. After all, “fetal anomalies” is one of the big four reasons pro-aborts use to keep abortion on demand legal (the other three being rape/incest and health and life of the mother).
So let’s talk about it. On page two are compelling points to ponder, many surprisingly brought forth in the BG piece.
[Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe.]
Hat tip: Dr. Joseph and Mark Pickup
Just as handicapped people are winning the fight for greater inclusion in our society, they will find their numbers dwindling. The same politicians heralding the Americans for Disabilities Act are fighting for the right to kill those diabled Americans prenatally.
What about HIV+ babies?
Will the day come when children with “previously existing handicaps” are denied insurance if parents don’t abort?
80% of Down syndrome children are now aborted
As numbers of people with certain conditions dwindle, less money is likely to be devoted to cures and education. “If you terminate pregnancies with a condition, who is going to put research dollars into it?” the BG quoted Nancy Press, professor of medical anthropology at Oregon Health and Science University.
The more people are conditioned against bringing certain kinds of babies into the world, the less they will tolerate them once they’re here.
Smaller numbers will mean even greater isoloation and loneliness. “Loneliness is one of the most significant challenges they face,” the BG quoted Anthony Shriver, founder of Best Buddies, a nonprofit org that helps people with intellectual disabilities form friendships.
Who decides what qualifies as an abortable handicap? As fewer perfect people are born, will the bar continue to raise? What about deafness? Or Type I Diabetes? What about adult onset disorders like Huntington’s Disease?
As prenatal testing advances, will the time come when even nonhandicapped qualities like brown eyes or red hair are checked?
Where do you draw the line? There are four degrees to spina bifida, ranging from incapacitating to barely noticable. Or what about a 95 IQ, which is borderline normal?
While some argue advanced prenatal testing will result in “pooer man’s gene therapy,” others argue only the wealthy will be able to afford genetic testing, leaving the poor to deal with the infirmed.
Children are taught not to bully and to accept one another’s differences. We encourage them to raise money for Jerry’s Kids or the March of Dimes or the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation or the Special Olympics. What are adults teaching by killing those same people? “At what point are we engaging in eugenics and not accepting the normal diversity withint a population?” the BG quoted Mark Rothstein, director of the Bioethics Institute at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I have no problem with women using prenatal testing in their decision to gestate or abort. I almost did when I received a false positive for downs. Luckily, they ran the numbers again and everything turned out okay.
I find nothing wrong with genetic testing and the abortion of a fetus with Down Syndrome.
Why is there all this talk about “tolerance” and “diversity,” but as soon as we know that a child will be different, it’s considered a reason to abort? Where is our respect for diversity, when we consider people whose minds work differently, or who aren’t as healthy, or whose bodies are different, ought to be put to death in-utero so the rest of us don’t have to share our world with them?
No, so the woman will not be saddled with raising a child that will never grow up for the rest of her life.
I would like to get on Jill Stanek e-mail list.
Thank you,
Georgie Scott
gscott@tacnet.missouri.org
If you think that aborting a child just because he or she happens to carry an extra chromosome is acceptable then you are ignorant of the facts. Don’t kill before you learn the complete truth. Seek the potential that every child has before making such a harsh judgment on God’s creation. No one on this earth is perfect. And my child who has DS has just as much and more to offer this world than people who have a false sense of what is “normal”. Test numbers don’t equate to equal love for a child.