Australian "Experts" Want to Target Down Babies for Eugenic Abortion
AUSTRALIA urgently needs a national screening policy for Down syndrome, experts say, after international research showed it could halve the number of babies born with the incurable genetic condition. Access to the four tests that help detect if a foetus has Down syndrome varies widely between states, urban and rural areas, and public and private patients, leading to stark differences in birth and termination rates... Euan Wallace, professor of obstetrics at Monash University, said: "In Australia in 2008 every single woman should be offered and have access to state-of-the-art screening tests irrespective of age." The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) agrees, saying two screening tests -ultrasound nuchal translucency measurement and serum screening -have a combined detection rate of 90percent. But in NSW, free screening tests are available in public hospital antenatal clinics only to women aged 35 or over or with a family history of chromosomal defects...Professor Wallace said NSW Health's age-based policy is "15 years out of date and not good public health policy".
Can you imagine the if " the experts" suggested that genetic tests be done on all pregnant women to screen for supposedly undesirable racial characteristics or a propensity for homosexuality (if that could be done), with the goal of vastly reducing the number of babies born with those traits? There would a clarion outcry.
Well, that is precisely what is happening in Australia, only the targets are unborn babies with Down syndrome, people that "the experts" want very much to cull from society by preventing most from ever being born. From the story:
This is rank eugenics. Germans in the 1930s called it racial hygiene. Not long ago, it was considered the worst sort of bigotry. Not today, apparently because "the experts" tell us so.
Babies with Down won't be the only casualties of this pogrom, either. Making these tests universal will also result in the unintended deaths of babies that would have been born without a disability. As I noted in a previous SHS post:Two healthy babies are miscarried for every three Down Syndrome babies that are detected and prevented from being born, research has suggested...
Oh well, just collateral damage in the "urgently" needed effort to cleanse Australia from the scourge of the sweetest human beings who walk on the planet Earth.
Culture of Death? What Culture of Death? Wesley, it is all in your paranoid imaginings.
Labels: Culture of Death. Australia. Eugenic Abortion. Down Syndrome.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:26 PM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
I am of extremely mixed feelings about this testing. Although I have many children already, and had previously always declined testing, I recently became pregnant with my first 35+ child, and after some wrestling, went in for the nuchal ultrasound. Not for abortion purposes, obviously, but for advance knowledge of some of the physical risks to the baby that can accompany Downs, like heart defects and intestinal blockages. The hospital I normally deliver at does not have a full-blown Level III NICU, so depending on the baby's health I might have needed to deliver elsewhere. Sadly, it was a moot point, as the ultrasound showed something far worse, that the baby had died in the womb at about 11 weeks.
While I'm as disgusted as anybody at the eugenic (spot on with that, Wesley) tones to the Australian statement, it's important to remember that these tests aren't intrinsically bad, and aren't always search-and-destroy missions. My testing was intended to provide the safest, healthiest possible outcome for my baby.
Agreed Margaret. It isn't the tests per se, although they can be dangerous to the fetus. Sarah Palin and her husband used the news to prepare themselves and their family for Trig's birth, as an example.
But the REASON stated was to cut the number of Down babies born.
Yes, the purpose is overtly for purposes of aborting more of them. In fact, the story complains specifically about differences in _rates_ of abortion and birth between areas that have and areas that don't have easy access to the tests. "Halving the number of children born" with Downs is the overt intention. Very scary stuff.
The amazing recklessness about false positives is also notable. Killing healthy babies apparently isn't too high a price to pay for being sure to root out all of the Down's babies. It's like chemotherapy: Kills some healthy cells but gets all of that cancer. Disgusting.
Hi, Margaret,
I am so, so sorry to hear about your miscarriage. That must be very painful for you. I'm sure that you'll be in all of our thoughts/prayers.
God bless you.
When I was in high school, I had to watch (as part of my 10th grade biology course) a program that showed the life of one family with a high level Down's child, and another where the woman had pre-natal screening and discovered the baby she was carrying had Down's. The thing that sticks with me all this time later, even though I can't recall the entire series, is that the woman who found out about her baby ahead of time opted to abort, and was sitting there crying in front of the camera in grief, talking about how hard that decision was, while the other family talked about how difficult it could be, even though they were "lucky" and their high-functioning son didn't require the constant maintainance that some kids did. I bet they thought they were being fair, but they weren't, not really. They made it seem like a natural, sad decision to have an abortion. I was a teen and thus had no real set feelings about abortion (I don't know any teen that really *thinks* about it, even if one is in that situation - they all react depending on parental mood), but I didn't like that the reason the woman didn't want the baby was all finanacial and personal - it would cost too much money and the baby would be far too much work for her; eventually, she said, she'd never have a life of her own.
Parents: keep an eye on what your kids are being fed in schools. They might have tried to present the story as fair, but given that the family with the Down's boy talked about the "rewarding hardships" they went through, and the woman who aborted talked about the hardships she avoided, I think impressionable minds would be twisted by such a show.
All babies deserve equality and respect. They have the potential to lead full and rewarding lives as contributing members of their families and the broader community. What holds them back is not their intellectual disability but the negative attitudes and limitations imposed upon them by others.
Secular Heretic: Welcome. Well said. We are the ones with the problem.
Most interesting to me is that otherwise intelligent folks miss the elephant in the room: Multitudes of individuals with no mental or physical disabilities lead their families down the path of sorrow and dispair, while, like those, individuals with disabilities are able to live rich and meaningful lives. I'd lament "what blindness!" but it isn't the lack of sight that blinds.
It is a pervasive, pernicious social prejudice that permeates our culture.
When I was going to school, I used to be taunted by people who said that my mother should have aborted me, or that I shouldn't have been born-and I only have a "mild" learning disorder. If people can't even tolerate that, than one can imagine how prejudiced they are against people with obvious handicaps.
I've thought about it, and I know that if I had to choose being a down syndrome person with a kind, loving heart, or being an intellectual like Peter Singer who advocates bigotry and evil, I'd choose down syndrome any day.
What's also concerning is that there seems to be a lack of resources in the pro-choice community to help woman who are being pressured by others or by society to have abortions based on disability, which is a very serious problem. I feel like if that community took more of an interest in preventing this kind of imposition on a woman's choices, there might be more headway made in regarding disability as diversity. Of course, the people who are advocating abortion based on these differences are pro-choice, but just like pro-lifers like me have to deal with prejudiced or violent people in our ranks, so do those who are pro-choice. I know that this has been going on intermittently, esp. in the pro-choice disabled community and their allies, but it has not gotten enough attention or traction within the most vocal abortion rights organizations, such as PP and Naral. Although, I do suspect that NARAL really does have a eugenic mission tied into their pro-choice activities, as their mission statement reads in part, "we support a woman's right to choose when to have children, to bear healthy children..." Within the context of abortion, this doesn't apply to good prenatal care, it applies to aborting late in a pregnancy due to a disability. PP has also hurt the disabled community by joining in the chorus for permitting late term abortion in the case of disability. But, I see the dissent coming from amongst their ranks-there are people within the pro choice community who see this bigotry and are working to counteract it. I really hope that we start to see the fruits of that labor soon.
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