UK Govt. Fights to Keep Eugenic Abortion Information Safely Sealed Away
Pro lifers in the UK are seeking transparency--that's the big new buzz word, isn't it?-- about eugenic abortion in the UK, and apparently the government is trying to squelch the news. From the story:
They have accused officials of using restrictions that are more heavy-handed than those used in terrorist trials, to exclude them from a tribunal which will decide whether statistics on foetuses aborted because of disabilities will be published.That's always the excuse. But they just don't want the truth out--to the extent that the government doesn't even want them allowed in the hearing:The hearing next month will decide whether figures on the number of babies aborted for disabilities such as cleft palate and club foot should be published.
While abortion is only legal in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy if carried out on social grounds, it is legal to abort a foetus which has a serious risk of physical or mental abnormality, right up to birth. In 2005, after a public outcry over the termination of a foetus with a cleft palate at 28 weeks, the Department of Health (DoH) stopped publishing abortion statistics if fewer than 10 cases were carried out. Details of abortions on foetus with club feet, cleft lips and palates and webbed fingers and toes were no longer published.
The Information Commissioner has ordered the release of the figures, requested by the Pro-Life Alliance campaign group, but the DoH is resisting, claiming that the data could lead to women who have late abortions being identified.
During discussions about restrictions at the hearings, Government lawyers referred to procedures used in terrorist trials, when lawyers are not allowed to discuss the most sensitive evidence with their clients, before going further, to request that the alliance are entirely banned from proceedings.Well, such acts are best done in secret. It keeps the collective conscience from being disturbed and the national self image from being tarnished.
Julia Millington, from the alliance, accused the Government of a "serious misuse" of the judicial process to shield the debate from scrutiny.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 12:51 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
This reminds me of the article I just re-read the other day of the twin who was accidentally aborted because his/her parents were trying to abort his/her twin with Down Syndrome, in which the parents said that they were "desperate" and "unable to sleep at night" because of the mistake. I have to confess that I felt an unattractive sense of vindication for all fetuses aborted because of down syndrome, in that the perfect child that the parents wanted was destroyed in their discrimination against the targeted fetus. They would have been spared all of that heartache if they hadn't been too prejudiced to welcome both their children into the world, which is why such people don't want this information being shared-they want everyone to feel nothing but sympathy for parents who make this decision based on disability. It shows the ugliness of abortion's contribution to the destruction of a very important minority group, and no one wants to admit to doing that.
This is not the only portrayal of our peaceful and law-abiding prolife movement as a threat.
A recent 'fictional' thriller broadcast at peak time on a Sunday evening by our supposedly impartial BBC depicted members of a real British prolife organisation (clearly identifiable from context) kidnapping and killing young children in order to achieve their real and known objective of having their video showing the reality of the abortion process broadcast on mainstream television.
Guess we must be doing something right if we have to be attacked in this way!
Pauline-Sheesh. Talk about the government biasing the news on purpose to control people's minds.
You don't need to be a pro-life to see that the Labour government needs replacing, but it helps.
The thing is, they are so feverishly convinced of the necessity for them to be there that I am not at all sanguine about the propriety of the next election. Perhaps this blow against pro-lifers marks a change in gear in their campaign to use laws conceived to fight terrorists in the war against Labour's greatest enemy, the British people.
Given that U.K. and E.U. banking system is even more on the ropes than our own, this kind of bioethic issue is going to the the last thing on the minds of Britons for the next few years.
Makes no sense. I haven't got a clue why aborting is better than giving birth and placing a child up for adoption.
The most plausable explanation I heard was that the mother - and father in the case I read about - didn't want to riks "bonding" to the child if they let it live. That it would be too hard to give it up for adoption if they had fallen in love with it.
Which has to be the most insane excuse I've ever come across.
It boiled down to, the baby's imperfect and we don't want it right now, but if we keep it to birth we might want to keep it forever, and be stuck with the expenses.
Very insane thinking.
That's about the only kind of thinking that I can say accounts for people aborting their sick children. It's cheaper to abort than to take care of them themselves, but if they go through with the pregnancy, they might want to keep the baby after all.
But there are plenty of people out there who willingly adopt disabled kids - some who are on a long list of people waiting to adopt disabled and mentally disadvantaged kids.
Another possibility is the fact that the parents are ashamed to be giving birth to a baby that's disabled.
Like, I could give a child up for adoption, but everyone would know I did because it was disabled, and I'd have to bear both the stigma of having a baby that's less than perfect and then the stigma of not being a good enough parent to keep the child. I lose face either way.
What's sadder is that private adoptions can be handled in such a way that nobody has to know that the woman in question had a disabled baby and gave it up. Granted, some of the family might know, if the parents chose to make the matter known, but that doesn't mean that a social stigma would be the default for the birth parents.
So nobody necessarily has to know that a woman is giving birth to a disabled baby. It's easy enough to say that, after the child is adopted, the baby was a still-born. It happens, still, even though not as much as it used to, but it keeps everyone from knowing, if you're ashamed to be labeled a "bad parent" for giving your baby up. And if you're ashamed that your offspring was imperfect, it saves you from having to worry that people will think you're defective, too.
There just aren't enough good reasons to abort, not really. All the reasons I hear are bad.
I'm shocked that they're doing what they're doing already. Now I understand more why a lot of other things that shouldn't be are going on. Life is life and not to be messed with.
You know...
There was this story I read as a kid called The Fisherman's Wife. A fisherman captures a magic fish and lets it go. When he tells his wife, she demands that he ask the fish for a better house. The man reluctantly does so. She's happy for a little while, but then she wants an even bigger house, and then she wants a mansion, a palace, to be king, to be Pope, and finally to be God. When she demands the fish make her God, the fish puts them back in their little hovel.
I get this feeling that modern life is a lot like that. At first we only want a little improvement, and we're happy for a while, but then we get restless and want more, until we're not content unless we're the one controling the sunrise and sunset.
Maybe that has something to do with the desire for eugenic abortion. Maybe our society wants so badly to be in total control that people would rather kill their own children than give birth to a child with a disease or disability they have no control over.
I mean, look at how parents shuffle kids around to band practice, football games, soccer, dance class, etc. Ever seen those episodes of "World's Wildest Police Videos," where fathers are going insane and scream at little league coaches because a kid from another team got a hit off his kid's ball? Or how parents push their children to succeed at everything?
It's one thing to want to have mastery over your own self. That's a good thing - a person who masters his body and becomes a vegan, for example, or becomes a monastic. A person who denies herself sweets and fasts periodically for the clensing of her body and/or soul. These are all good things.
But this control freak attitude toward others, *especially* children, both born and unborn, is just plain crazy. I guess we pick on kids because they're so helpless and dependent on us.
T.E.: Part of narcissism is wanting to control everything and everyone. Except oneself. It can be wanting to destroy others in order to be able to do as one pleases, too.
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