A better way to diagnose (and kill) the disabled?!
Jun 13, 2011 / By: Michael Spielman
Category: Abortion in the News
This morning saw the publication of a slew of new AP stories on the subject of prenatal testing. One such story showed up in The Boston Globe, and its insidious final sentence made my blood boil. I literally slammed my fist into the desk when I read it. The story tells us that "companies are racing" to market a new blood test that will be able to detect Down syndrome about two months earlier in pregnancy than amniocentesis can. This is the closing sentence that left me so riled up:
Current screening has already reduced the number of babies born with the syndrome, which now stands at about 6,000 each year in the United States, or about 1 in every 691 babies, said Dr. Brian Skotko, a Down syndrome specialist at Children’s Hospital Boston.
That may seem an innocuous enough statement, but it is no less despicable for it's subtly. The article makes no mention as to how prenatal screening has been able to so dramatically reduce the number of babies born with Down syndrome. After all, Down syndrome is a genetic abnormality. It's an incurable condition. The only reason there's been such a dramatic decrease in the number of babies born with Down syndrome is because there's been such a dramatic increase in the number of babies aborted with Down syndrome. This is not compassion. This is not prevention. This is elimination, plain and simple.
The article in question is not an editorial. It's supposed to provide an objective analysis of fact, but it reads like a press release. It boasts that this new method will "spare many women the need for [an amniocentesis]," but such screenings have never been needed. The report goes on to trumpet the fact that these new results will be available to a woman before her pregnancy begins to show. But why is that significant unless they're inferring that women will now be able to have an abortion before anyone knows they're pregnant?
Even the statement I referenced at the outset is misleading. Despite the way they've framed it, Dr. Skotko is not celebrating the impact of prenatal testing on the "treatment" of Down syndrome. He's bemoaning it. In a separate article on the same subject, Dr. Skotko affirms that the "the vast majority of people with Down syndrome and families affirm that their contributions to their communities are significant, and their lives are very valuable." This should come as no surprise to anyone who's had the privilege of knowing someone with Down syndrome.
The National Down Syndrome Society has devoted a portion of their website ("My Great Story") to sharing the remarkable, heart-warming stories of those living with Down syndrome. All the while, "an estimated 92 percent of all women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to terminate their pregnancies"–a number that is almost sure to go up with "better," earlier diagnosis. This is an outrage, and it displays an ideology that doesn't bode well for the future–as referenced in another of the day's AP releases: "Could prenatal DNA testing open Pandora's box?"
The suggestion that Down syndrome is a fate worse than death is absolutely damnable. I don't know how else to say it, and it's just one of the seemingly endless string of atrocities tied to abortion. For unborn children, it's dangerous to black , it's dangerous to be female, and it is all but fatal to have Down syndrome. God help us. A nation that is arrogant enough to celebrate the violent extermination of the disabled, and call it "progress" cannot be long for this earth.
Michael Spielman is the founder and director of Abort73.com. Subscribe to Michael's Substack for his latest articles and recordings. His book, Love the Least (A Lot), is available as a free download. Abort73 is part of Loxafamosity Ministries, a 501c3, Christian education corporation. If you have been helped by the information available at Abort73.com, please consider making a donation.