The Extinction of Down Syndrome and the “Wrong” of Abortion

According to some, Down Syndrome might become extinct in the next few years due to the increased ease of prenatal testing and a quite negative shift in public opinion concerning the condition:

What do most women do when their baby tests positive for Down’s? They abort. Around 90 per cent of pregnancies that involve the condition end in a termination. In 2014, 693 abortions were carried out for this reason – a jump of 34 per cent since 2011. The rise is blamed on increased access to blood tests via private clinics. American campaigners warn of the risk of “extinction”. In Denmark, the head of a midwife association blandly told a newspaper: “When you can discover almost all the foetuses with Down Syndrome, then we are approaching a situation in which almost all of them will be aborted.”

Why would nearly all parents want to abort babies with Down Syndrome? Because Down Syndrome babies are inconvenient and challenging. In other words, for the same reason any woman aborts a child. And that reality sheds a strange light on this whole debate. Watch this author for the Telegraph desperately attempt to both protect abortion rights and condemn the savagery of exterminating Down Syndrome babies:

It’s the woman’s right to make this choice and the reasons why it’s taken are entirely understandable. We’d all be frightened of the thought of being left to ourselves to care for a disabled child. But these fears are shaped by a popular culture that, for all its apparent sophistication, remains remarkably ignorant about the realities of Down’s. . . .

I’m not making a case for banning abortion in instances of diagnosis, rather that mothers who discover they are pregnant with a Down’s Syndrome child should be informed of all the options available to them. One is to terminate, which is a woman’s legal right. The other is giving birth and raising a child who can contribute to the world in their own particular way. . . .

We get it. We get it. You’re a good liberal. You’re not trying to infringe on a woman’s “right” to abort her baby. But we must ask, “Why not?” Why are you defending abortion at all when later liken it to “barbarism disguised as reason.” I would add that abortion could also be called barbarism disguised as compassion.

Why is abortion in the case of Down Syndrome so much more repugnant to the liberal mind than other abortions? Because it exposes the truth concerning abortion, and they often don’t even see the connection. According to the compassionate leftist, the abortion of a Down Syndrome baby happens when two selfish and ignorant parents, pressured by a callous and superficial society, are unwilling to give up their own ideal or sacrifice their own convenience for the sake of the helpless and unique person they brought into the world.

The leftist is able to see more clearly here because babies with Down Syndrome are disabled. They are different. The normalized abortion of Down Syndrome babies is just another sign to the leftist that society wars against diversity and change. In those terms, the extinction of Down Syndrome and the Holocaust of the “Unfit” begin to look quite similar: an attempt to burn out the different ones, the weak ones, and the useless eaters.

The problem is that “normal” babies are not all that different from Down Syndrome babies: they are weak, helpless, inconvenient, difficult, challenging, and different. And their parents are no different: selfish and ignorant. And society is no different: callous and superficial. Nothing is different. When will we wake up to what monsters we have become?

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