David Quinn“eugenics has crept up… almost unnoticed and… society in an almost unbreakable lock grip” within a logic that is “absolutely terrifying” writes David Quinn
In Iceland, 100% of Down’s Syndrome babies have been aborted every year for the last five years. This was only one of a number of very chilling revelations contained in a programme aired on BBC 2 last week called A World Without Down’s Syndrome.
The programme was presented by comedienne and actress Sally Phillips, who is herself raising a Down’s Syndrome child, her son Olly, aged 11. This obviously made the issue very personal for her. Her basic message was that thanks to ever more sophisticated pregnancy screening we are creating a world in which there may soon enough be no more Down’s Syndrome children left.
At present, screening is 85% effective at detecting Down’s Syndrome children in the womb. In her native Britain, 90% of detected Down’s Syndrome babies are aborted, a colossal figure. This detection normally take places at 20 plus weeks, meaning these abortions are quite late term. The babies are well developed at this point. No-one can call them a mere ‘zygote’ or those who defend their right to life ‘zygopaths’ as Fintan O’Toole did recently in an Irish Times column. (So much for ‘calm and reasoned’ debate on the issue.)
Disabled
In another chilling moment on the programme, Phillips interviewed a woman who had her Down’s Syndrome baby aborted at 25 weeks. The woman did not believe it was fair to bring a severely disabled child into the world. She described how she took a tablet to break down the placenta and then the doctors injected a solution into the baby that stopped its heart. This is the reality of abortion that pro-choice campaigners don’t want us to hear about.
What was most chilling was the entirely matter-of-fact way in which the woman described how her baby was killed.
Phillips went on to discuss how a new screening technique is being rolled out and paid for out of public funds that will detect Down’s Syndrome babies in the womb at around 12 weeks, not 20 weeks, and is 99% effective.
Phillips said this has already led to an increase in the number of Down’s Syndrome babies being aborted. Here in Ireland, the Rotunda offers this new form of screening.
The Master of the Rotunda, Prof. Fergal Malone, says of it: “The advent of foetal DNA testing from the mother’s blood is a major advance in screening, which has been available in Ireland for the past 12 months.” This was in November 2014.
What Phillips found is that when women are told that their unborn babies have Down’s Syndrome, doctors and nurses present them with a uniformly bleak picture of what this will mean both for the child and the rest of the family. They are presented with a list of the health problems Down’s Syndrome children face. The child is seen as a burden only, as a burden to itself as well as to everyone else.
But to Sally Phillips her son Olly is a source of joy and Olly himself seems to be very joyful. Phillips spoke to a supporter of earlier screening of Down’s Syndrome babies and this supporter seemed to think she had a killer argument (pun intended) when she asked Phillips what would happen to Olly once she had passed on.
Phillips, needless to say, believes society ought to have something better to offer than the mass aborting of such children.
Eugenics
A few weeks ago I wrote about the rise of eugenics, which means ‘well born’. The belief of eugenics is that genetically imperfect children should not be born at all. Clearly this philosophy is now absolutely commonplace in society and, disastrously, in maternity services around the Western world. The quest for ‘genetic purity’ is on, and the ‘genetically impure’ are being killed in vast numbers before they are born.
There was one weakness in Phillips’ presentation, however. She is herself pro-choice. I suppose the BBC would never have allowed her to make the programme if she was anything else and I guess the British public would simply have dismissed her out of hand if she was not for legalised abortion.
But this only shows what happens when a society has normalised abortion to the extent that Britain has. You won’t even get a hearing unless you are in some way, shape or form in favour of abortion.
Phillips, who came across in the programme as enormously likeable, would probably argue that while she is pro-choice she wishes that more people would make the choice not to abort Down’s Syndrome babies.
She argues that when a woman is told her child has Down’s Syndrome she shouldn’t be presented with a bleak picture only, she should also be presented with the many positive stories out there of people and families living with Down’s Syndrome.
This would certainly be a big step in the right direction because eugenics has crept up on us almost unnoticed and now has society in an almost unbreakable lock grip.
Its logic is absolutely terrifying. If children deemed a ‘burden’ can be killed in the womb, if we are told it is for their own good, then why doesn’t this logic apply after they are born? In fact, it does apply, and fully.
We see it in the way assisted suicide is gaining a hold on Western societies. In Belgium, children living lives of “unbearable suffering” can now offer themselves for assisted suicide.
The inescapable fact is that abortion makes lives dispensable, and not just the lives of the ‘genetically imperfect’ although it bears down on them most severely. In the end it makes all ‘imperfect lives’, or ‘inconvenient lives’ dispensable in the name of ‘choice’.
When St John Paul II coined the expression ‘culture of death’ this is exactly what he was talking about. The situation is growing ever worse and ever more inhumane.