Advocates of persons with disabilities have warned of “plummeting” numbers of people with Down syndrome because they are being systematically eliminated through abortion, the Daily Telegraph reported Friday.
“In countries where early screening is routinely offered, almost all women opt to abort the affected unborn baby and try again,” states the article’s author, Lois Rogers. “The global Down’s syndrome population is therefore plummeting.”
While well-known utilitarians like Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins insist that mothers should abort their children with disabilities or genetic anomalies and “try again,” other bioethicists disagree, Rogers observes.
“It is extraordinary that instead of supporting our fellow human beings with Down’s syndrome, and their parents, unconditionally, we are inviting their parents to end their lives,” said Dr. Helen Watts of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre.
“The absence from our community of people with Down’s syndrome leaves those individuals who do succeed in being born with a justified sense that they are no longer welcomed by society,” she added.
As Breitbart News reported last week, Heidi Crowter, a young UK woman with Down syndrome, recently challenged a law allowing abortions targeting children with Down syndrome up to birth, charging that the law is discriminatory.
A British court ruled against Crowter, contending that not all mothers will want to carry a pregnancy to term if they believe the child will be born with Down syndrome or other disabilities.
“The fight is not over,” Crowter said following the decision. “We face discrimination every day in schools, in the workplace and in society. Thanks to the verdict, the judges have upheld discrimination in the womb too.”
More and more children with Down syndrome are being aborted thanks to England’s introduction in July of NIPT (non-invasive prenatal testing) screening, “a blood test which detects the rogue extra copy of chromosome 21 that causes Down’s syndrome,” Rogers asserts in her article.
“Campaigners for Britain’s estimated population of 41,500 adults and children with Down’s syndrome say this is the road to eugenics,” she adds.
Similar debates are occurring across the pond.
Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on abortionists’ request to block Texas’ heartbeat law, Newsweek contributor Richard Hanania warned that banning post-heartbeat abortions could flood red states with children with Down syndrome and other disabilities.
While many supported Hanania’s concerns, many others observed that such considerations have been used in the past to justify eugenics.
One of those to jump in the fray was Princeton University Professor Robert P. George, who reminded his readers of similar arguments used by the Third Reich.
“Why is ‘Down Syndrome’ trending on Twitter?” George asked in a tweet. “Because some people are arguing we need permissive abortion laws so we can ‘screen’ for people with Down’s and kill them in utero. So wrong. No member of the human family is inherently superior or inferior to any other in basic dignity.”
“Sometimes it’s worth remembering that what became known as the Holocaust did not begin with the murder of Jews, or Slavs, or Romani,” George continued. “It began with the killing of the disabled and cognitively impaired. They were regarded as ‘useless eaters’ and declared ‘Lebensunwertes Leben.’”
“Claiming that we are ‘eliminating Down Syndrome’ by killing people with Down Syndrome — so long as we catch them early enough — is like claiming that we are ‘eliminating poverty’ by killing poor people,” he contended. “It is barbaric and the very thought of it should fill us with revulsion.”
In Friday’s article, Rogers notes that in countries like Denmark, which introduced NIPT screening 5 years ago, more than 95 percent of Down syndrome babies are aborted, while in Iceland, no babies with the disorder are believed to have been born in four years.
Citing a study published by the European Journal of Human Genetics, Rogers writes that in just four years — from 2011 to 2015 — the number of babies born with Down syndrome in Europe dropped by a remarkable 54 percent.
Moreover, many women who elect to go to term with their pregnancies even with a risk of giving birth to a child with disabilities are routinely pressured by doctors to abort their children, Rogers writes. Medical personal also frequently underscore the difficulties associated with Down syndrome rather than social and medical advances that have facilitated raising a child with the condition.
Rogers concludes with a citation of 42-year-old actress Rebecca Hulbert, the mother of two-year-old Arthur, who has Down syndrome.
“I feel very sad and worried,” Hurlbert said. “Are we trying to create a master race of identical children all capable of going to Oxford, or do we also want people who can read how you’re feeling and give you a hug?”
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