Abortion: Things Are Worse than you Think

While The Drudge Report is not always the best place to find news (Matt Drudge makes no apologies for sometimes printing stories with only a single source) it is reporting today a very important article on abortion, from the Daily Mail (a British paper). It indicates that abortions are more and more being done for eugenic reasons. In other words, people are aborting imperfect babies whose flaws could be easily corrected with surgery more and more every year. Many arguments have been made against the "slippey slope" warnings of early opponents of abortion, and those who apply it against controversial issues today. This makes you wonder if the nay-sayers dismissed these arguments too quickly.

And the number of abortions of Down's syndrome babies now outstrips live births, despite the fact that those with the condition can live a long and fulfilling life. As screening techniques improve, the trend is likely to grow - horrifying pro-life campaigners.



'These figures are symptomatic of a eugenic trend of the consumerist society hell-bent on obliterating deformity - and at what cost to its own humanity? ' said ethicist Jacqueline Laing, of London Metropolitan University. 'We are obliterating the willingness of people to accept disability. Babies are required to fit a description of normality before they are allowed to be born.'



The figures for 2002 - the latest available - from the Office for National Statistics show more women than ever are choosing to terminate babies with potential handicaps, with such abortions rising 8 per cent in a year.

One of the more common "flaws" cited as cause for abortions is a cleft palate. I grew up with one girl born with a cleft palate whose parents were warned at birth she would never live a normal life, and would probably never speak. She is now married, with two children, and sings regularly in the choir at church. How long until we are aborting children regularly for the wrong gender or eye color or because they are carrying "nerd genes" instead of "jock genes?" GATTACA is close than we had ever thought.