From today's Washington Post (of all places): The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have
If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?....Whenever I am out with [my daughter] Margaret, I'm conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don't know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.
This is a great editorial. Please go read the whole thing and come back.
...here's one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what's driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman's right to choose whether to have a baby; it's also about a woman's right to choose which baby she wants to have.
Where to start?
-- the idea that Margaret might be a -- are you sitting down? -- "living embodiment" of the *gasp* pro-life movement!!????!!!!!! Seriously, are "pro-lifers" really that scary to the left? Are we the villians in the bedtime stories they tell to their children?
-- I can't get over the implication that there are people out there who are so blinkered by politics that the very existence of a particular human being is nothing more than a political statement: to them, Margaret is nothing more than a walking, talking bumper sticker.
-- The prenatal weeding out of disabled children makes the constant yelping about "diversity" even more hypocritical.
-- One of the dangerous things about making Hitler the new Satan is that it's easy to ignore how we're falling into the same trap. Aside from that unfortunate Jew-killing thing, Hitler had many qualities that would be much admired today: he was nice to animals, he was a vegetarian, he detested smoking... and he was all about making poor those poor crippled children didn't suffer. Face the facts. Before the Nazis got started on the Jews, they warmed up on their own disabled citizens. "Life unworthy of life." "Useless eaters."
But then, apparently people with Down's syndrome don't count as human beings, do they?
-- the idea that we have the right to judge other people's lives as worthy or unworthy of living...
-- and that only a life of perfect health is deemed worthy of living. You know that as soon as an "obesity gene" is identified and can be tested for.... because of course we can't have fat people in the master race it would be unfair to subject children to the risk of being teased.
I would only question the title of the article. "The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have?" Please. The pro-life nut-jobs have been trying to have this debate for years. A few years ago, I heard with my own ears Father Groeschel make this very point: that in the future, only a few families -- mostly Christians and traditional Jews -- would have mentally disabled children. The others would have been aborted.
An obesity gene? Sorry, this is off-topic, but isn't that like a sad excuse for just not eating right? People think it's hereditary because fat parents have fat children, but did they ever think that maybe it is because the children are eating the same stuff as the parents?
Now back to the topic,... I know what you mean about Hitler, I have the same opinion, he was just "ahead of his time", that's why to the rest of the world his ideas were maniacal and evil. But we are slowly getting there as a society, had Hitler been born in say a hundred years from now (at the rate we're going) he'd have probably been hailed a hero, or something.
Or maybe not,... because see, at the rate we're going, in a hundred years or so, the only people having more than one or two kids (or any at all) will be those same traditional jews and christians, and by then there'll be so many more of us, that they'll just have to disappear... That's my only consolation to all this.
You're good.
Are "pro-lifers" really that scary to the left? Are we the villians in the bedtime stories they tell to their children?
For some, yes. I suspect they need to offset the nudgings of conscience. Since we (and Margaret) reinforce the wrong of abortion, pro-choicers can externalise their rejection of their own conscience.
Just a thought.
Coucoumelle -- An obesity gene? Sorry, this is off-topic, but isn't that like a sad excuse for just not eating right?
It's been pretty well established that there are genetic components to being predisposed to obesity. It's not a single gene, though -- there are over 200 mechanisms that just control the regulation of appetite, never mind everything else.
Matthew -- pro-choicers can externalise their rejection of their own conscience I could see that.
Dear Mr Luse -- how you flatter me.
Coucoumelle,
Yes, there is a definite genetic component. Look at it from the opposite aspect, very often when you have two parents who are ectomorphs (boney) who can eat everything in site and not gain at all, it is not odd for there offspring to have a similar build and metabolism.
There is a 'thrifty' gene, it was a 'gift' God gave those who lived in lean areas. Basically, it enabled those people to store calories as fat so that they could survive harsh winters with little available food. The classic example is the Pima indian tribe. However, in an environment of plenty, with no lean times, this lifesaving genetic gift becomes a burden, a predisposition to obesity.