New developments in prenatal monitoring certainly can be seen as positive although this latest news from the United Kingdom is less than encouraging. As reported by LifeNews.com there has been a 34% increase in the number of abortions on babies with Down syndrome since a new genetic test became available in 2011. From the article:
Although most of the medical community praises the new screening, fetal medicine specialist Dr. Bryan Beattie, aired a different perspective on the testing. He said, “The real issue next, in around two or three years’ time, will be an ethical one – where do you stop? Do you screen for breast cancer genes, for Huntington’s – or taking it a step further, test for eye and hair colour?”
Canada is not immune to this either and we ought not deceive ourselves. This technology is being used as a tool for eugenics, in an attempt to “improve” society by eliminating less-than-perfect pre-born children.
LifeNews.com interviewed Hayley Goleniowska, a mother of a child with Down syndrome. She said, “I fear it will lead to a larger abortion rate of babies with Down’s. In quieter moments I weep to think of what we could lose. Women need unbiased information – it’s not the test that worries me, it’s how it is implemented.”
Events over the past one hundred years have shown us what happens when taking the life of another human being is justified under the guise of eugenics. If Canada is going to give human rights more than lip service, we can tolerate modern-day eugenics no longer.
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Lily’s parents were devastated. Nothing had prepared them for this traumatic experience, and they will not leave the hospital without this terrible memory following them.
This week, researchers at the University of Montreal released the results of a study showing that, between the years 2000 and 2012, similar traumatic events had been experienced by 218 families who decided their child’s life was not worth living. The only difference? Lily’s parents wanted her life ended two years after she had been born while the 218 children reported on in the University of Montreal study were still some weeks from being born before being delivered prematurely and then left to die.
The National Post covered the results of the study with an article that began with, “Better testing for birth defects has given rise to an unusual phenomenon: growing rates of abortion ending in ‘accidental live birth’”. It also suggests that this raises “difficult ethical issues.”
No one would accept that the manner in which (the fictional) Lily’s life was ended ought to be legal. Yet we live in a country where no child has protection prior to his or her birth, even if they are old enough to live outside the womb, as the 218 children in Québec were. How is it that an eight-inch journey down the birth canal magically transforms us into human beings worthy of protection? Why is Canada the only democracy in the world that affords no protection to the smallest members of the human family?
Dr. Natalie Auger, lead author of the University of Montreal study, recommends that new clinical guidelines be developed to ensure that parents are counselled before bringing their pre-born children to the clinic. She is concerned that parents are not fully prepared for the possibility that their baby might be born alive and would like them to be better prepared for these traumatic experiences. Her response is incredibly callous, and illogical. It has been said that asociety will be judged on how it treats its weakest members. In Canada, it is perfectly legal to kill a fully developed child, provided he or she is on the other side of the birth canal. This injustice will only be corrected when our elected lawmakers stop treating pre-born children as a political liability and ensure they receive the same legal protections as born Canadians.
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When the horrors of the Holocaust became public in the 1940s, eugenics faded to the background. But once again we are witnessing science being manipulated in an attempt to create a more “perfect” society.
New developments in prenatal monitoring certainly can be seen as positive although this latest news from the United Kingdom is less than encouraging. As reported by LifeNews.com there has been a 34% increase in the number of abortions on babies with Down syndrome since a new genetic test became available in 2011. From the article:
Although most of the medical community praises the new screening, fetal medicine specialist Dr. Bryan Beattie, aired a different perspective on the testing. He said, “The real issue next, in around two or three years’ time, will be an ethical one – where do you stop? Do you screen for breast cancer genes, for Huntington’s – or taking it a step further, test for eye and hair colour?”
Canada is not immune to this either and we ought not deceive ourselves. This technology is being used as a tool for eugenics, in an attempt to “improve” society by eliminating less-than-perfect pre-born children.
LifeNews.com interviewed Hayley Goleniowska, a mother of a child with Down syndrome. She said, “I fear it will lead to a larger abortion rate of babies with Down’s. In quieter moments I weep to think of what we could lose. Women need unbiased information – it’s not the test that worries me, it’s how it is implemented.”
Events over the past one hundred years have shown us what happens when taking the life of another human being is justified under the guise of eugenics. If Canada is going to give human rights more than lip service, we can tolerate modern-day eugenics no longer.
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It is only a short one hundred years ago that eugenicists in Britain and the United States began putting their ideas into practice. As they strove to create a perfect society, the weak, blind and disabled were sterilized and institutionalized to prevent them from pro-creating. These ideas soon proved fatal as the Nazis took eugenics to the next level by killing their own disabled citizens as a means of preventing weak genes from entering the human race.
When the horrors of the Holocaust became public in the 1940s, eugenics faded to the background. But once again we are witnessing science being manipulated in an attempt to create a more “perfect” society.
New developments in prenatal monitoring certainly can be seen as positive. But Canadians ought not deceive themselves. This technology is being used as a tool for eugenics, in an attempt to “improve” society by eliminating less-than-perfect pre-born children.
In the National Post, Chris Selley writes,
“Richard Dawkins is advocating something that people are already doing. But we’re not supposed to be talking about it.”
Events over the past one hundred years have shown us what happens when taking the life of another human being is justified under the guise of eugenics. If Canada is going to give human rights more than lip service, we can tolerate modern-day eugenics no longer.
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