There is No Defense for Killing Babies With Down Syndrome in Abortions
Periodically—actually more than periodically—I run across stories that are absolutely schizophrenic about children with Down syndrome. The same person who tells us how blessed she or he is to have this special needs child will, in the next breath, casually say it is perfectly fine to abort a child who is prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. Why? The all-purpose excuse: opposition to governmental “interference.”
This goes back aways but illustrates perfectly what I am talking about. The topic was an egregiously tasteless, brutal, uncaring observations of Ruth Marcus, who wrote for the Washington Post for almost 40 years before resigning in a huff last year over changes instituted by owner Jeff Bezos.
Let me set the stage.
After some to-ing and fro-ing (including bashing pro-lifers), Marcus announced that had she discovered that either of her children had Down syndrome,
I can say without hesitation that, tragic as it would have felt and ghastly as a second-trimester abortion would have been, I would have terminated those pregnancies had the testing come back positive. I would have grieved the loss and moved on.
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Read that again. “I would have grieved the loss and moved on.” Even years later, this unfeeling, callous, even flippant response stuns me.
“I’m going to be blunt here: That was not the child I wanted. That was not the choice I would have made.”
Give “birth to a child whose intellectual capacity will be impaired, whose life choices will be limited, whose health may be compromised”? Don’t be silly.
After Marcus rightly got clobbered, what did she do? She doubled down, and the Washington Post looked pretty (how should we put this delicately?) insensitive. What to do? Run another column, this one by Tim McQuire, a guy who, on the surface, was the very opposite of Marcus.
Went to Catholic school, learned about the barbarism of “some culture’s ancient custom of leaving deformed children on the mountainside,” is himself born with a serious malformation, and on the top of that willingly accepts his child who has Down syndrome. A saint by comparison, McGuire told us when his middle son is born
The bumbling, insensitive doctor suggested that we commit Jason, adding that “some people even take them home.”
The mountainside had not changed since I was born.
What a guy. And he’s not done yet! It’s awful that (at least) 67% of the kids diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. “How is this abortion based on medical diagnosis any different from leaving deformed children to the wolves?” he asks indignantly. (As he goes forward, he never answered his own question.)
Well, “It should stop,” McGuire told us without hesitation only to drop the (Washington Post-approved) hammer)
yet I categorically oppose any bills that force people to keep Down syndrome babies. I find it reprehensible and morally dangerous that our governments would pretend to know best what choice parents should make. I oppose abortion, but I believe the state must stay out of that choice.
What?! Before the reader has a time to assimilate the incredible turnabout, McGuire’s essay immediately takes another turn:
My life has been worth living. The mountainside would have been a bad place for me. Jason’s life has been worth living. He makes every person he encounters better. He spreads joy and kindness everywhere he goes. His ready laugh, his obvious kindness and his precious insight enrich our family. When his mother died a few years ago, as I sobbed, he pointed at his head and his heart and said, “Daddy, she’s here and here.”
And then he spends the rest of the essay developing an insight into the unique identity [“haecceity”] that is “inherent in each being.”
It may be the single most schizophrenic essay I have ever read. Ignoring his conclusion—“Every child makes the world more complete. And no child deserves to be left on the mountainside” —he falls back on the lamest, most threadbare cliché of the anti-life set: governmental “interference.”
Just guessing but I’m thinking his son Jason had quite a different perspective.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.
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