Posted on 05/22/2011 9:51:23 AM PDT by wagglebee
Wouldn’t it be nice if the purpose of pushing prenatal testing for Down syndrome was to assure that fetuses testing positive would be later welcomed into the world in full preparation for the medical challenges that sometimes arise in babies with the condition? Of course, the real point is to make sure that as many as possible are not allowed to be born. And now France is thinking very seriously about requiring that all pregnant women be tested regardless of risk factors–that is, legally requiring–not just recommending–a medical procedure so that no babies with Down slip through undetected. From the blog, Curse of Our Joy:
France already has an abortion rate of 96% once Down syndrome is detected through pre-natal testing, universal testing would be catastrophic to this population and to human rights in general, setting off a possible chain reaction throughout Europe. Below is a translation of the original letter from the Foundation Lejeune.
On May 25 and 26 of this year, the National Assembly [the lower house in the French Parliament] will resume its debates and votes concerning the proposed bioethics law. If the deputies follow the recommendations of the Senate and the Special Committee on Bioethics, the pendulum will swing, in the next few days, and France will implement a policy of eugenics with regard to infants with Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome.) Because all of us are vulnerable and called to show solidarity with those who are a little more so, we cannot accept this or let it happen.
Yea, gotta stop that 4% that make it through the eugenic filters! Liberté, égalité, fraternité, my right nostril.
I will try to check out this story further and report back.
HT: E. Haupt
Update: Commenter Raven says the bill would require counseling be offered, not conducted, with a link to the French Assembly. If anyone can speak French and would like to translate, that would be great.
But the purpose of the bill I think is as the blogger I quoted suggests–to increase the already sky high abortion rate of fetuses testing for Down, dwarfism, etc. There is a strong pre natal eugenic drive in the West and pushing for more testing serves that agenda. Of course, testing can also serve to make such births easier to prepare for, as Sarah Palin said her test did. But note, one Canadian medical leader worried that her lead would cause fewer women to abort Down babies:
But others fear Ms. Palin’s emergence as a parental role model sends a different message. As a vocal opponent of abortion, Ms. Palin’s widely discussed decision to keep her baby, knowing he would be born with the condition, may inadvertently influence other women who may lack the necessary emotional and financial support to do the same, according to André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. Dr. Lalonde said that above all else, women must be free to choose, and that popular messages to the contrary could have detrimental effects on women and their families. “The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in Canada,” he said…
“It’s very dark,” said Krista Flint, executive director of the Canadian Down Syndrome Society. “They hear a lot about the medical conditions that are sometimes associated with Down syndrome. They hear about the burden … it places on children and a marriage. They hear about things like shortened life expectancy. They hear a lot about the challenges of a life with Down syndrome.” That’s why Ms. Palin has become an example that could possibly stem the tide of families who abort fetuses after a positive determination for Down syndrome, she said. “We know overwhelmingly the message families get is ‘Don’t have this baby, it will ruin your life,’ and I don’t think people would look at Sarah Palin and see a ruined life,” Ms. Flint said. “Regardless of politics, I think it’s a good example.”
I also believe that a societal expectation for that course–abort the “defective–is being forged. That is a major purpose behind these testing proposals and a reason why some loathe Palin so deeply–as we have discussed at length on several occasions.
This is the "Brave New World" that the eugenicists have been pushing for over a century.
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The frogs need to be checking for frog genes and jihadi genes.
My best friend has a Downs child. I am proud to be her “Uncle Bill”! These children are special and the most loving people I know. Shame on you France.
I sat in church today next to a woman who has an extremely mentally handicapped child. She is there every week.
He cannot even eat by himself. She holds him and his tubefeeding in the back during service, and hugs and kisses him the entire time. He smiles and rolls his eyes, about all he can do. A few times she holds him on his feet during the sermon, so his legs stretch a bit.
I kept thinking, this is love. It blesses her as much as it does him.
I recall a British woman being pressured her “Down’s Syndrome” baby a few years ago. She refused and the baby turned out to be perfectly normal.
People with down syndrome are people! They deserve life! Who in France is so wonderful and perfect that they are better than a child with downs? The IMF chief??
Lets just say the barbarian (me) was not impressed.
‘Natural Disasters Are Never a Punishment from God’
Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.
My friend Jan was confused after reading the Good Friday sermon delivered by papal preacher Fr. Raneiro Cantalamessa in St. Peter’s Basilica. At the end of the sermon on God’s charity, he made a reference to the recent tsunami in Japan: “Earthquakes, hurricanes and other disasters that hit guilty and innocent alike are never a punishment from God. To say otherwise means offending God and man.”
This was a shock to Jan, who had learned in the “old teaching” of the Church that the chastisements of God are, in fact, a charity. God chastises us in this life for our good: to stop us from sinning and to convert us so we escape eternal punishment. “It is most merciful of the Lord not to let iniquity pass unpunished,” said St. Augustine.
By “old teaching,” Jan meant the pre-Vatican II catechism. Since the Council, we have been bombarded with a new teaching on an unconditionally merciful God who loves and saves everyone, regardless of the atrocity of their sins or the false religion (or non-religion) they profess (or do not profess). The Good Friday sermon was particularly shocking, Jan commented to me, because the words were said in front of the Benedict XVI, who listened complacently giving them his tacit approval.
Fr. Cantalamessa at his sermon before the Pope
“How could he be silent?,” Jan wondered aloud to me. “Doesn’t he believe that earthquakes depend on the will of God, and that He sends them because man has abandoned his law and merits such chastisement?”
She is right. Punishment is drawn down upon man by his sins. But it is also a grace, an important grace, since it serves to save him from eternal destruction. God deals mercifully with the sinner when he sends tribulation to invite him to open his eyes to his miserable condition and to return to the favor of God. This is what anyone can deduce of the teaching of St. Peter (2 Pet. 2:5-9).
In fact, it would seem that this teaching would never be as timely and needed as it is today, when all the nations have turned their backs on the Law of God and society is corrupt to its very core.
However, the Capuchin papal preacher completely turned around this constant teaching of the Church. To say that a chastisement cannot come down form Heaven because it would “offend God and man” is to go against Scripture, Church tradition as well as the teaching of past Popes, Church Fathers and Saints.
The penitential processions
In times of plague, earthquake, famine and other hardships, it was common for the clergy – and often even Popes – to hold a penitential procession, with chanting of litanies invoking God and the Saints asking for relief. The medieval Church instituted Rogation days, four days specially set aside for prayer and fasting to appease God's anger at man's transgressions and to ask protection in calamities such as plagues, floods, famines and other natural disasters. The Major Rogation was set on March 25 to commemorate the famous penitential procession of Pope St. Gregory the Great through the city of Rome when a plague was devastating the city in 590.
St. Gregory addressed the people of Rome, exhorting them to penance to avert the chastisement of God. Then, the whole population of Rome joined in the penitential procession through the ruins of the deserted city.
St. Michael appears and signals an end to the plague
Contrary to the teaching of the papal preacher, God was not offended at the Pope’s prayer to avert the hand of His Divine Justice. Instead, He showed his pleasure by sending a great miracle. As St. Gregory, heading the penitents and bearing a picture of Our Lady painted by the Apostle Luke, reached the bridge on the way to St. Peters, a heavenly vision greeted the eyes of the people. St. Michael descended over Hadrian’s Mausoleum and placed a flaming sword in its sheath – a sign that the plague had been stayed.
Later that mausoleum received the name of San Angelo in memory of the miracle and was transformed into a papal palace. Over the chapel on its summit is the bronze figure that still stands today of the Archangel, his wings outstretched, sheathing his sword. Some historians propose the penitential procession of 590 and that great miracle can be regarded as the beginning of Rome’s Middle Ages. (1)
Of course that penitential procession led by a Pontiff and followed by his people was not at all offensive to God and man. Rather, for centuries it was officially commemorated by the Church on the Great Rogation Day. Future Popes, Bishops and priests followed the example of St. Gregory the Great, and when calamity struck or a natural disaster threatened, penitential processions were held to avert the punishment of God against unrepentant sinners.
It seems to me that instead of preaching the falsity that ‘God never sends natural disasters’ to punish man for his grievous sins, the papal preacher would do better exhort the Pope to follow the example of his predecessor St. Gregory and call the entire world to abandon its sinful life.
In contradiction with Fatima
The words of the papal preacher are also contradicted by the message of the Mother of God to an errant world at Fatima. There she confirmed Church teaching, telling us that war was a punishment from God for sins. In the first prophecy of Fatima, the children were shown a terrifying vision of Hell and were told “that is where poor sinners go.” Then the three children were told that the war that was taking place – World War I – would soon end. But Our Lady warned: “If the people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the reign of Pius XI.”
She continued, "When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that is going to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and the Holy Father.” Clearly, Our Lady was teaching us that God does punish the sins of man. Sadly, her warning was not heeded, and in 1939 a second and worse war fell upon an unrepentant West. It was Our Lady herself who came to warn mankind that God would punish man for his sins unless measures were taken.
In view of this, one cannot help but wonder why an official papal preacher and Benedict XVI himself can fall so far from the clear tradition of the Church on the chastisements sent by God..1. To read the complete text of P. Raniero Cantalamessa in Italian, click here; in English, click here
2. Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the city of Rome in the Middle Ages, Volume 2 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1902), pp. 31-35Posted on May 20, 2011
I wish they would hear that their baby will be chopped up into little pieces before it is removed from the “safety” of moms womb.
Every journey starts with one step ...will the next testing be IQ? Height? Hair color? potential illness seen in DNA ? Where do we stop looking to make a perfect society?
My guess is that everything will be on the table, even such trivial matters as future baldness or nearsightedness, UNLESS science one day discovers a gene which predisposes someone to homosexuality, abortion for that would be absolutely forbidden.
There’s some good Biblical points in that.
Thx.
---or a kid could have a Trisomy anomaly like Downs and go on to have a big heart, a loving family, and ---ferheavenssake ---his own TV series! Life Goes On! L'Chaim!
Every so often someone posts something from a Latin source which demonstrates why some say there is a chasm between the theology and praxis of the West and that that of the East which may well be unbridgeable. The Horvat article you have quoted is one of those.
We live in a fallen world, Doc; a world so distorted by the sins of mankind that it bears little resemblance to that perfect one which God created. It is the weight of man’s sins which causes natural disasters not the punishments of God. By death, Christ destroyed Death and because of that we can fulfill our created purpose and that in turn, my friend, will restore, in however limited a fashion and area, the world to its original state, where the lion does lie down with the lamb.
My youngest son, who is 28, has Down Syndrome. When he was born, I thought we had been cursed and I implored Panagia to tell me why. I was a fool. Thank God I got over that fear, because that’s what it was, within a few days. He was and is the greatest blessing I and my family and the small “ecclesia” around us have ever been given. He was born with Down Syndrome for the same reason that the blind man cured by Christ was born blind, so that the love of God might be made manifest in the world.
God won’t punish France and the French for this. They will do it to themselves.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
Jeremiah 1:5
“UNLESS science one day discovers a gene which predisposes someone to homosexuality, abortion for that would be absolutely forbidden.”
That would be a fight to the death between two usually staunch allies, the homosexualists and radical feminists. Many lesbians are both. Heads would explode, like that Star Trek episdode where the robot is given two contradictory orders that it must obey, “reproductive rights for any woman for any reason vs. no homosexualist discrimination for any reason”.
I expect the abortionists would win out in the end, it’s all about the baby butchery eventually. Besides, if it comes to that point homosexualist “couples”, through surrogates, would soon be able to select embryos based on whether they are predisposed to have homosexualist traits(if they exist at all). So they could get rid of those without the predisposition to be homosexualist, which of course make the abortionists happy.
Freegards
That is so beautiful. It never fails to give me goose bumps.
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