Posted on 04/24/2018 9:42:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
"If anyone has ever had the arms of a Down syndrome child or adult wrapped around your necks, you will know that you have encountered profound love that comes from the heart." So states a Kentucky legislator in supporting a law banning abortions involving a fetus with Down syndrome if the diagnosis is the reason for ending a pregnancy.
Indiana and Ohio have already passed such bills, though a federal judge has temporarily blocked Ohio's law from taking effect. Last Monday, the Pennsylvania House passed its own bill to ban such abortions. The bill passed with bipartisan support in a 139-56 vote.
If the bill passes in the Senate, it faces an expected veto from Gov. Tom Wolf.
In Iceland, nearly 100 percent of women who discover their unborn child has Down syndrome choose to abort their baby. In Denmark, the abortion rate for unborn babies with Down syndrome is 98 percent. The abortion rate in the US for such babies is 67 percent.
Famous people with inherited challenges
Since I believe life begins at conception and is sacred from that moment to natural death, obviously I oppose the decision to abort a child. Let's consider this issue in the context of congenital conditions.
Imagine a world in which we abort all babies who have such conditions. Wikipedia lists 127 congenital disorders. Some famous people who may have inherited physical challenges include Frederic Chopin (cystic fibrosis), Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Edison (Asperger's syndrome), and Abraham Lincoln (Marfan syndrome). Olympic gold medalist Shaun White, Super Bowl winner Tedy Bruschi, Pro Bowl football player Steve Hutchinson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger were born with congenital heart disease.
Brynjar Karl Bigisson was ten years old when he constructed the world's largest Titanic model built with Legos. The Iceland native spent eleven months creating the replica. It stands twenty-six feet long, five feet tall, and four feet wide. He used fifty-six thousand Legos to complete the model.
Brynjar is autistic. Before he started the project, he had trouble with communication and social interactions. Now he has confidence in talking with others and, according to his mother, his classmates see him "as another kid, not just autistic."
Eugenics today?
Aborting a child specifically because he or she has a congenital condition is a tragic step down a very dark path.
Eugenics is "the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations . . . to improve the population's genetic composition." The term, which means "well-born," was first used by Charles Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton. The movement has led to horrific practices, such as Nazi experiments on prisoners and forced sterilization programs in the US.
Are we seeing eugenics at work today?
In vitro fertilization is the process whereby an egg and sperm are united in a laboratory to produce an embryo. The embryo is then tested (a process known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis) to determine its viability before being implanted in the mother's womb. Doctors can now test for approximately two thousand inherited gene disorders before implantation.
Tests are also being developed for pregnant women to use in determining whether their unborn child has an inherited disease, so they can choose to abort the child. And experimental DNA editing on human embryos is being performed in the US, a step toward genetically modified humans.
"Acts of courage and belief"
Ideas have consequences. The idea that there are no absolute truths (itself an absolute truth claim) has become conventional wisdom in our culture.
It leads directly to the belief that a woman should be able to do whatever she wishes with her body and thus her unborn child (though her child is a genetically distinct person living in her body for only a short time). It leads to the belief that parents should be able to engineer their children through genetic means however they wish.
It leads to the plague of pornography, premarital sex, and adultery (since "consenting adults should be able to do what they want"). It leads to the redefinition of marriage and gender. And it leads to the belief that painless suicide should be easily available to all people; a 3D-printed euthanasia device unveiled last weekend is one response to this claim.
How should Christians respond?
One: Determine to live by the absolute truths of God's word. Changed people change the world.
Two: Use your influence to encourage others to know and follow God's word. Don't assume that your children or friends are living biblically. Respond to the immorality of our day by "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15) wherever and whenever you can.
Three: Pray for the moral and spiritual awakening we desperately need. It is always too soon to give up on God.
Robert Kennedy: "It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped." Is God calling you to "acts of courage and belief" today?
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Adapted from Dr. Jim Denison's daily cultural commentary at www.denisonforum.org. Jim Denison, Ph.D., is a cultural apologist, building a bridge between faith and culture by engaging contemporary issues with biblical truth. He founded the Denison Forum on Truth and Culture in February 2009 and is the author of seven books, including "Radical Islam: What You Need to Know." For more information on the Denison Forum, visit www.denisonforum.org.
No.
Right after babies of liberal parents.
No
There are some wonderful service providers to these people these days, and they can live lives surprisingly fulfilling.
It’s no less an evil act to abort them as it would be for any other fetus.
I still think of it as genocide. 50 plus million people and their offspring do not exist. That is pure evil.
Is it OK to just cold-bloodedly kill innocent children?
Golly. That’s a tough one ... gimme a minute ...
And that figure only addresses the United States.
No
But I ask
Can any baby be aborted depending on disability or viability
And where would this road toward a MASTER RACE end?
How many false diagnoses are acceptable?
I worked with a couple who lived through that and that Father has had to live for the last 25 years with the thought that he wanted to abort his perfectly healthy daughter, out of fear and selfishness.
That is a family decision. I’m not going to be the one there taking care of the child. I can pontificate all I want to.
In general, just because the child has Down Syndrome, is usually not enough reason to prevent the birth. If the child has profound birth defects, that will make a stillborn birth very likely anyway, or endanger the mother, then perhaps so.
I wouldn’t dream of sitting in moral judgement of such parents, under those conditions.
A Downs child is a gift from God. The child gives love in incredible amounts, far greater than the extra care that is given.
Should Down syndrome children and adults be killed? The answer to both questions is the same: NO!
Many considerations here....who will be available for the lifetime of care needed, how will expenses be met, effects on other family members, mental stability of parents, advice of doctors, and others I haven’t even thought of.
Heartwrenching decision, certainly.
Then there’s Alfie Evans 23 month old sick child in England, a “victim” of Socialized “medicine”.
Italy has offered to fly him to a hospital in Rome to provide appropriate medical care and treatment and to look at experimental treatments that could help his degenerative neurological condition.
However, British courts have PREVENTED Alfie’s parents from taking him there and a European Court of human rights (human rights???) has refused to intervene. They just want him dead!
I am horrified that modern “progressives” are so anxious to kill the helpless. Yet Alfie Evans refuses to “get the “memo”. The godless see no miracles in anything… what a sad place in which they dwell.
Prayers for Alfie and all others the State and Courts of “human rights” (human rights???) deem not worthy to live. To them we are little more than human livestock to be culled.
“Many considerations here....who will be available for the lifetime of care needed, how will expenses be met, effects on other family members, mental stability of parents, advice of doctors, and others I haven’t even thought of.”
—
Technically those questions could be asked about any unborn baby-——who really ever knows what’s ahead?
.
Wait...I thought it was the Nazi’s who wanted to exterminate the disabled?
Now you’re telling me it’s liberals?
In the US hundreds of thousands of babies are aborted ‘without’ Down Syndrome so suspect it’s an easy vote of yes for those who favor abortion anyway.
This is where the irrationality of a legal system causes the entire social order to collapse.
If abortion is deemed to be "legal" as a matter of constitutional law, then it's ludicrous to pretend that the law can be used to prohibit it under specific circumstances.
That's why it shouldn't be legal under any circumstances.
A legal system can't function at all if it isn't even built on consistent basic principles.
Wouldn’t be surprised.
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