Posted on 12/27/2019 9:23:47 PM PST by Morgana
On the one hand, there has never been a better time for people with Down syndrome to be alive; advances in science, education, and medicine means they are living longer, healthier, and more independent lives than ever before. Yet on the other hand, despite this fact, people continue to argue that it’s acceptable to deny someone with Down syndrome his or her right to life — simply because of a disability. Even many of the people whose lives are allegedly dedicated to advocating for those with disabilities seem to think preborn children with Down syndrome should be targets for abortion, as seen in a horrifying op-ed in The Hill.
Susan Mizner and Alexa Kolbi Molinas wrote the opinion article together, and both work for the ACLU. Mizner, however, is the head of the ACLU Disability Rights Project — and the argument made was essentially that because the lives of people with disabilities are not perfect, thanks to a still-ableist society, it should be acceptable to have abortions due to disability. This was written directly in response to the growing number of Down syndrome abortion bans being passed across the country, which recognize that it is eugenic and ableist to target someone for death simply because they have a disability.
According to Mizner and Kolbi Molinas, these bans are pointless, because they don’t improve the lives of people with disabilities. “It does not ensure that pregnant people are given information, resources, and support to raise their children — including children with Down syndrome (or any other disability) — with dignity,” they wrote. “It does not expand access to necessary services and opportunities or protect any person with disabilities from discrimination in education, housing, employment, medical care, or any other area of life. It does not make it easier for people with disabilities to have — and keep — their children. And it does not protect people with disabilities from violence and abuse, such as coerced sexual and reproductive health decisions, sterilization abuse, and police violence.”
While Down syndrome bans like the one they were specifically addressing — HB 214 in Ohio — do not solve all of the problems people with disabilities face, they do make it more likely that they will have the ability to live, which is the most important thing. Without life, none of those other protections can be offered.
Arguing that preborn children with Down syndrome (or other disabilities) are less deserving of life than typical preborn children helps fuel the ableism Mizner and Kolbi Molinas claim to oppose. It reinforces the message that raising a child with a disability is a burden (one too much for some people to carry), that a disabled life is an unhappy, stressful one, and that it’s better in some cases to not bother at all. That mindset in and of itself fuels ableism, and if people with disabilities never make it out of the womb, then what need is there at all to make things better?
Yet the concern here, tellingly, is first and foremost about abortion, as one passage makes obvious by trying to tie ableism to the “right” to abortion. Nonsensically, to the authors, preventing the discriminatory abortion of preborn children with disabilities allows ableism to continue.
There is no question that stigma, prejudice, and misconceptions about people with disabilities are widespread. But forcing someone to carry a pregnancy to term against their will does nothing to tackle underlying and systemic ableism and discrimination against people with disabilities.
On the contrary, forced pregnancy threatens a person’s physical, mental, and emotional health, as well as the stability and wellbeing of their family, including existing children.
And there it is, straight from the head of the ACLU Disability Rights Project: children with disabilities might make the lives of their parents or siblings worse; therefore, it might be better to just get rid of them before they’re even born. How is this disability advocacy?
The ACLU is a pro-abortion organization, and unfortunately, it is clear here that the priority is not in protecting and advocating for those with disabilities; it’s about protecting abortion at the expense of the very people whom Mizner claims to defend. That mindset does not help the disability community; it does nothing but perpetuate negative stereotypes that claim life with disability is worse than death.
Eugenics once again rears it’s ugly head.
Evil.
it never really left us it is really the reason Roe was passed.
The people with Down Syndrome are not the one’s with a disability in this story.
Well two things: The author has a child with one.
and
People with down syndrome are most often targets for abortion with spina bifida coming in a close second. Several countries now have a birth rate of 1 child per year born with down syndrome because of abortion. That child was just lucky the test missed him or her.
I am not sure why you are telling me that.
Perhaps you missed my intent that it is the people of the ACLU who have the real disability.
Bingo.....
[[deny someone with Down syndrome his or her right to life — simply because of a disability.]]
The ones advocating for abortions of down syndrome babies are the ones with the mental disabilities, NOT the down syndrome Babies!
“Eugenics once again rears it’s ugly head.”
Not so sure it’s Eugenics. It’s money. Abortion is a huge business. Donations to politicians campaigns from abortion advocates are huge. All this says is that big abortion is much bigger than big disability. There’s a ranking of intersectionality credits. This tells us that being able to kill your baby is much higher in the intersectionality calculus than supporting disabled people.
The extremists (the left) became infatuated with eugenics in the early 1900’s at their facility in Cold Spring Harbor, NY. I guess it evolved into their zeal for abortion, as a way of destroying the Untermensch. In the end, they always come back to purifying the race and the population.
ACLU just staying true to it’s humanistic Marxist Communist origin.
Like the National Socialist Party of Germany, communist governments around the world have used abortion to determine the number of children, ratio of male to female, to eliminate potential “problem babies”, to eliminate political prisoners families, and for organ harvesting for much of the last century, and to the present.
The left in our country are fundamentally no different than their NAZI or Soviet parents in faith (atheism/evolutionary humanism), and the globl lefts “learned” political ideology, and all forms of the lefts political manifestation, all ending in tyranny or totalitarianism, and death.
Leftism is nothing less than a Godless, narcissistic, tyrranical, death cult...
Just the way Satan intended it to be.
There is an over abundance of sickos in this country. God knows the evil intent of these people.
Abortion and eugenics together again as if they ever were apart. Kill the young and the old just as dr Emanuel author of Obama care has stated
Socialists are the ultimate in Public Serve Us.
The issue is not selection of babies to be aborted. The issue is abortion. There are no limitations on abortion. It is legally permitted in any and all cases. It is an absolutely unrestricted medical procedure. One may kill any preborn baby regardless of circumstances, genetics, or reason. The entire population of unborn babies is 100% vulnerable to extermination for any or no reason. The issue is abortion. It is utterly and thoroughly evil in its intent, its practice, and its effect. There is no greater crime than aborton.
The authors are, of course, ignorant, blockhead leftists with no understanding of the sheer immensity of services available to families with Downs children. Their haughty and reprehensible leftist politics are showing and it is ugly.
Wonderful. The “right” to be exterminated.
Peanut butter falcon
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