Posted on 07/13/2006 5:57:14 PM PDT by wagglebee
TORONTO, July 13, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an op ed intended by the Globe and Mail to be a sympathy piece, a Toronto woman, who identified herself as C. Smyth, told the story of her intention to abort her 19 week old daughter because the child was diagnosed by a geneticist as having a chromosomal disorder. The child, said Smyth, did not meet her and her husband’s standards or fulfill their dreams of having a child athelete.
She says their 19 week-old “miracle” is “tragically flawed:” the child, she is told will have a “significantly lower functioning than other children,” and the decision to abort was difficult. She cried when told the child was a girl.
40 year-old Smyth writes that she and her 45 year-old lawyer husband do not “feel capable of raising a severely disabled child. It would be different if we didn't have a choice, but we do.”
She describes herself and her husband as financially secure yuppies, professional, with university degrees, who own their own mortgage-free house, and who are fit, healthy and looking 10 years younger than their age.
Smyth writes, “Isn't it more cruel to bring a child burdened with so many disadvantages into the world?”
People with Down’s syndrome and other developmental disabilities and their families are becoming increasingly alarmed at the growing popularity of the eugenics philosophy typified by the Globe piece. Disabled rights groups have said that a societal attitude has grown that people with Down’s syndrome or other disabilities are better off dead.
Smyth bluntly admits that before she had undergone the IVF treatment that conceived her child, she and her husband had already ruled out the question of Down’s syndrome. “We had already decided if it was a Down syndrome baby (one in 30 chance for a mother over 40) we wouldn't continue.”
She assumes that everyone agrees that Down’s syndrome is so horrible that even her devoutly Christian mother would agree. “I thought even my church-going mother (who goes door-to-door collecting money for those who are anti-abortion, and their pro-life campaign) could forgive that.”
She describes the actual killing of her daughter equally bluntly. “On the third day, when the cervix has dilated, the doctor clears out the uterus: the evacuation.”
Letters to the editor have appeared in the Globe today decrying the slide towards a new eugenics. Jeremy Jay wrote from Victoria saying that the piece illustrates a shift in the attitudes towards abortion from a debate over the right to life to deciding which children are fit enough to deserve life.
Michael G. Ceci, said “her account gives no consolation to women struggling with the knowledge that their yet unborn child is developmentally disabled.” He pointed out that having this chromosomal disorder is not necessarily a life sentence for the mother, nor should it result in a death sentence for the child.
The piece appeared in the Globe and Mail at the time that the powerful Silent No More Campaign opened in Toronto, where women share their regret at having had an abortion. It also coincides with a Parliamentary effort by Liberal Party MP Paul Steckle to criminalize abortion after 20 weeks gestation.
It is also significant that the Globe produced this anonymous piece at the same time Health Canada is developing regulations under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act to define which genetic disorders are allowed to be screened in IVF embryos. Health Canada is calling for public input on the regulations (see contact information below.)
The Catholic Organization for Life and Family made a presentation to Health Canada pointing out the essential moral flaw of a genetic screening of embryos in IVF labs.
COLF wrote that preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is always a threat to the dignity of human life. “PGD inherently disrespects the dignity and worth of human life, since it is performed in order to select the most genetically perfect embryos while discarding those that are deemed undesirable.”
“Parents, doctors, and society become the evaluators of the future worth and quality of the lives of existing embryos, and the arbitrators of life or death for these embryonic human beings.”
Contact:
The Assisted Human Reproduction Implementation Office
Health Canada, AL 7002A
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0K9
Fax: (819) 934-1828
Email: ahr-pa@hc-sc.gc.ca
#11 is a great post!
I mean #14.
TYVM
Is that the new feel-good euphemism for having an abortion?
Sick, sick, sick.
Nothing is more cruel than robbing someone of a chance at life!
Canada ping!
Canada ping.
Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.
Something about anyone who is not blonde-haired, blue-eyed, 6 feet tall and right-handed comes to mind.
Uh-oh - I have dark hair, well under 6 feet, and am left-handed!
Welcome, fan!
Yeah, me too except, but I am right-handed and have blue eyes!
Uh-oh, I've also got brown eyes!!
Actually, shouldn't Hitler have gassed himself? He was hardly an Aryan! ;)
Thanks for the ping! I saw the original piece written by the mother (spit when you say that ...) and was absolutely stuned.
As an older mother (just turned 40), I'm acutely aware of the increasing possibility of having a disabled child. It's taken us several years to be at peace about this possibility, while continuing to welcome more children into our family. My mother was very anxious during my most recent pregnancy; dealing with her fears caused me more stress than my own concerns!
One important point is that, while some disabled children experience great suffering (pain, multiple surgeries, paralysis, etc.) that's not the case for many others, including children with Down's Syndrome. They do not experience their condition as a special hardship. The difficulties are felt by the rest of the population.
I had a mental breakthrough when discussing Terri Schiavo's condition with another FReeper. My son James was about 9 months old then, and I realized that, even if he never developed mentally beyond his present age - only grew bigger physically - he would still be happy, as long as he was fed, cleaned, and loved. He didn't need to speak, read, walk, or even roll over to live contentedly. He would only need simple, life-sustaining care ... and LOVE.
Often we look at the condition of the disabled and revolt, saying, "I wouldn't want to live like that; I'd rather be dead!" However, that's the subjective judgment of a healthy adult considering alternatives, not the subjective judgment of a disabled (especially mentally disabled) person. None of us wants to be a 9-month-old baby again, having achieved adulthood, but a baby given proper care and LOVE is happy in his condition, not suffering or "burdened."
Often we look at the condition of the disabled and revolt, saying, "I wouldn't want to live like that; I'd rather be dead!"
When you think about it, that attitude is really a form a snobbery, or even bigotry - it's certainly a form of prejudice; it's like a rich man saying; "I'd hate to be poor", or a white saying; "I'd hate to be black".
Of course, it's a form of prejudice that's conpiculously absent from liberal finger wagging...
Good points - there is definitely an analogy with poverty and even race. The same people who want to abort disabled children in the United States or Canada also want to eliminate children in Africa and Asia. "It's better to have never been born than to be a poor (black!) child in Ethiopia."
It's ironic how little value *other people's* lives can have, isn't it?
Think of why DDT was banned - it was great in the battle against malaria!
It's ironic how little value *other people's* lives can have, isn't it?
Someone once pointed out that the "sanctity of life" is been replaced with the "quality of life" - morality replaced with utility!
Yes, and millions of Africans and Asians, mostly children, die from malaria each year, now. But it's for the Environment !!!!
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