The Daily Telegraph reports:
The figures showed that diagnoses of Down’s syndrome increased from 1,075 in 1989/90 to 1,843 in 2007/8. Yet the numbers of babies born with the condition fell by one per cent from 752 to 743.
That’s because an average of three unborn children diagnosed as Down’s Syndrome are killed by abortion every day in England and Wales, or about 1,100 every year.
As I noted at my own blog, Sobering Thoughts, on September 21:
One word for such a phenomenon is eugenics. The problem is that pregnant women are routinely tested to see if their child has a genetic anomaly for which there is no treatment. Doctors, who can’t stand to do nothing, offer what they can: abortion to get rid of the “problem”. This leads to a vicious cycle; I’ve talked to doctors who are concerned that with fewer Down Syndrome children being born, there is less impetus to do the type of research which could enrich the lives of those who survive the womb for nine months because there isn’t enough demand. Future lack of resources to help parents of Down Syndrome children will only encourage more parents to abort such children in the future.
Peter Elliott, chairman of The Down Syndrome Research Foundation, is quoted in the Telegraph story:
“I don’t think the choice is presented to the parents in the light of the true situation where the children have a good life and are in fact viewed as a blessing to the parents, not a curse, and I don’t think these parents getting the abortions know much about Downs syndrome at all.”
The Interim editorial from September 2002 provides an answer to why parents aren’t given this information:
More importantly, as Gilbert Meilaender, a professor of theological ethics at Valparaiso University in Indiana, has noted, we fail the most important Christian virtue, that of love, when we substitute love of those with genetic defects with the faux medical treatment of abortion. Josef Pieper, Meilaender notes, said love is one way of saying to another “It’s good that you exist; it’s good that your are in this world.” Prenatal screening, as it is routinely practiced today, is in direct conflict with the virtue of love.
