Lon Jacobs writes in the Wall Street Journal about Sarah Palin’s advocacy on behalf of those with Down syndrome, his own Down syndrome child, and the abortion debate. He says:
What separates me from many other pro-choicers I encounter is that I strongly believe we need to make abortion rare. In too many quarters we have moved from a society that protects the right to abortion to one that promotes it. This is especially true with regard to those with disabilities …
I don’t presume to tell others what to do when they are faced with these difficult decisions. But I worry that women who find themselves pregnant with a child who has a physical or mental disability get only one message, which is all about the burden about to be dumped in their laps. Today, nine out of 10 American women who are told they have a child with Down syndrome choose to abort. I think it’s fair to say that if some of these potential parents had a glimpse of the other side they might have made a different decision.
Jacobs, a liberal, observes that most people are “in the middle” on the abortion issue, but that there are some people who harbour eugenic (my word, not his) attitudes about people with disabilities that leads them to stridently and obscenely pro-abortion views. As Jacobs notes:
At their most vulgar, these attacks are like Erik Sean Nelson’s item on the Huffington Post this summer. “Palin to run in ’12 on More Retardation Platform,” screamed the headline. Mrs. Palin’s policies, he wrote, “will increase jobs because Wal-Mart is building new stores each day and someone has to be a greeter.” He added that she would achieve her goal of smaller government “because fewer Americans will have the cognitive ability to hold a government job.”
That is ugly and hateful, but it is also predictable; people who support the murder of the unborn are likely to have darkened hearts.
