Monthly Archives: August 2017

Recently, a CBS news crew traveled to Iceland, producing a report titled Inside the country where Down syndrome is disappearing. As much as it sounds like it, the headline is not clickbait or hyperbole: In Iceland, nearly every women who undergoes prenatal testing and whose fetus receives a diagnosis of Down syndrome decides to end her pregnancy. Each year, according to their sources, only a child or two is born with Down syndrome in Iceland.

Up to 85% of pregnant women in Iceland choose to take prenatal testing. The specific test in question, which CBS calls the combination test, takes into account ultrasound images, a blood draw, and a mothers age to determine the likelihood that a fetus has Down syndrome. (Older mothers are more likely to have babies with Down syndrome because chromosomal errors are more likely as women age.)

In essence, pregnant women in Icelandand presumably their partnersare saying that life with disability is not worth living. It is one thing to decide that a child who will never walk, talk, feed herself, or engage with caregivers may not have a good quality of life. But children with Down syndrome do not fit this description. If a woman doesnt want to have a child with Down syndrome, their bar for what qualifies as a life worth living is set quite high. Are babies who are born deaf destined to lead a worthwhile life? What about babies with cleft palates, which can be corrected but leave a visible scar?

Heres the interesting thing: Down syndrome, or Trisomy 21 as it is also called, is actually one of the less severe chromosomal conditions. Unlike many other trisomies (genetic conditions in which a person has three copies of a chromosome instead of the standard two), its compatible with life.

People with Down syndrome have an extra copy of their 21st chromosome, which causes intellectual delays and readily identifiable facial features such as almond-shaped eyes. But the way that Down syndrome expresses itself in an individual can be highly variable. About half of babies born with Down syndrome have heart defects that require surgical correction. Some children with Down syndrome grow up to be adults who go to college and get married; others never live independently.

Can she live a full life without without ever solving a quadratic equation? Without reading Dostoyevsky? Im pretty sure she can.I have interviewed Amy Julia Becker many times over the years. Becker wrote a book about her daughter, Penny, who has Down syndrome. In A Good and Perfect Gift, Becker, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton, chronicles her shift in thinking about intelligence. Pre-Penny, she had assumed that being smart is a prerequisite for being happy and fulfilled. Post-Penny, she changed her mind. Can she live a full life without without ever solving a quadratic equation? Without reading Dostoyevsky? Im pretty sure she can. Can I live a full life without learning to cherish and welcome those in this world who are different from me? Im pretty sure I cant.

Deciding what sorts of lives are worth living brings us disturbingly close to the bygone era of eugenics, when only the right sorts of people were supposed to procreate.

In 1927, a US Supreme Court decision upheld the right of the state of Virginia to sterilize Carrie Buck, whose daughter, Vivian, was deemed to be feeble-minded. Paul Lombardo, a professor of law at Georgia State University who is an expert on eugenics, believes that Vivian was in fact of normal intelligence. Eventuallyand fortunatelyeugenics fell out of favor, and several US states have issued apologies to people who were forcibly sterilized over the years. Yet the bias against people with disabilities is still very much evident.

When I interviewed Lombardo for my book, The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have KidsAnd the Kids We Have, he noted that theres a long list of physical and mental disabilities that people find discomfiting. At the top of that list? Intellectual disabilities.In other words, Down syndrome and other similar conditions that result in people not being able to pursue a PhD or do quantum physics are often seen as bigger impediments to a life worth living than physical impairments. But is that our choice to make for them?

Deciding that people with Down syndrome dont live worthwhile lives can snowball into a groupthink situation. It will become less and less acceptable to raise a child with Down syndrome, and that will translate into fewer support services available to parents who decide to buck the trend. The lack of support will further encourage women to terminate their pregnancies, leading to even fewer babies born with the condition in the future. If we continue to follow this path, the disappearance of Down syndrome will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And to what end?

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Down syndrome in Iceland: The disturbing, eugenics-like reality that ... - Quartz

Brian Mark Weber Aug. 18, 2017

In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, readers are presented with a dystopian vision of the future in which the whole process of conception and birth is delegated to the scientific community. Parents have no emotional connection to their children, and motherhood itself is considered embarrassing and obscene.

The novel, written in 1931, seemed far-fetched at the time. Yet it wasnt long after Huxley penned his dark and frightening tale that science and politics began to consider the implications, and the possibilities, of playing God with human reproduction in order to bring about desired results.

Columnist David Harsanyi writes, [Negative selection eugenics] was the rationalization behind the coerced sterilization of thousands of mentally ill, poor, and minorities here in America. It is why real-life Nazis required doctors to register all newborns born with Down syndrome. And the first humans they gassed were children under three years old with serious hereditary diseases like Down syndrome.

But why wait? Aborting unborn children with Down syndrome is gaining acceptance once again, and the latest wave of news is from Iceland. Yet the childs suffering or the elimination of a human life doesnt seem to be part of the conversation, nor does the post-abortion health of the mother.

Whats interesting is that, according to Kevin Burke in the Washington Examiner, About 80 percent of parents facing the same diagnosis, who were provided with the option of perinatal hospice care for the child and family, chose to carry their disabled child to term. Apparently, most parents planning to abort their children dont receive this advice.

Burke adds, Those who advocate for routine screening to detect fetal disabilities also fail to advise parents of the potential for serious post-abortion reactions. The fallout from this loss can place a tremendous strain on couples as they struggle with the shock and pain that can follow the abortion. Some abortion advocates may concede that some women suffer symptoms of depression and grief immediately after termination of disabled babies, but they see this as a short-term condition. Research, however, confirms that women often suffer symptoms of emotional trauma and complicated grief years after such procedures.

Sadly, and just like the people in Brave New World, Icelanders no longer seem to value human life. Parents who fail to think of their unborn child as human are less likely to keep their child when the options are presented to them.

As Helga Sol Olafsdottir, a counselor at Landspitali University Hospital, helpfully explains, We dont look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication preventing suffering for the child and for the family.

A thing? If children are considered things, then it cant be long before countries like Iceland start passing their own version of Nazi Germanys Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.

How far away is it when people like Princeton University professor Elizabeth Harman say, Some early fetuses will die in early pregnancy due to abortion or miscarriage. And in my view that is a very different kind of entity. Thats something that doesnt have a future as a person and it doesnt have moral status.

While those on the Left may rush to defend a program that frees parents from the burden of raising a disabled child, they should seriously think about the implications of going down this path.

The situation is not much better in the United States, where nearly two-thirds of American women whose prenatal screening tests reveal Down syndrome choose to have an abortion. Fortunately, theres still some resistance at the political level.

Harsanyi notes, A number of U.S. states have passed or want to pass laws that would ban abortions sought due to fetal genetic abnormalities, such as Down syndrome, or because of the race, sex, or ethnicity of a fetus. Such a U.S. House bill failed in 2012. Most Democrats involved claimed to be against sex-selective abortion, but not one gave a reason why. Probably because once you admit that these theoretical choices equate to real-life consequences, like eugenics, you are conceding that these are lives were talking about, not blobs.

And what if science develops to the point where we can identify other traits in humanity that parents may find undesirable: a genetic heart condition or a low IQ or, where it would really hit home for leftists, homosexuality? Gender-based abortions of girls are already the norm in Communist China. When society reaches the point where only desirable children are allowed to enter this world, are we still a civilization? And if a free society lacks the moral compass to speak out against this practice, how can we oppose another government that one day might decide that Jews, Africans or Christians are a problem?

These are the questions that should be asked before science allows us to discover even more undesirable traits in unborn children, and before the political class yields to social and cultural decay. Lets face it: Were living in a Brave New World today. But unlike the society in Huxleys novel, we must summon the courage and decency to end the ghastly practice of eugenics.

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Brian Mark Weber: The 'Brave New World' of Down Syndrome ... - Patriot Post

REYKJAVIK A new report by CBS is raising concern as it highlights the fact that nearly all women in the Nordic nation of Iceland who receive a Down syndrome diagnosis obtain an abortionto the point that children with Down syndrome have been nearly eradicated.

We dont look at abortion as a murder, Helga Sol Olafsdottir of Landspitali University Hospital in Ryekjavik told the outlet. We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication preventing suffering for the child and for the family.

And I think that is more right than seeing it as a murder. Thats so black and white. Life isnt black and white. Life is grey, she asserted.

In Iceland, an estimated 80 to 85 percent of pregnant women choose to take theCombination Test, which is able todetermine whether or not a child in the womb has an extra chromosome or similar abnormality. The number of Down syndrome babies born each year has therefore decreased to only two or three,since the vast majority of preborn children with the conditionare aborted.

When asked if some women experience guilt for killing their child,Olafsdottir replied, Of course, but advised that she tells the mothers, This is your life. You have the right to choose how your life will look like.

While Iceland has a nearly 100 percent abortion rate surrounding Downs diagnoses, other nations are not far behind. In Denmark, the rate is 98 percent, and in France, 77 percent of Down syndrome babies never get to have birthday. Areported 67 percent of American women also choose an abortion due to a Down syndrome diagnosis.

View the full report below.

The CBS report has been startling for a number of viewers, includingKurt Kondrich ofHuman Coalition Pittsburgh, whose 14-year-old daughter Chloe has Down syndrome.

This represents the ultimate, extreme form of eugenics, he told Christian News Network, and there should be an international outcry to end this genocide against beautiful people who fill the world with unconditional love and genuine purity.

As previously reported, Chloewas the inspiration behind a Pennsylvania bill, signed into law in 2014, thataims to help save the lives of Down syndrome babies who would otherwise be aborted. She also visited the UN this past year to speak against the murder of children like herself, and met with Vice President Mike Pence as well to be a voice forlife.

In 1928, capital punishment was abolished in Iceland, Kondrich noted, but now this country is systematically executing a group of citizens prenatally who have committed no crimes, hurt and offended no one, and who do not deserve prenatal capital punishment when they are completely innocent.

The culture of Iceland and many other countries are truly disabled by allowing this prenatal slaughter of diverse, beautiful people who have many abilities and commit no horrific acts of hate, violence, prejudice or racism in a world filled with evil, helamented.

Kondrich said that he believes that prenatal testing, such as the Combination Test, is a slippery slope that can result in other forms of eugenics in order to weed out those society finds to be imperfect or undesirable.

As science rapidly increases and genetic codes are unlocked, we should ask who will be targeted next prenatally, he explained. What if the genetic codes for depression, autism, ADHD, baldness, shortness, brown eyes, etc. are unlocked and then used to prenatally eliminate more people our society labels defective? In some cultures, prenatal testing is used to identify and terminate females because women are viewed as inferior; where is the outcry from womens rights groups?

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Report: Nearly All Women in Iceland Who Receive Down Syndrome Diagnosis Obtain Abortion - Christian News Network

Summary: A Middle Tennessee jail was offering birth control services to male and female inmates for 30 days off their sentence.

A federal lawsuit alleges that a Tennessee jail traded birth control procedures for 30 days off an inmates sentence. The controversial practice is referred to as a modern day eugenics scheme in the lawsuit filed by advocacy lawyers of a pro bono legal group of a national GPS monitoring company.

President and CEO Mike Donovan of Nexus Services Inc. said, This case is nothing more than a modern day eugenics scheme. Donovan claims that Judge Sam Benningfield, White County Sheriff Oddie Shoupe, and his staff were playing God.

The lawsuit alleges that Shoupe was trying to sterilize as many inmates as possible by offering up a deal. Inmates could get 30 days taken off their sentence if they went in for a birth control procedure that was in violation of their constitutional rights. A Nexus lawyer explains that 42 men received vasectomies and 35 women got birth control implants.

One inmate, Christel Ward, agreed to get the implant but she never received time off her sentence. Now that she is out of jail, it will cost $250 to have the implant removed. The lawsuit wants the county program declared unconstitutional and Wards implant to be removed at no cost to her.

White County in middle Tennessee is south of Cookeville with a population of 26,000 people. The most common crimes involve theft and drugs with 1,500 cases filed each year. Residents of the area say there isnt a family in town that hasnt been affected by opiates.

Benningfield says he was approached by state health department to present a two-day class on the effects of drugs on fetuses. He started off by giving two days off a sentence for those that agreed to attend the class. To get more inmates interested in the class, he announced a standing offer in May for inmates to get out of jail faster in order to save the judicial economy and the administration of justice. This meant female inmates would get the birth control arm implant Nexplanon for free and men would get a vasectomy for free. He told reporters, Hopefully while theyre staying here we rehabilitate them so they never come back. No male ended up receiving a vasectomy.

The ACLU of Tennessee calls the practice a coercive and unconstitutional program. They said, Offering a so-called choice between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional. The judge in this program imposed an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it.

The program ran for two months before Judge Benningfield rescinded the order, claiming the Tennessee Department of Health would not offer free birth control services any longer.

The lawsuit lists Benningfield, Shoupe, White County, and Donna Daniels, a sheriffs deputy, as defendants. Judge Benningfield only handles misdemeanor crimes with a maximum sentence of just under one year. He justified his order by stating, It occurred to me that many of the same women I had incarcerated were the very same from whom I was having to remove their children in my role as the juvenile judge because they were born addicted to drugs.

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Tennessee Jail Practiced Modern Eugenics on Inmates - JDJournal.com