Discrimination is completely acceptable to many so-called women’s rights advocates as long as it occurs before birth.
This week, they are attacking a new Pennsylvania bill that would prohibit abortions on one of the groups most discriminated against in the world today – children with Down syndrome.
Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, told the Reading Eagle they oppose the bill – and any other legislation that restricts abortions.
“You would think this is a huge problem in the United States,” she said in response to a large pro-life, pro-disability rights rally Monday at the Pennsylvania Capitol. “We believe women should be able to make their own decisions about unwanted and unplanned pregnancy.”
The NAF also opposes sex-selection abortion bans, another non-discrimination measure that Pennsylvania adopted more than two decades ago.
“Women in Pennsylvania deserve the autonomy and dignity to act in accordance with their own personal convictions and to decide what is best for their own lives and families,” Saporta told the newspaper. “Politicians have no place in that decision. This is just another way for politicians to insert themselves into women’s private medical decisions.”
In other words, women should be allowed to discriminate against their own children via deadly means as long as their children are not born yet.
Karen Gaffney, a disability rights advocate and long-distance swimmer who has Down syndrome, urged Pennsylvania lawmakers to pass the law to protect individuals like herself.
“It was a wave of humanity that lifted us out of institutions, brought us home, got us into schools and included us in the community of life, and now it will require another wave of humanity to stop the targeting of Down syndrome around the world,” she said.
Unborn babies with Down syndrome are targeted for abortions at astronomical rates.
A recent CBS News report shocked the nation with its exposure of the discriminatory abortion trend. According to the report, nearly 100 percent of unborn babies who test positive for Down syndrome are aborted in Iceland. The rate in France was 77 percent in 2015, 90 percent in the United Kingdom and 67 percent in the United States between 1995 and 2011, according to CBS.
Some put the rate as high as 90 percent in the United States, but it is difficult to determine the exact number because the U.S. government does not keep detailed statistics about abortion.
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“We face the possibility of wiping out the tremendous progress we’ve made in the last 60 years,” Gaffney said at the rally Monday. “Just as we are making so much progress, a whole industry has grown, focused on prenatal screening and taking away our life before we take our first breath.
“Now that you can test for Down syndrome before birth, there are people who say this extra chromosome we carry around is not comparable with life. Not compatible with life? Am I not compatible with life? I would say, we are more than compatible,” she continued.
If it passes, the legislation would create a second limit within Pennsylvania’s 24-week abortion ban, prohibiting abortions based on a Down syndrome diagnosis. Currently, the only limit within those 24 weeks is a sex-selection abortion.
Four states, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and North Dakota, also prohibit abortions based on an Down syndrome diagnosis. A handful of states also prohibit sex-selection abortions.
