Pope Francis has urged families to accept their children and condemned the termination of those found to have disabilities as stemming from a mentality akin to the Nazi obsession with ‘purification’.
Addressing Italy’s family associations on Saturday, the Pontiff reflected on couples who apply pre-natal testing to determine possible anomalies within their child. He said: “I’ve heard that it’s fashionable, or at least usual, that when in the first few months of pregnancy they do studies to see if the child is healthy or has something.
“The first proposal in such a case is, ‘Do we get rid of it?”‘ Pope Francis said. “The murder of children. To have an easy life, they get rid of an innocent.”
He recalled his horror as a child at being told by teachers of the ill-treatment of those with disability and the fact that children born with birth defects were ‘thrown from the mountain.’
He added that society’s current approach to babies with disability is comparable to the Nazi aim in pursuing a pure and perfect race, saying, “Last century, the whole world was scandalised by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves.”
A welcome warning
Communicating his pro-life stance, Pope Francis lamented over society’s ‘throw away’ culture which glorifies perfection and disregards the impoverished, elderly and unborn, deeming them unworthy of life. This reaffirmation of the Catholic Church’s position has been welcomed by SPUC Scotland’s Director of Communications and Campaigns, Michael Robinson, who said: “This message should not only remind us to care and protect our most vulnerable, but it should stand as a harrowing warning over the wave of discrimination drowning our society in the guise of healthcare.”
Nazi eugenics and abortion
Launched in 1934, the Nazi eugenic programme T4 saw the murder of well over 250,000 disabled people. Driven by obsession for the perfect race, propaganda posters depicted the disabled as leeches upon society, claiming a single individual would ‘cost society over 60,000 Reichsmark over the course of his lifetime.’ Deemed ‘life unworthy of life’ , those marked for death were taken to killing centres disguised as hospitals to be murdered by lethal injection. The desire for a race free from imperfection saw the T4 operation last eleven years and serves as a powerful reminder of the human rights violations that can occur in the search for human perfection.
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Currently, the United Kingdom’s Abortion Act allows for abortion up to birth where there is a substantial risk that if the child were born he or she would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be “seriously handicapped”. Over 90% of children detected with Down’s Syndrome are aborted in the UK. Since pre-natal testing was introduced in Iceland in 2000, close to 100% of children detected with Down’s Syndrome in the womb are aborted.
LifeNews Note: Courtesy of SPUC. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is a leading pro-life organization in the United Kingdom.
