Discrimination is still thriving in some of America’s most prominent newsrooms.
Last week, the Los Angeles Times editorial board supported discrimination against babies with Down syndrome, writing, “A constitutional right to an abortion means a right to have one for any reason.”
The focus of their criticism was a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld the Ohio Down Syndrome Non-Discrimination Act.
The law prohibits abortions if the abortionist knows the reason is because the unborn baby has or may have Down syndrome. It aims to combat the astronomically high abortion rate – nearly 100 percent in some countries – for unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome and the pressure that medical professionals often put on parents to consider abortion.
But the newspaper editors slammed the law as an “unjustified restriction” on abortion.
“The Supreme Court evidently needs to underline a point that should have already been clear: No matter what lawmakers may think about a woman’s reasons for obtaining an abortion, those reasons don’t matter,” they wrote.
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“… all the state has done is discriminated against the women who want to have a frank discussion with their doctors about whether they want to give birth to a baby that is expected to have Down syndrome,” they wrote, leaving out the fact that this “frank discussion” is about whether to kill the baby just because he/she may have Down syndrome.
The editors argued that the law does not help people with Down syndrome either because, apparently in their minds, people are not people until they are born.
The editors continued: “And did it occur to state legislators and the appellate judges that the more deeply and candidly a woman can discuss her options and possible decision with her doctor — who may also be the one performing the abortion — the more information she may get about Down syndrome, which could help to overcome the stigma the law cites?”
But evidence suggests that the opposite is true. Parents frequently report feeling pressured to abort unborn babies with Down syndrome and other disabilities. One mom recently told the BBC that she was pressured to abort her unborn daughter 15 times, including right up to the moment of her baby’s birth. Another mother from Brooklyn, New York said doctors tried to convince her to abort her unborn son for weeks before they took “no” for an answer.
Research, including a recent study highlighted in Scientific American, also shows evidence that families of children with Down syndrome often face negative, biased counseling and pressure to have abortions.
Health data across the world also sheds light on the shocking trend. In Iceland, nearly 100 percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. The rate is about 95 percent in Denmark, 77 percent in France and 90 percent in England. In the United States, the abortion rate is approximately 67 percent for unborn babies with Down syndrome – though data is scarce and some studies suggest it is above 90 percent.
Meanwhile, new research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics found that the number of babies with Down syndrome born in the United Kingdom, which provides universal health care, dropped 54 percent since non-invasive prenatal screening tests became available about a decade ago, The Telegraph reports.
The evidence is clear that abortion has become a modern means of eugenics. Sixth Circuit Judge Richard Allen Griffin wrote about this in a powerful concurring opinion last week.
“Many think that eugenics ended with the horrors of the Holocaust,” Griffin wrote. “Unfortunately, it did not.
“The philosophy and the pure evil that motivated Hitler and Nazi Germany to murder millions of innocent lives continues today. Eugenics was the root of the Holocaust and is a motivation for many of the selective abortions that occur today,” he continued.
But for the LA Times editors, that’s ok – because “any reason” is ok to have an abortion. Even if the parents want a boy instead of a girl, or they do not want a child with Down syndrome. Even if they do not want a child with a cleft lip, an easily repairable condition.
And as science advances and the knowledge of genetic traits before birth expand, parents could choose to abort because their child has brown eyes instead of blue or their child may not be as smart or as tall as they would like.
The LA Times editors know that discrimination is a problem, an evil that needs to be ended in society. Yet, they refuse to acknowledge – worse, they openly condone discrimination as long as the person who is being discriminated against is still in their mother’s womb.
