Calls for a Massachusetts Democrat leader to resign are growing after he suggested unborn babies with disabilities should be aborted because they are a drain on public school funding.
Fox News reports local residents plan to protest at 6 p.m. Tuesday outside the Framingham City Hall in response to local Democratic committee chair Michael Hugo’s comments.
“As a parent of an autistic child, I read those comments and go ‘what?’” said Jon Fetherston, a disability rights advocate and protest organizer. “A peer of mine thinks that I should’ve aborted my child because he was going to be a burden to a school budget? … Every life is important, and words matter.”
Fetherston and others have said Hugo should resign for his discriminatory remarks.
On Feb. 7 during a Framingham City Council meeting, Hugo urged the council to pass a proclamation to discourage pregnancy resource centers from opening in the city. One of the reasons he gave was his “fear” that more children with disabilities will be born and cost the city money.
“Our fear is that if an unqualified sonographer misdiagnoses a heart defect, an organ defect, spina bifida, that becomes a very local issue because our school budget will have to absorb the cost of a child in special education, supplying lots and lots of special services to children, who were born with the defect,” Hugo said.
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Notably, Hugo told the council that he made the comment on behalf of the whole Framingham Democratic Committee – something other Democrat leaders later denied.
Hugo did not make the comments off the cuff either; he sent an email to all 11 city council members hours before the meeting with very similar comments, according to the Framingham Source, which first broke the news.
ACTION ALERT: To demand Michael Hugo’s resignation, Contact the Framingham Democratic Committee.
After the meeting, in an email to the Source, Hugo claimed he made the comments “in haste” and he regrets them. He also asked the news outlet not to run an article about him, arguing it would only cause “additional harm.”
The Source ran the article anyway, and LifeNews and others picked up the story.
Ten days later, Hugo issued a formal apology, according to Fox News.
“I am writing to offer my most sincere and humble apology to members of the Framingham Democratic Committee, but more especially my fellow members of Framingham’s disability family community, for comments that I made at the last City Council meeting which were offensive and hurtful,” Hugo wrote Feb. 17.
But his initial comments drew wide-spread condemnation and calls for his resignation continue from parents, disability rights advocates and community members.
Sheryl Goldstein, the chair of the Framingham Disabilities Commission, said his comments felt like a personal attack against her own children. Goldstein said it’s terrible that Hugo thinks “my children who had special needs were not worth the expense in the school system.”
Another local advocate for people with disabilities, Laura Green told Fox News that she did not think Hugo’s apology was sincere.
“I feel like after a statement like that is made, you can’t just pretend that it didn’t happen or take it back because it’s damaging to a community of people,” she said. “The disability community is the only minority group that you can become a part of at any time.”
Here’s more from the report:
The Framingham Democratic Committee also issued a statement, denouncing Hugo’s statement, claiming it did not reflect the full committee, despite the committee receiving Hugo’s remarks several hours in advance of him delivering them. It also said it “put in place processes to avoid future occurrences.”
Racist and ableist comments are common throughout the history of the pro-abortion movement.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a well known eugenicist who believed certain groups of people, especially the poor and people with disabilities, were “unfit” and should be “weeded” out of society.
“Their lives are hopeless repetitions,” Sanger wrote in 1925. “All that they have said has been said before; all that they have done has been done better before. Such human weeds clog up the path, drain up the energies and the resources of this little earth. We must clear the way for a better world; we must cultivate our garden.”
Today, Sanger’s organization, Planned Parenthood, aborts more than 380,000 unborn babies every year and lobbies against laws to protect unborn babies from discrimination based on their special needs, sex or race. Planned Parenthood and the Democratic Party also are close supporters of each other.
ACTION ALERT: To demand Michael Hugo’s resignation, Contact the Framingham Democratic Committee.
