Today we have a guest Post by Angela Farrell. Angela is a member of Saving Downs and proud mum of 4. Jonah, her 3rd child has the gift of an extra 21st chromosome, and they have the gift of his life to share.
Jonah Farrell
So here we have it, the nation everyone thinks about when the word eugenics is mentioned is now heading back down the same path. Well, I guess it had to happen at some stage since every other ‘modern’ nation is doing it. Why go against the flow when it’s so much easier just to do what everyone else is doing?
Such a shame as I held them in high admiration as being one of the only countries that did not practice the ‘search and destroy’ antenatal testing that most countries inflict upon – oops, I mean ‘provide for’ pregnant women. Unfortunately this position has changed, as evidenced in this article.
The German Down Syndrome Information Centre puts it well:
“People with trisomy 21 will, in the long run, be the first people with a different genetic makeup to disappear from our society, and with the tacit approval of the majority.”
Therein lays the crux of the issue
“with the tacit approval of the majority”.
This is the really scary part, as the clever scientists have deceived the majority into believing that those who are different, whether disabled physically or mentally, are a drain on society and it is apparently good science to weed them out. They liken it to natural selection. Am I crazy to believe there is nothing natural at all about the process that terminates the life of these ones?
Having spent some time reviewing the whole lead up to Hilter’s concentration camps I am fearful for where our current society is heading. If you are unfamiliar with the process, have a read of this.
Not only were children with disabilities gassed, many of them were used as living experimental fodder for sadistic scientists and doctors before their end.
Now, please follow the T4 progression and see if you can guess what the current testing and terminating may lead to. First, people were given the choice to end the life of their family member who they deemed ‘unworthy of life’. Once society was desensitised to the horror of this and the practice had the ‘tacit approval of the majority’, parents who chose to accept the gift they had been given and uphold the sanctity of life were demonised and accused of being irresponsible. It was implied that they had a moral duty to hand their child over to be extinguished.
Then the ‘choice’ element was removed. ‘Life unworthy of life’ was snuffed out for the greater good of the Fatherland and to prepare the way for the Master Race.
Hmmn, it’s spooky how history repeats. The ideologies touted by Hitler and his crew have resurfaced today in defence of the inevitable result of antenatal testing for Down syndrome and other ‘abnormalities’. I can’t help but think how Hilter would have rubbed his hands with glee at the prospect of having access to the technology we have today, and the way it’s being used. Fact: over 90% of babies diagnosed antenatally with Down syndrome never make it out of their mother’s womb alive. For now it’s a ‘choice’, but the way most doctors delivering the diagnosis pressure for termination, trying to force parents to make such a huge decision when they are very emotional and given very negative and incomplete information, is it not reasonable to perceive that much of the ‘choice’ element has been removed already?
The practice of screening for and terminating those with disabilities, even if the disability is the wrong gender, now pretty much has ‘tacit approval of the majority’. If we continue to head down this slippery slope look out for it to become mandatory. That’s why it’s got to stop here and now. Antenatal testing can be used to enhance and save lives, let’s demand that it does.
Nazi Germany – least we forget.
excellent blog-agree entirely. After experiencing the eugenic (and genocidal) effects of pre-natal screening while having my baby with DS, I wrote to the then UK minster of health informing him that Hitler had won the war afterall-I’ve yet to have a response 17 years later. And my concerns about where this screening was going have all proved to be valid now that the researchers and geneticists have the capability to detect a vaste myriad of “conditions”. Least we forget!
In general I do agree. But there is not only a dark side: The german comission of ethics (I hope this is the correct term), a group of very respectable politicians, is working on a model, how to make sure that prenatal screening, especially NIPT, is not used to antagonize abortion for the reason of genetic defects, or gender. I am not sure about their power, but they are heared. And there i a visible, and big number of physicians, medics, and medical scientists, who are not willing to support abortion for the above mentioned reasons. Especially not for (against) embryos with down syndrome.