How abortion magnifies our prejudices

Sam and the Perfect World by David Lenz, father of Sam who has Down Syndrome

What does this have to do with abortion?  Everything.  When 90% of babies with Down Syndrome are aborted, it means a 90% less chance of ever meeting someone with Down Syndrome.  90% less chance of understanding how wonderful a person with Down Syndrome is.  90% less chance of understanding that an extra chromosome 21 does not define or negate a person.

Instead we have a world that is nearly Down Syndrome-less.  Some would say that was better.  Better for the aborted baby and better for the people with Downs that make it out of the womb.  I disagree.  Instead, we have thousands of dead Downs babies and for the ones that survive, a world that has erroneous preconceived notions about what it is to have Down Syndrome.  This creates an environment where people say the most hurtful things about the children and the families of those with Downs. 

Case in point: Larry Flynt who said the following about Sarah Palin's son Trig:

She did a disservice to every woman in America. She knew from the first month of pregnancy that kid was going to be Down's Syndrome. It's brain dead. A virtual vegetable. She carries it to all these different political events against abortion, she did it just because she didn't want to say she'd had an abortion. How long is it going to live? Another 12, 15 years? Doesn't even know it's in this world. So what kind of compassionate conservative is she?

Or liberal blogger Jack Stuef when he wrote the following at Wonkette:

What’s he dreaming about? Nothing. He’s retarded.

His mom went to a lot of trouble to leak amniotic fluid over 8 states to make sure that he arrived in this world somewhat alive...

Clearly neither Flynt nor Stuef has ever met anyone with Down Syndrome, and with the vast majority of people with Downs never seeing the light of day, they likely never will. You might say that Flynt and Stuef are the fringe exception.  Except they are not.  Elizabeth R. Schiltz, Associate Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, wrote the following for Business Week:

From time to time, we are all confronted with the disconnect between how we see ourselves and how others see us. I've always seen myself as a responsible, law-abiding citizen. I recycle, I vote, I don't drive a Hummer. But I've come to realize that many in the scientific and medical community view me as grossly irresponsible. Indeed, in the words of Bob Edwards, the scientist who facilitated the birth of England's first test-tube baby, I am a "sinner." A recent book even branded me a "genetic outlaw." My transgression? I am one of the dwindling number of women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome and choose not to terminate our pregnancies.

So any mother that chooses to love and nurture her Down Syndrome child instead of ripping it from her womb is a "genetic outlaw?"   Patricia Bauer experienced being seen as a "genetic outlaw" at her local park with her daughter Margaret.  She recounted the experience in The Washington Post:

She was a fresh-faced young woman with a couple of adorable kids, whiling away an hour in the sandbox at the park near my home. So was I, or so I thought. New in town, I had come to the park in hopes of finding some friends for myself and my little ones.

Her eyes flicked over to where my daughter sat, shovel gripped in a tiny fist, and then traveled quickly away. The remark that followed was directed to the woman next to her, but her voice carried clearly across the playground. "Isn't it a shame," she said, an eyebrow cocked in Margaret's direction, "that everyone doesn't get amnio?"

A woman I know was told by her obstetrician that her fetus had Down syndrome.  The doctor ordered her to abort, she refused....  Another woman was similarly coerced.  Her doctor told her that her baby would be more like a fish than a human and would only be as smart as a baboon.

Abortion doesn't just magnify the prejudice against people with genetic disorders, it magnifies whatever prejudice festers in society.  Beyond the reality that Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the United States, was an outspoken racist, we only need to look globally.  Many eastern countries a have a deep seeded preference for boys in their culture. Which means a prejudice against girls.  In India, it is estimated that 12 million girls have been aborted simply because they were girls.  And this is not just isolated to India.  From The Economist:

Gendercide—to borrow the title of a 1985 book by Mary Anne Warren—is often seen as an unintended consequence of China’s one-child policy, or as a product of poverty or ignorance. But that cannot be the whole story. The surplus of bachelors—called in China guanggun, or “bare branches”— seems to have accelerated between 1990 and 2005, in ways not obviously linked to the one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979. And, as is becoming clear, the war against baby girls is not confined to China.

Parts of India have sex ratios as skewed as anything in its northern neighbour. Other East Asian countries—South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan—have peculiarly high numbers of male births. So, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, have former communist countries in the Caucasus and the western Balkans. Even subsets of America’s population are following suit, though not the population as a whole.

The real cause, argues Nick Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, is not any country’s particular policy but “the fateful collision between overweening son preference, the use of rapidly spreading prenatal sex-determination technology and declining fertility.” These are global trends. And the selective destruction of baby girls is global, too.

And with a gender imbalance in favor of males comes a large population of unmarried men.  In the next decade, that unmarried Chinese male population will be the same as the entire population of males in America.  With these 'bare branches" as the bachelors are called, comes a higher rate of violent crime including bride abduction, the trafficking of women, rape and prostitution.  So women are not only being killed in the womb, but also abused outside the womb.  And the trend will only get worse.

Abortion was supposed to "liberate" women.  But with a rejection of life and a preference for males, comes the death and abuse of millions of women around the globe.

One commenter on this blog said that I should not blame abortion for the gendercide of girls, I should blame instead the cultures that need some education and feminism. My answer was to point out that since abortion is the thing that kills, I blame the abortion.  Abortion magnifies the prejudices of every society and no amount of reeducation will eliminate that.  When we "discover" the "genes" for obesity, then future obese will be on the chopping block. And so will homosexuals and other "undesirables." Abortion always marginalizes the weakest, most "unwanted" segment of society and then makes the prejudice worse.  It always will.