OOPS! Killed the wrong one!

Italian police to investigate abortion of wrong twin.

Italian parents wanted their fetus with Down Syndrome aborted, and the fetus with the standard set of chromosomes left alive. But the doc killed the wrong twin. So the parents went ahead with a second procedure to snuff the "faulty" fetus, and raised hell.

Here's a deplorable opening paragraph:

Italian police have been asked to investigate a case in which doctors treating a 40-year-old woman who was pregnant with twins aborted a healthy foetus while leaving a second, malformed one untouched.

"Malformed."

Does this kid look "malformed" to you? Or this kid? This kid? This kid? Or this kid?

1. Just because somebody's different isn't a reason to slap a label like "malformed" on him.

2. Even if somebody had some sort of physical malformation, does that make the person worthless or deserving of death? And does that make it right to label that person "malformed" and ignore anything he or she has to offer the world? Johnny Eck was born missing almost the entire lower half of his body. He was a cult icon and an affectionate friend to his Baltimore neighbors. Jeannie Tomaini was born minus her legs, and with malformed arms. (Note that I say that Jeannie's arms were malformed. Jeannie herself was a lovely lady.) She delighted audiences, married and raised a family, and established a lodge and fishing camp where people society deemed "abnormal" could get away from judgmental eyes for a while. The McCoy sisters were born conjoined -- and purchased their entire family out of slavery. And let's not forget Joseph Merrick, best known as "The Elephant Man", whose intelligence and charm won over Victorian England.

(And actually, the doc beat the odds this time. Statistically, three babies with standard chromosomes die for every DS fetus identified and eliminated.)

The war against babies with congenital conditions is causing collateral damage in other ways:

In March, a foetus aborted in the 22nd week of pregnancy at a hospital in Florence, because of suspected deformities, was found to be physically sound. It was rescuscitated and survived for a brief period.

Midtown Hospital, a National Abortion Federation member in Atlanta, got caught aborting healthy fetuses who had been targeted because of supposed abnormalities.

For all our talk of "tolerance" and "diversity", society isn't walking the walk, is it? If you're different in a way that makes other people uncomfortable, you deserve to die. And if we end up taking out one, two, or even three "desirable" people just to weed you out, that's an acceptable price to pay.

Which is a deplorable attitude but there you have it.