MORE than 50 babies with club feet were aborted in just one area of England in a three-year period, according to new statistics.
Thirty-seven babies with cleft lips or palates and 26 with extra or webbed fingers or toes were also aborted.
The data have raised concerns about abortions being carried out for minor disabilities that could be cured by surgery.
Abortions are allowed up to birth in Britain in cases of serious handicap, but the law does not define what conditions should be considered grave enough to allow a termination late in the pregnancy. That is left to the discretion of doctors.
The Commons science and technology committee is carrying out an inquiry into whether the law should be made more specific.
Some parents, doctors and campaign groups are worried by what they see as a tendency to stretch the definition of serious handicap.
The justification the doctors give is that cleft lip or palate, or extra or webbed fingers or toes might (my emphasis) be indicative of other problems that can't be diagnosed in-utero. Better safe than sorry! Better to eliminate any number of babies with purely cosmetic problems (surgically correctable, I might add) than to let a more seriously affected baby live!
So, kids with webbed toes become collateral damage in the war on "defective" people. Another victory for the forces of tolerance and diversity!
Click here for the full breakdown. It's a catalog of what we as a society consider capital crimes when committed by the unborn. Including three babies aborted for external ear anomalies. And six for being intersex. Five for dwarfism. Twenty for Turner's syndrome. Three for Klinefelter's syndrome. One hundred and ninety-four for having Down syndrome. And fifty-two for "suggestion of underlying anomaly". I guess innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply to the possible crime of being sick or disabled.
HT: Verum Serum
Christina, just wanted to share that this week I started a new job as a direct support personel at a residential facility for children with autism spectrum disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, and other developmental disorders. I hope to be a mentor and teacher to these children as well as learn more compassion/patience from these children and become educated on autism and the various developmental disorders.
ReplyDeleteGroovy!
ReplyDeleteThough working with the disabled, especially the profoundly disabled, I've learned that it's dealing with the bureaucracy and management that requires more patience than working with the clients!