In America, we don't leave infants with disabilities on the side of the road or bury them in the desert. We simply
get rid of them before they're born. And this, according to "progressives", is our choice and our right. It's called
eugenics, and it's the logical conclusion of Darwinism.
A recent Washington Post article, written by the mother of a Down syndrome child, observes that "prenatal
testing is making your right to abort a disabled child more like 'your duty' to abort a disabled child." The writer,
former Post reporter and bureau chief Patricia E. Bauer, describes the looks that she and her daughter get:
"curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed…Margaret falls into the category
of…less than human. A drain on society.
"At a dinner party not long ago, I was seated next to the director of an Ivy League ethics program. In answer to
another guest's question, he said he believes that prospective parents have a moral obligation to undergo prenatal
testing and to terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability, because it was immoral to
subject a child to the kind of suffering he or she would have to endure. (When I started to pipe up about our
family's experience, he smiled politely and turned to the lady on his left.)"
According to Bauer — who did get "the test" but kept the baby anyway — 80 to 90 percent of pregnancies are
terminated when prenatal testing diagnoses Down syndrome.
In other words, progressives are killing off Corky, that lovable, tenacious character of the 1990s series "Life
Goes On." Don't look for too many more of him to do the amazing things that Down syndrome actor Chris
Burke did — a first for TV. And don't look for too many more Special Olympics that prove the will of these
people to live and achieve.
Though she brought up the comparison of disabled babies being left out in the elements to die in ancient Greece
and lamented that "we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value," Bauer shied
away from making the more glaring analogy. Recall that it was the progressive Nazi Party of Germany that killed
the retarded and handicapped, including kids. Our progressives simply have more advanced technology at their
disposal, which can exterminate them before they're even born. We've streamlined the process; we're more
efficient than the Nazis.
Soon after Bauer's article, The Post ran a piece by People Magazine national correspondent Maria Eftimiades,
who had the opposite experience. She, too, took "the test," but aborted after she learned that the male child she
was carrying would have Down syndrome. The piece was a response to a Down syndrome mother by a
would-be Down syndrome mother, lest the former think she was on a higher moral ground or something.
Eftimiades defends her choice with a vengeance, as being equal to and as moral as Bauer's.
All the while, she describes the euphemisms she'd use for the word "abortion" — "appointment," "procedure",
"going to the hospital" — and recalled how she phoned her boyfriend in tears after a friend was "inconsiderate"
enough to ask her when she was going for the abortion.
Her boyfriend, Mike, is 52. Eftimiades is 42, and it was to be the first child for both of them. As for marriage,
they wanted "to wait before taking that step." Not only did this pair wait until almost middle age to have a baby,
but they continue to indulge their indecisiveness about "settling down", not bothering to create the proven ideal
conditions for child-rearing. Yet they wanted an ideal baby. What mentally healthy soul would jump at the chance
to be these people's kid? No chance these two would have seen this child as a character test after a life of
self-absorption.
Nor could Eftimiades stand the obvious, begged questions and utterly apt jokes that friends made when they
learned of her pregnancy, instead balking at "insensitive remarks from friends": "So, is this good news?", "Who's
the father? Just kidding!" and, her favorite for some reason: "How did it happen? No birth control?"
To explain the disappeared pregnancy to some — like the writer's brother who is married to a Catholic — she and
her mother came up with a miscarriage cover story, because "people are funny," her mother cautioned.
Yes, it's those other people who are funny, according to Mom, who understood enough that her daughter was
doing something worth lying about.
Eftimiades, who had reported on clinic bombings and people who stand outside clinics and imitate babies crying,
"Mommy don't kill me" concludes, "Only now do I understand how entirely personal the decision to terminate a
pregnancy is and how wrong it feels to bring someone else's morality into the discussion." (That is, to bring
morality into the discussion.)
While it's hard to believe that Eftimiades hadn't previously taken a position on the abortion issue (she's a
journalist, after all; we can guess where she stood, especially if she covered clinic bombings), the message now
that she became an abortion seeker is that everybody double better stay out of her way.
"To know that our son would be retarded, perhaps profoundly, gives us the choice of not continuing the
pregnancy," writes Eftimiades. "We don't want a life like that for our child….I'm quite certain that I made the
right choice for the three of us."
Talk about imposing one's morality on another. Regardless, this unmarried woman who at 42 wants a baby and
the chance to opt out of a relationship with its father wants us to believe that her choice was made out of
something other than self-interest — that she acted in the interests of someone other than herself and her equally
selfish lover. It's clear to any reader that the only person whose suffering she's trying to avoid is her own.
While moralizing from the sidelines is never in good taste, what is so infuriating is these women writing publicly
and self-righteously about the sanctity of their choice. Is it too much to ask them to do what they're going to do
but to not build a moralistic case around it — which, by the way, imposes their view on the rest of us? They are the
ones who seem to be telling us what we can and can't think.
The title of Eftimiades' article is "One Woman's Choice: After a Prenatal Test Shows Down Syndrome, a
Wrenching Decision." But between Bauer and Eftimiades, for one woman the decision wasn't wrenching.
Because one woman did the right thing. Eftimiades says she will always mourn the baby she aborted. Hopefully
she'll at least have the character to share that mourning with her perfect future child, and will tell him how she
disposed of his retarded brother.
