Washington Post columnist: I would have killed my Down syndrome child

Some are hailing this as “courageous.” I can think of a few other adjectives, including “cowardly,” “cruel,” “inhuman” and “brutal.”

Herewith, a part of an opinion piece by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, defending her constitutional right to commit murder:

I have had two children; I was old enough, when I became pregnant, that it made sense to do the testing for Down syndrome. Back then, it was amniocentesis, performed after 15 weeks; now, chorionic villus sampling can provide a conclusive determination as early as nine weeks. I can say without hesitation that, tragic as it would have felt and ghastly as a second-trimester abortion would have been, I would have terminated those pregnancies had the testing come back positive. I would have grieved the loss and moved on.

And I am not alone. More than two-thirds of American women choose abortion in such circumstances. Isn’t that the point — or at least inherent in the point — of prenatal testing in the first place?

If you believe that abortion is equivalent to murder, the taking of a human life, then of course you would make a different choice. But that is not my belief, and the Supreme Court has affirmed my freedom to have that belief and act accordingly.

I respect — I admire — families that knowingly welcome a baby with Down syndrome into their lives. Certainly, to be a parent is to take the risks that accompany parenting; you love your child for who she is, not what you want her to be.

She goes on:

I’m going to be blunt here: That was not the child I wanted. That was not the choice I would have made. You can call me selfish, or worse, but I am in good company. The evidence is clear that most women confronted with the same unhappy alternative would make the same decision.

On the other hand, Marc Thiessen in the same paper just published this: 

Sadly, there will always be those who see people with Down syndrome as nothing more than a burden on society. Princeton University professor Robert George recently tweeted out a shocking video in which a bureaucrat from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment uses a blackboard to show a man with Down syndrome how “expensive” he is for society compared with “normal” people. “Do the Dutch, who suffered under — and in many cases heroically resisted — Hitler’s domination, forget that the ‘final solution’ began with the dehumanization and eugenic killing of the handicapped?” George asked.

Today, more and more people with Down syndrome are speaking out and demanding recognition of their humanity. Recently, Frank Stephens appeared before a House appropriations panel, where he told members of Congress, “I am a man with Down syndrome, and my life is worth living.” Noting the abortion rates for Down syndrome babies in Europe, he declared, “I completely understand that the people pushing this particular ‘final solution’ are saying that people like me should not exist,” but pleaded, “Let’s be America, not Iceland or Denmark. . . . Let’s pursue inclusion, not termination.”

It is simply intolerable that so many joyous lives are being snuffed out.

Amen.