Got a cleft palate? Well, you should just die, then.

This UK author dares to suggest that there is something immoral about systematically destroying babies who might show any sign of imperfection. We’re not talking aborting infants with Downs Syndrome, or fatal deformities (I have issues with those abortions, too, but this is not the time or place) we’re talking about babies with cleft palates for criminy’s sake!

To abort an unborn child beyond 24 weeks’ gestation is recognised in British law as infanticide – but only if the child is thought to be “normal”. If doctors diagnose physical or mental handicap, including, it seems, a cleft palate, it is lawful to kill the unborn child at any time up to its birth.

This is a programme for eliminating the handicapped. Its justification is that it is better “not to burden” either the present or future generations with their care. It differs in practice from the mass murder in Nazi Germany – but it is not easy to articulate how it differs at the level of moral principle. The state is killing unborn children because we do not want to live with them, or to bear the costs of looking after them. It is a justification the Nazis would have appreciated.

About 200,000 unborn children are aborted every year in England and Wales, many because doctors have decided they will be handicapped. That is a killing rate of nearly 550 a day: less than the number of people gassed daily at Auschwitz, but a horrifically large number none the less – and larger than the numbers of defenceless handicapped murdered by the Nazis.

I’ve written about this before – this very scary road we are traveling whereby people are deemed “burdensome” or are encouraged to believe they should be willing to die and get out of the way. Sorry, I know women who were told they should abort their “damaged” babies who went on to give birth to perfectly healthy babies, and this is evil just having a high old time for itself. “Kill your babies, Kill yourselves!” it urges with mad and salivating glee!

Europe is embracing this mindset, is embracing the Culture of Death, with both arms and dragging it to herself. And too many in the US are saying, “me too! Group hug!”

UPDATE: Captain Ed has the best post I’ve yet read about the current circumstances of the pro-abortion lobby in the US, and what – realisitically – is in store for the issue of abortion in the US. Ed has a way of cutting through both nonsense and nuance and putting it all right out there. You’ll like. Hattip to Kathianne at Teachersramblings.

UPDATE II and, if you can stand it – here is an account of one woman’s experience working in an abortion clinic.

UPDATE III: Michelle Malkin links to a heartening batch of photos showing thousands – really, thousands – turning out to March for Life in…here it comes…San Francisco. I was happy to see the sign linking abortion with breast cancer, myself.