Saturday, February 02, 2008

Abortion and Down Syndrome

I just read this post on Desiring God's website:

Bombing, Abortion, & Down SyndromeFebruary 2, 2008 By: John Piper Category: Commentary
Al Qaida has moved another step toward western standards of abortion barbarity in using Down Syndrome women to blow boys and girls to pieces. The news is that this was not suicide bombing, but the detonation of retarded girls at a distance.
The disgust one feels for the kind of heart that does this could reveal to England and America how we should feel when we screen for Down Syndrome babies and then kill them. Compare the stories:

Story One: al Qaida
At Breitbart.com (and most news sources), it is reported that yesterday al Qaida used two women with Down Syndrome to bear the explosives under their clothes and then were detonated remotely killing over 70 people.
Two women suicide bombers who have killed nearly 80 people in Baghdad were Down's Syndrome victims exploited by al Qaida.
The explosives were detonated by remote control in a co-ordinated attack after the women walked into separate crowded markets, said the chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad General Qassim al-Moussawi.
Other officials said the women were apparently unaware of what they were doing in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert toughened security measures.

Story Two: Abortion
Medical News Today:
Although no national data are available, the abortion rate of fetuses with the condition [of Down Syndrome] was found to be 59% in one California study and 92% in an English study.

Steve Calvin at Physicians for Life:
I believe that we are at a tipping point. The counterweight to societal support for people and families with Down Syndrome is the expanding availability and promotion of prenatal DS screening tests. When DS is confirmed, abortion is offered. Increasingly, it is chosen. In England and some major U.S. cities, more than 90 percent of DS fetuses are aborted.”

New York Times, with reference to Detroit, MI:
Until this year, only pregnant women 35 and older were routinely tested to see if their fetuses had the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome. As a result many couples were given the diagnosis only at birth. But under a new recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, doctors have begun to offer a new, safer screening procedure to all pregnant women, regardless of age. About 90 percent of pregnant women who are given a Down syndrome diagnosis have chosen to have an abortion.