Discriminatory Abortion

An obvious progression from legalized murder

The highest French Court (the Cour de Cassation) has ruled that doctors who fail to detect deformations in unborn children and do not suggest an abortion can be held liable for damages. The court ruled that:

"a child born handicapped may request financial compensation for prejudice resulting from his or her handicap if the handicap is in direct causal relationship with faults committed by the doctor in executing the contract formed with the mother and which prohibited the mother from exercising her choice to terminate the pregnancy."

Such an unprecedented ruling sent shock waves through France's medical community. As reported by Catholic World News and the BBC,

"...doctors say the fear of being sued for a misdiagnosis would encourage them to recommend abortions at the smallest hint of a disability. 'The ruling means that the handicapped have no place in our society,' said Yves Richard, a lawyer representing the medical profession. 'There is a real risk of this starting a process that ends with the search for the perfect child.'"

Although the legal mandate is new, the practice of doctors recommending (and patients procuring) abortions based on physical defects is not uncommon. Parents are told that having an abortion is the "compassionate thing to do" for a child that will undoubtedly suffer. The 1967 Abortion Act in England permits abortion at any time during a pregnancy if there is a "significant risk of a baby being born seriously disabled". Otherwise, abortion is not allowed after 24 weeks.

The ultimate mechanism of discrimination

If abortion can be used to kill those with undesirable genetic or physical defects, what's to stop it from being utilized to eliminate certain races or groups of people? Nothing. In fact, such practices are already taking place around the globe. The United Nations' favorite method of foreign aid is the provision of abortifacient pills to third world countries, which supposedly help society through the gradual elimination of citizens. Some countries have even seen their birth rate fall below the mortality rate. This situation has gotten so bad in Russia, the government has proposed a ten-year moratorium on abortion and female emigration to help reverse the effects of this national suicide.

Even within these countries enjoying "freedom of choice", portions of the population are being systematically eliminated. Both India and China have recently come under attack for the practice of selectively aborting female children. Their critics include none other than the UN, which advocates (and attempts to mandate) abortion in almost every country. They are somehow surprised that an approved method of killing would be used in a such an oppressive way. They wonder how their much-heralded myth of "reproductive rights," which is supposed to grant freedom to women, can be used to discriminate against them?

Abortion advocates are hypocrites

Here we see an example of the blatant hypocrisy of abortion advocates. According to what the modern world has been trained to think, a woman in India opting to abort her female child is exercising her "right to choose". What's the difference between making that "choice" based on a disability and making it based on the child's gender? Who is the United Nations to decide for these women what they can and cannot do with their bodies? In fact, how can a mass of tissue that, contrary to all human senses, is certainly not a human life be discriminated against in the first place? The obvious answer is that the mantras of the baby killers ("freedom to choose"; ""reproductive rights"; "pro child, pro choice") are nonsense. You can't pretend a fetus is not human then start defending his rights. How can anyone protect the unborn from discrimination while denying them the most basic right of all — life?!?

...abortion is infanticide — and no government or global institution can ever make it otherwise.

What is seen here is liberals experiencing a conflict between two of their crusades (population-control and feminism) which is forcing them to make suspicious exceptions. Similar behavior is seen in their anti-missionary opinion that all religions and rituals of other cultures should be respected, revered and left alone — as long as they are not cutting down trees, performing female circumcision or any taking part in any other "politically incorrect" or "intolerant" activity. Suppose one day, African scientists believe themselves to have discovered a way to detect homosexuality in the pre-born, and figured that it is better to abort such individuals than introduce the public health risks associated with their disorder ("AIDS", STDs, etc.). It's guaranteed both "population control" and "fighting AIDS" would be discarded and ignored in favor of "anti-discrimination" and "homosexual rights".

Unfortunately liberals, like modernists, have no need to explain the consistency of their views. Because they have somehow convinced massive amounts of people to ignore their innate human instinct, life experience and even their own eyes, abortionists see no problem with assuming the same people will also suspend their rational abilities. They teach that random or selective abortion is a right, but when done for a reason they don't like, it's injustice. It's analogous to the claim that every man has the right (and even duty) to own a slave, but to select a slave based on gender is evil and discriminatory. Such inconsistencies are readily apparent to those blessed with even the most basic grasp of the obvious. The truth is very clear — every abortion kills a human life. There are no good and bad reasons to have an abortion. Killing a child because it's a girl is no more reprehensible than doing so because she has asthma. Whether the "choice" is made out of misplaced compassion or mere convenience, abortion is infanticide — and no government or global institution can ever make it otherwise.

Peter Miller
Seattle, WA
8/24/2001