Aborting babies with Down Syndrome is not "Human"

After a series of tweets calling children born with Down Syndrome "defective", anonymous blogger feels the need to defend herself with this blog entry: The Down Side: Prenatal Testing and Its Consequences.

Here is some of what she said in her blog post:

"[Renate Lindeman], a "spokesperson for Dutch parent group Downpride." claims that Down Syndrome screening is about "eliminating a group of people."

No, it's not. It's individual parents and families, offered tests, given results, thinking it over, and making individual decisions based on their own desires and capacities. 

In other words, people taking advantage of technological ingenuity to get information in order to make their own choices about their own families. 

It doesn't get more human than this. 

I took crap on Twitter the other day for calling Down Syndrome a defect, admonished rather to use the term "different."...

It's not evil, it's not genocide, and it certainly is not Nazi.  

And the state has no fucking business in it. At. All. 

Note to commenters: Yes. I know Down Syndrome people can be lovely, joyful people. And to people who choose to birth and bring up these children, good on you. But your saintliness gives you no right to shit on people who choose not to."

I just watched a remarkable documentary called "Abigail & Brittany Hensel - The Twins Who Share a Body". Abigail and Brittany are conjoined identical twins.

Are these girls also "defective" and worthy of eliminating? Because they sure don't go by the text book definition of what is human.

What about someone who is born with limbs missing like thalidomide babies in the 1960's? Also "defective" and worthy of eliminating?

Being human means you are born into the human species. You are a human being. Not a single one of us is perfect. And what about babies born who will go on to develop mental illness? And babies with a hole in their heart or with with one foot? And what about babies with genetic disorders like those with Down Syndrome?

If we can eliminate children before birth because they are "defective", what's to stop us from eliminating them after birth as well? Where does it stop? Who decides who is to live and who is to die? Anonymous blogger says its "not evil, it's not genocide, and it certainly is not Nazi" to eliminate these humans. That's exactly what it is. The Nazis wanted to create the perfect human race, devoid of Jews, Poles, Catholics, Gypsy's and homosexuals. We call that eugenics.

Aborting children born with Down Syndrome is just more of the same evil, genocidal Nazism. Saying it's not, doesn't make it true.