Category: Abortion and the Disabled

From Dr. Thomas Elkins, whose daughter has down syndrome:

“We look at our child, Jenny, who has Down’s syndrome, and see our own limitedness She shows us love even when we, at first, were not totally accepting of her. These kids love us until we begin to love them back. And by loving them, we learn whole new definition of love – something very akin to grace.

In our country, we have been very much aware of physical attributes and their importance in being successful. But with a child like Jenny, we learned that love is deeper. It’s love because of the personal qualities of that child and because of something of the spirit of God that’s within that child – what we term personhood.”

Harold Smith “A Legacy of Life” Christianity Today, January 18, 1985

Quoted in: F LaGard Smith When Choice Becomes God (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1990)

When the fight to legalize abortion was just beginning in the late 1960s, some in the medical community supported legal abortion because they felt that abortion could prevent the birth of children with disabilities. Disabled people’s lives, they believed, were not worth living. Here is one example of a doctor saying that it’s morally wrong to have a disabled child:

“If life is sacred… Then it is about time we begin treating it as such, instead of continuing to commit the frightful tragedies we do in permitting individuals to be brought into the world who will suffer all the days of their lives from serious disabling defects… The initial basic right of the individual should be to be born without handicap. Anyone who, in the light of the facts, assist in bringing a seriously handicapped child into the world in my view commits a crime against humanity.

Abortion could prevent that crime.”

Respected scientist Ashley  Montagu “Letters to the Editor” New York Times, February 28, 1969

Rayna Rapp, a former abortion clinic worker, interviewed women getting genetic testing to find out if their babies would be disabled or have a genetic problem. Here are some things that people said about why they would abort a down syndrome baby:

“The bottom line is when my neighbor said to me: “Having a “tard,” that’s a bummer for life.”

…

“I have a cousin, my mother’s sister’s son, he’s retarded and 38. Oh, it isn’t Down’s, it’s something else. He’s done fine, he’s likely to live a normal life, to die at 80. But it’s really messed up the rest of the family. My aunt give up a lot of her life… I’m not that selfless, I don’t want to live like that.”

…

“I would have a very hard time dealing with a retarded child. Retardation is relative, it could be so negligible that the child is normal, or so severe that the child has nothing… All of the sharing things you want to do, the things you want to share with a child – that, to me, is the essence of being a father. There would be a big void that I would feel. I would feel grief, not having what I consider a normal family.”

…

“I have an image of how I want to interact with my child, and that’s not the kind of interaction I want, not the kind I could maintain.”

…..

“I just couldn’t do it, couldn’t be that kind of mother who accepts everything, loves her kid no matter what. What about me? Maybe it’s selfish, I don’t know. But I just didn’t want all those problems in my life.”

Rayna Rapp Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (New York: Routledge, 1999)

To some, they may seem like good reasons. But keep in mind that abortions of down syndrome babies are usually late-term abortions, performed after 16 to 20 weeks. Below is a picture of a 16-week-old unborn baby. A baby like this would be completely torn apart in an abortion procedure