Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League says currently in the United States, about 67% of preborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted, and that is usually the advice the expectant parents are given in those cases.
"We've seen a tremendously irresponsible approach to this issue from so many in the medical community, a real ablest approach that treats a Downs diagnosis as if it's a sort of death sentence for the parents, that they're going to have a miserable life, their child's going to be a vegetable," Scheidler laments. "There's an incredibly negative attitude towards many in the medical field where there's any kind of a negative diagnosis."
But he suggests new research has the potential to turn things around.
Published in JAMA Network Open, the study shows that odds of receiving a Down syndrome diagnosis at birth were higher between 2011 and 2018 in states where gestational limits on abortion were in place.
Eugenic abortions have increased with the rise in prenatal testing. But since most parents do not receive a prenatal diagnosis until the second trimester, it could be too late to terminate a child diagnosed with Down syndrome in states where preborn children are protected from late-term abortions.
"In states that have been able to limit abortion, especially 20-week abortion bans, we're beginning to see more children being born with Down syndrome instead of being killed in utero," the pro-lifer relays, calling abortion "a horrific approach to dealing with any kind of disability" and "especially … harmful to our entire society's attitude towards the disabled."
Live Action News says prenatal screening, a pro-life tool, has been hijacked as a method to weed out those seen as "unfit," with countries across the world effectively eradicating people with Down syndrome and other disabilities. There has also been the growth of wrongful birth lawsuits, in which parents publicly proclaim that they wish their children did not exist and had been aborted.
Scheidler believes society should care about every person. While information can help accomplish that, he says doctors would do well to consider every unborn child as a second patient who deserves to live.
