Youth Blog

Imagine a world in which there are no genetic disorders. Advanced medical technology has virtually eliminated such issues, creating a society that is, in at least one way, perfect. People are happy for all the suffering that’s been prevented. So happy, in fact, that no one stops to look beneath the surface and ask themselves an ominous question: What did it cost us to get here?  

Sound like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie? It’s actually a very possible future.  

Case in point: In Iceland, about 4,000-5,000 people are born every year, but on average, only two of those babies have Down Syndrome. Contrast this with Canada, where, of the average ~360,000 babies born per year, about 461 have Down Syndrome. If you do the math, the percentages work out to around 0.128% in Canada compared with a staggeringly low 0.044% in Iceland.  

In the words of geneticist Kari Stefansson, the country has “basically eradicated” the condition. “There is hardly ever a child with Down syndrome in Iceland anymore,” he said in a 2017 interview with CBS News.  

And how have they brought about this medical miracle? You guessed it – abortion.  

Prenatal screening is readily available to pregnant women in Iceland, and 80-85% choose to undergo a non-invasive test that determines the likelihood of their baby having Down Syndrome. Further, more invasive tests can show the presence or absence of the condition for certain. Of the Icelandic women whose unborn babies are diagnosed with Down Syndrome, the vast majority tragically decide to kill them – in other words, to terminate the lives of precious, innocent children who deserve a chance to be happy.  

Despite the challenges their parents may face in caring for them, people with Down Syndrome are no less valuable than we are. They deserve the same human rights as any other group of human beings. Society already recognizes these rights outside the womb – why not inside?  

The answer is simple: just as with the “not prepared/lack of financial support” argument for abortion, pro-choicers apparently think it’s wrong to bring a child into a less-than-perfect world to live a less-than-perfect life. But I ask you, which is worse: to live in poverty, or not to live at all? To be pushed from home to home in the foster care system, or to be directly and intentionally killed in your very first home – your own mother’s womb? To live a difficult yet fulfilling life before dying of heart defects or other Down Syndrome-related complications, or to be starved, exsanguinated, or violently dismembered without ever being given the chance to breathe fresh air and feel the sunlight?  

I sympathize deeply with the struggles of people with Down Syndrome. We must realize, however, that murdering them in excruciating ways is not the answer. Even before they develop the capacity to feel pain, they are human persons possessing every human right, including the most fundamental one of all: the right to life, upon which every other right must logically depend.  

Iceland’s nearly-100% abortion rate for prenatal diagnoses of Down Syndrome is the most obvious example of this deadly ableism. But unfortunately, the rest of the world isn't far behind: In the United States, the rate is at least 67%. Both in Canada and globally, it’s 90%. This should alarm you, especially considering the historical precedent for the elimination of the disabled – a practice eerily reminiscent of no less an atrocity than the Nazi Holocaust.  

Hitler and his fellow National Socialists cooperated with German doctors to devise a secret plan called Aktion T4, designed to eliminate those who did not fit their ideal of a perfect Aryan race. “Defective” people – i.e., the physically and mentally disabled – were transferred to “care centres”, where they were euthanized by either lethal injection or gas chambers.  

The resemblance only grows more striking when you look at where the program's trajectory began. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, the first disabled people to be targeted by this murderous regime were infants and toddlers. Adolescents up to age 17 were soon included, and adults were quick to follow.  

All in all, historians believe that Aktion T4 and related measures ended the lives of 250,000 people, including at least 10,000 children. The Nazis viewed the disabled as a threat to genetic purity and acted on that belief by systematically killing those they thought did not deserve to live. In a word, they practised eugenics, defined by Merriam-Webster as “the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations' genetic composition”. The parallels to our modern situation aren’t perfect, but they’re still terrifyingly accurate.  

Believe it or not, it gets worse: As the Holocaust Encyclopedia says, “The Euthanasia Program represented in many ways a rehearsal for Nazi Germany's subsequent genocidal policies.” Sex-selective abortion is already legal in most countries, and abortion is an ageist procedure by nature. How long until other uncontrollable, morally irrelevant characteristics become grounds for the brutal murder of unborn children? How long until, for example, babies are aborted simply for being of an “undesirable” race?  

As a matter of fact, this was almost the exact intention of Margaret Sanger, the racist founder of Planned Parenthood. She criticized what she saw as an overly euphemistic name for the organization, and she similarly did not mince words when describing her objective: “... we want to exterminate the Negro population.” Additionally, Sanger had connections with Nazis and once gave a speech to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Her legacy lives on today, as Planned Parenthood continues to emphasize providing their “services” to racial minorities.  

To put it concisely, Sanger opposed the reproduction of those she deemed unfit or inferior. (Ironically enough, she also opposed abortion; she advocated contraception instead, failing to recognize the link between the two.) A rather frightening quote of hers ties back to the central theme of this post: “In the early history of the race…. The weak died early or were killed. Today, however, civilization has brought sympathy, pity, tenderness and other lofty and worthy sentiments, which interfere with the law of natural selection. We are now in a state where our charities, our compensation acts, our pensions, hospitals and even our drainage and sanitary equipment all tend to keep alive the sickly and weak, who are allowed to propagate and in turn produce a race of degenerates.”  

People with disabilities are often perceived as weak, and in many cases, this is sadly true. But nature’s – and Sanger’s – harsh rule of “survival of the fittest” abandons the weak for the sake of the strong. This is not how civilized societies operate. In fact, it ought to work the opposite way: The strong have a moral duty to use their strength to protect the weak. If we allow disabled children to be killed simply because of their disabilities, we forfeit all claim to civilization and are left with a ruthless anti-society, drained of a beautiful God-given diversity, whose illusion of perfection collapses under scrutiny.  

The systematic termination of the most vulnerable members of the human species, along with other injustices, proves that our culture has largely forgotten the Christian values that made us great. No matter what the political left may tell you, the concepts of human dignity and equality were brought into the world by the representatives of the God who granted us our right to life in the first place. For His sake and that of His image-bearers, we are called to take a stand against all abortions, including those perpetrated against babies whose sole crime is a genetic disorder. Let’s put an end to this ableist butchery – before we become a society Hitler would be proud of.