Richard Hanania, in addition to writing for Newsweek, is the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and a research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. In reaction to the limiting of abortion in Texas, Hanania warned about the possibility of an increase in births of people with Down syndrome and other disabilities — because they will no longer be aborted, thanks to laws like the Texas Heartbeat Act.
“You can’t screen for Down syndrome before about 10 weeks, and something like 80% of Down syndrome fetuses are aborted. If red states ban abortion, we could see a world where they have five times as many children with Down syndrome, and similar numbers for other disabilities,” he wrote. In follow-up tweets, he added, “Could be outliers in the whole developed world. There are already negative stereotypes of Americans in these states, one can imagine it getting much more extreme. What if they also ban genetic engineering and embryo selection [eugenic reproductive technologies], while other places go ahead?…”
Despite Hanania’s claim that nearly 80% of Americans have an abortion following a Down syndrome diagnosis — which he believes includes pro-lifers — the real rate in the United States is estimated to be approximately 67%….
In Europe, the abortion rate is so high that the birth rate for children with Down syndrome has fallen by 54%, according to a recent study. In southern Europe (countries including Spain, Italy, Greece, and Monaco), the decrease in births was 71%, while northern Europe (home to countries such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) was at 51%. In Eastern Europe (countries including Russia, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary), the birth rate for babies with Down syndrome decreased by 38%.
Iceland recently boasted of having a 100% abortion rate for preborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome, while nearly every abortion in Poland is due to disability. Just 18 babies with Down syndrome were born in Denmark in 2019, while the Netherlands tells women they have a “moral duty” to have an abortion if their child has Down syndrome….
The above comes from a Sept. 3 story on Live Action.
The Texas abortion law coupled with its new gun law will result in more deaths from armed vigilantes trying to enforce the abortion law. Absolute craziness.
What’s crazy is your irrational speculation and fear of guns.
Such nonsense. The right to life and the right to bear arms are essential and in America, to Oppose them is the craziness. Absolutely.
Betty, that simply isn’t true. Most pre-born babies and their mothers in Texas will be protected by the new Texas law. We’re in Texas as I type this.
Mid Cities Women’s Clinic, Birth Choice of Dallas and other life-affirming pregnancy support centers are already assisting any women or girls with their pregnancies, in addition to the many churches and private charities as well as Texas public/government resources. I’ve witnessed some of this already. Please don’t “buy” the pro-abortion “arguments” (or the caricatures of Texans). Abortion was forced on our nation through a Texan (“Jane Roe,” Norma McCorvey, who later became a pro-life Catholic) who brought suit against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade and got seven unelected jurists to agree with her. Maybe restoring protection to preborn babies and their mothers is appropriately, if not Providentially, beginning in Texas.
Norma McCorvey was used.
Indeed she was, tragically.
She never had an abortion, but was used by Planned Parenthood and others in Big Abortion on numerous occasions.
So if you fall and hit your head or have a stroke and are somewhat mentally incapacitated we should snuff out your life, and if you survive the attempted “euthanasia”, we should just throw you into a bath tub (adult version of a sink) and leave you to die, just like what is done to aborted children? except they are dismembered first or burn to death with saline.
What’s crazy is calling good evil and evil good. New pro-abortion talking points won’t work.
All unborn people have a right to life. If you shouldn’t discriminate against disables people after they’re born, you shouldn’t do it before they’re born.
Say no to eugenics, you may be in the next group decided to be worthy of death.
One of my jobs in the past — and still is to a certain extent in my old age– was to help children with Down’s Syndrome, Autism, etc., or to help those who helped them. Out of all the thousands of children I have known by name in my past, I have never forgotten the names of three children I helped directly over twenty years ago with Downs Syndrome – Christopher, Walter and Patrick. May God continue to help and take care of them if they are still alive. We have and have had family members (children) with autism, cancer and other problems. Which one should we have killed? I say none of them.
Yes, Anne, they are human beings created to live in this world under God’s care with human love and help. They, like every other human being, are created to be baptized to begin the journey into eternal life. The care they need to live in this world is an opportunity for grace for the rest of us to support their parents and families who have to deal with some challenges that other children may not present. If I have an opportunity to help someone who perhaps would not survive without assistance, then I have a reasonable expectation that such an individual will greet me and engage me fully in heaven.
St. Mother Teresa said it best: “But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child – a direct killing of the innocent child – murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love, and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even his life to love us. So the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love – that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
Pray for me Fr. Perozich. Please pray for me. Most of my youthful strength has long gone, and still there are some who need my help, and I wonder how they will fair when I am long gone. I will pray for you too.
I know it is not easy for the men and women who have to make these choices. We are not always sure of the right path. I have made many wrong turns the past, but God has turned them for my good, and often for the good of others even though they might not see it. The only hope we have is that in the end God rewards our faithfulness. Faith, hope and charity, these three sustains us if we ask.
The TX law will give us babies, period. Not necessary to point out whether they will be black, white, autistic or Downs. Babies being born is a great thing!