This column in the Daily Mail is one of the worst things I’ve read in a while. It’s not just shocking because someone wrote it but it was believed to offer an opinion that others would share.

Sadly, I believe it is the case that a majority of people would agree with this writer. But for me, the selfishness of this writer is just sickening. She writes of a few families with autistic children including a boy named Tom. She writes of their struggles and then says it would be better if the child were aborted. In order to cut to the chase I’ll give you the last few lines of the column:

In any case, that is a difficult question after the event: it is hard for a mother retrospectively to wish away a living child who, come what may, she loves.

But looking on, as a relatively dispassionate observer; looking at the damage done, the absence of hope and the anguish of the poor child himself, do I think that everyone concerned would have been better off if Tom’s had been a life unlived?

Unequivocally, yes.

Well the one thing which jumps out at me is she must understand that it wouldn’t be a life unlived, it would merely be a life cut very short. You can’t argue that a baby in the womb is not a life. That’s just not logical.

Look, the truth is that I’m sure autistic children make some aspects of life very difficult. But all children are difficult in one way or another. Children are difficult. And rewarding in ways we couldn’t fathom before having them.

So what this writer is really talking about is killing babies so we can be more selfish. But I guess that’s what it’s always been about. May God have mercy on us all.