Post-natal abortions are a logical extension of the culture of death. Why should birth be a demarcation when conception is not?
What kills me is how those supporting euthanasia couch their horrors in terms of mercy.
Radio Free Europe reports:
The Russian mother of a child with a developmental disability wants to sue a journalist who suggested killing babies with genetic diseases. RFERL’s Russian Service reports from Moscow.
In late December, Snezhana Mitina received a tearful phone call from her friend Svetlana. Sobbing, Svetlana explained she had just read a newspaper article calling for babies with mental disabilities to be killed at birth.
The author, Aleksandr Nikonov, used the word “debil” — a deeply offensive term in Russian — to characterize such children. He argued that parents should have the right to euthanize newborns diagnosed with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities.
The article, which ran under the headline “Finish Them Off, So They Don’t Suffer,” went on to describe what Nikonov termed “postnatal abortion” as an act of mercy.
Mitina and her friend, Svetlana Shtarkova — both mothers of children with developmental disabilities — decided to take action. They filed a complaint with the Russian Union of Journalists against Nikonov, a correspondent for the popular tabloid “Speed-Info.”
The two women say their aim is not to punish Nikonov but to raise the alarm about Russia’s culture of intolerance toward disabled people. Shtarkova made an emotional appeal at a hearing last week at the journalists’ union.
“The opinion expressed by the author is not unique; statistics show that one-fourth of Russians share similar views,” Shtarkova told the February 2 hearing. “Complete strangers come up to me in the street and tell me that I’m depraved and deserve my fate. Doctors and social workers refuse to do their jobs, just because my child is severely disabled.”
The lawyer representing the two mothers, Pyotr Kucherenko, told the board that Nikonov’s proposal to put “flawed” babies to death only fueled discrimination and was dangerously reminiscent of the theories of racial superiority upheld by Nazi Germany.
Nikonov, however, was unrepentant.
“Let me introduce myself: I am Adolf Hitler. This is the way people want to portray me,” Nikonov says. “But the real bastards are those who tell me, ‘Yes, it is good and fair that people are in pain. We’ll look on and say people can suffer, as long as our scholarly conception of humaneness is not affected.’ To hell with you. People shouldn’t suffer. This is my opinion, and you won’t shut me up.”
I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about post-natal abortions in the future.
February 10, 2010 at 8:30 pm
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February 10, 2010 at 8:34 pm
I have an adult daughter, Rebecca, who has a translocation trisomy (47 chromosomes in her cells). The extra chromosome in her cells consists of an extra partial chromosome 13's long arm, and an extra partial chromosome 15's long arm.
Rebecca has had surgeries and is developmentally delayed but brings such joy to our life and experiences such joy herself! She can read and write, which no doctor I know of would have told us to hope for (even had they known she has partial trisomies of the two chromosomes, rather than full). Rebecca loves church and enjoys attending a variety of activities for adults with special needs – a social activities and continuing education group, baseball, bowling, and so on.
Rebecca sings with such joy at church that I periodically ask her what her favorite worship chorus is. The last time she said that it was one which says: "LORD, I offer my life to You. Everything I've been through, use it for Your glory. LORD, I offer my days to You, lifting my praise to You as a pleasing sacrifice. LORD, I offer You my life!"
Her story may be found, along with those of other children and adults living with Trisomy 13, at http://www.livingwithtrisomy13.org on the Children and Adults Living With Trisomy 13 album. There is also a Prenatal Album for families expecting a baby with Trisomy 13 and a Treasured Memories Album, on which families may honor the memory of a child with T-13 who has passed away. There are message boards for support, doctors who will answer questions from families, and many great articles and links.
February 14, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Here in my part of the world (Canada) many priests in the Catholic church sanction early induction abortion. They don't call it that, however. The call it "taking the baby out early so it can die in its mother's arms".
It is mainstream in the medical community to know that the good civic-minded Catholic mothers will have their abortions with the rest of society although they will not allow the unborn to be killed with KCL before hand. Rather, they want the baby born alive to be baptized as it sputters and gasps until death.
If you should choose life for your baby, you are on your own. It is a desperately lonely choice. We had the audacity to not only choose life but to request the option of treatment to save our daughter's life, despite her predicted disabilities. When our daughter died at the age of 80 days shortly after arrival at hospital for respiratory distress and there were missing narcotics and records and a "Do Not Resuscitate Order" without consent, we were on our own yet again. The Church does not involve itself in matters of state.
From this article, it sounds like Russia at least requires consent before euthanasia. Maybe this is a better place to be.
Eugenics or Newgenics is silent and dangerous. One only needs to look around a crowded church year after year for a child with Down syndrome to know that the choosing of lives is not limited to the secular populations.
All religions that respect life must become involved in this area and take action to educate and provide support before the very special children who provide so much goodness to the world are completely eradicated.