Amercan Genocide

[Guest guest]

WHY DO WE MURDER DOWN SYNDROME BABIES?

American Genocide

February 2007By & Donna

, with the help of his wife, Donna, authored this article.

is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the

Pre-Theology Program at St. 's Seminary in Menlo Park, California. Donna

, RN, worked at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, California, for five

years and specializes in obstetric nursing.

My wife fell exhausted into a huge green chair in the lobby of

the Red Lion Hotel. We had survived a Christmas dinner with former parishioners

whose two boys, mixed with ours, created a chemical reaction that left us shell

shocked. Friends of a former parish had invited us to Christmas dinner at their

Modesto, Calif., home. Broderick and his wife, Carla Bratcher, were hard

workers in our former parish. They both ran busy practices as family

physicians. We came from Oakland, driving through the thick tule fog for the

better part of the trip. Just after crossing the Altamont Pass, the fog wrapped

around our car like molasses around a spoon, making it impossible to see five

feet in front of us. So we decided to spend the night in a hotel.

After dinner we wished the Broderick family a " merry

Christmas, " packed the kids into the car, and headed downtown to our

hotel. After getting the boys into bed, my wife and I fell asleep immediately.

The long drive from Oakland combined with the all-but-peaceful Christmas dinner

had done us in. The temperature in the valley had dropped to freezing that

Christmas night, which taxed us even more. Everything felt ten times worse for

my wife, since she was eight months pregnant.

Knowing my family was secure, I said my prayers and fell

asleep. But we enjoyed little rest that night. At two o'clock in the morning,

Donna's water broke -- a month early. We would never have traveled to Modesto,

we would never have separated ourselves so far from our doctors, and away from

the hospital where Donna was pre-registered had we anticipated such an event.

Of course, every expectant mother is told that premature delivery is possible

at any time during a pregnancy. But we had never let that fear restrict us

before.

I woke up our friend Carla with a phone call and told her

that Donna's water had broken and it looked like our baby was to be born in

Modesto that night. Carla, who had delivered our third son, faithfully met us

at Modesto's Memorial Hospital. Donna's labor was unusually brief compared to

her other deliveries, and our new son came into the world on December 26. We

named him Christian Augustus .

When my oldest boy, Zachary, first saw Christian, he

noticed that his new brother didn't look like the rest of the family.

Christian's face looked too round and his almond-shaped eyes bore no family

resemblance. His arms and legs were extremely floppy as the doctor lifted him

away from his mother. And, most notably, he was too quiet, far too quiet. As I

looked into his face, I noticed the strange design of his eyes. On his irises I

noticed tiny colored dots tightly surrounding the pupil. Later I was to learn

that all these peculiar traits indicate Down syndrome. Carla had observed the

same traits, but her training and experience helped her make a rapid, but

tentative, diagnosis. Wanting to be sure, she called the pediatrician on duty

that night, and he agreed with her diagnosis. When I saw those two doctors

leaning over Christian, their faces serious with concern, I knew something was

wrong. In a few minutes, Carla walked into Donna's room and, with tears in her

eyes, told us that Christian had Down syndrome. Then she prayed with us.

Other parents of Down syndrome children contacted us

almost immediately. There exists an invisible family, a national network, of

thousands of parents, grandparents, and adoptive parents who raise Down

syndrome kids. These parents refuse to abort their Down syndrome babies simply

because they are warned of the inconvenience of a " disabled " child.

They also refuse to send them away to a state institution. They believe that

God has His plans and ways with men, and our job is to abide in His will.

" A man's heart plans the course of his own way, but the Lord directs his

steps " (Prov. 16:9).

I quickly realized that this Down syndrome community

shares all the traits of a family. These people told us that because of

Christian's presence in our family, a transformation would occur in all of us

that we never imagined. They told us that Christian would create in his

siblings a kind of love rarely seen in children -- a mature, self-sacrificing

love. They told us that he would become the central light of our family and

that we would experience an indescribable love for him and especially from

him. Each stage of his development would be a miracle: his first step, his

first tooth, his first word.

Still reeling from the news of our son's disability, all

this positive news was difficult for me to accept. Yet all of it became

wonderfully true as we watched Christian develop. The first steps in his

development were delayed a bit, but when they finally arrived, our family

rejoiced all the more. Christian is best described as aggressively interested

in everything, especially other children and puppies. If his rambunctious older

brothers forget to include him in their activities, he makes sure he is

involved by inconveniently inserting himself into their plans. He attacks any

situation with utter enthusiasm and wonder. When he meets a new friend his size,

we often have to protect the unsuspecting prospect from unsolicited hugs and

kisses. Christian simply expresses his unconditional love for everybody

anywhere. At his birth, however, we were soon to learn that our son had other

challenges to face.

Before we left the hospital in Modesto it became obvious

that Christian was not digesting his mother's milk. Something was blocking the

milk's flow through his intestine. X-rays revealed that Christian's lower

intestine had not fully formed. This condition is called duodenal atresia, a

common occurrence in Down syndrome newborns. So, after learning that Christian

had Down syndrome, we were told that he would have to undergo immediate

surgery. A highly respected doctor known for his success in pediatric surgery practiced

at Children's Hospital in Oakland. The Modesto doctors contacted Children's

Hospital requesting an ambulance, specialized personnel, and life-sustaining

transport equipment for Christian.

An ambulance was dispatched from Oakland with a crew of

five: an emergency physician, a respiratory therapist, a nurse, and two

emergency medical technicians. It took them an hour to arrive at Memorial

Hospital in Modesto. I'm not ashamed to say that when I saw that group of

medical professionals burst though the automatic doors of the labor and

delivery department with all their equipment and concern, I broke down. It

moved me deeply to see how this team of people responded with such dedication

and skill to save the life of this little, day-old boy in a city far away. It

astonishes me that our society has become so confused and calloused that it can

fight to save an infant life tonight and carry out scheduled abortions in the

morning. Is the tyranny of personal convenience such a slave master that we

have become the unwitting arbiters of life and death? The nurses placed

Christian in the portable incubator. I worried that he might not make the

journey, even though he was in the best of care. We all stood frightened, yet

hopeful, as they quickly wheeled Christian to the ambulance.

A six-foot-three Nigerian doctor met us at Children's

Hospital in the early morning hours and explained what he was going to do. We

felt completely confident with him because he had successfully performed this

procedure many times. He assured us that everything would be fine. Then he

bowed his head and prayed for Christian. It struck us that at each step of the

way God had provided us with Christian doctors to care for our son. It was one

of those lessons of life that my children will never forget. They saw the

Christian faith alive and well in real-life situations. Christian came through

the surgery perfectly, just as Dr. Ido had predicted. Christian spent the next

month in the intensive care nursery at Children's Hospital. Donna went every day

to tend to Christian, to hold him, and to watch his every move. The neonatal

intensive care nursery is a place few people ever see. As we looked into the

cribs and incubators at babies with catastrophic problems, we found ourselves

praying for them. It was a place of great pain, but also a place of abiding

hope.

As Christian awoke from surgery, I watched him as his

eyes struggled to open. I counted eleven monitor wires and tubes attached to

his body. Some of them were inserted into his body, others were taped to his

delicate skin. I wanted to be the first person he saw when he opened his eyes.

I was feeling bad about my first reaction on hearing the news that he had Down

syndrome. When Carla first told us, I became angry. I wasn't angry at God; I

was just inexplicably angry. Christian's disability had shattered my false

image of the " perfect family. " That image was broken; no longer was

my family " perfect. " It is disabled. Certainly this is a false image

of the family (and a false standard), because no family is perfect. But I

believe now that the image of " the perfect family " that I held in my

imagination was completely self-centered. It was a perfect family because my

family could be none other than perfect. If it is not perfect then I'm

not perfect, and I can't stand the world knowing that I am not perfect.

So when I heard that one of my children was disabled, it made me angry because

I felt that Christian's disability reflected on me. In other words, I

wasn't thinking of Christian but of myself.

So I determined that the first thing Christian saw when

he awoke from surgery would be the face of his proud Dad. When he finally

opened his eyes, I said to him, " I'm sorry, son, that I got angry. I'm

sorry that I was not there for you when you needed me most. I promise you that

as long as I live, I'll always be there for you. " As I said this, I was

astonished as Christian moved his eyes to look directly into mine, as if to

say, " I know, Dad. It's O.K. "

In the U.S. today 85 to 90 percent of Down syndrome

babies are selectively put to death. They are selectively aborted by their own

mothers, usually on the advice of their physician. Eighty-five to ninety

percent! Given the fact that Down syndrome people share all the

characteristics of a community, such as social cohesion, a shared knowledge (of

the disability), and an utter abhorrence of the destruction of their community,

I wondered whether America was practicing its own form of genocide. Recently,

attending a Down Syndrome League dinner, I asked the families at my table the

following question: " If you could go back and correct the genetic

abnormality in your baby, would you do it? " Everyone said " No. "

They all said that they would not change their families at all. I then asked

them if they would choose to have the same child, but without the genetic

abnormality. They all said " No. " They explained that the Down

syndrome child is a unique individual and that Down syndrome defines the child

as uniquely as any other genome (genetic pattern). I was amazed. Here were middle-

to upper-class Americans who are accustomed to having everything they want, and

they were telling me that what the world may call abnormal they call normal.

But more than this, they told me that their child was an untold blessing to

their families, bringing to it what their " normal " children could not

provide. Moreover, the overwhelming number of people with Down syndrome will

tell you that their life is good and that they experience happiness.

The technology of prenatal screening has advanced significantly

in the past twenty years. There are several tests, each providing different

degrees of accuracy. For instance, pregnant women may choose non-invasive

prenatal test to determine the possible defects in their babies. The Triple

Screen test measures various proteins and pregnancy hormones. The test is done

during the window of the 15th to 20th week of pregnancy. It can detect 60

percent of Down syndrome pregnancies. However, this test has a 6.5 percent

Initial Positive Rate, meaning that in 6.5 percent of the cases this test will

give a positive result indicating Down syndrome. But the overall statistical

chance of having a Down syndrome baby is only 0.1 percent. Therefore, this test

will give a very high percentage of false positive results. In other words,

many pregnant women will be told their babies probably have Down syndrome when

in fact their babies are completely normal. And many misinformed women will

choose to abort these perfectly normal babies. Even with more accurate

non-invasive tests, such as the AFP/Free Beta Screen, which can be performed

between the 13th and 22nd week of pregnancy, providing a detection rate of 80

percent, the percentage of false positives is 3 percent. False positives can be

caused by undetected twins, an incorrect date of pregnancy, or normal

variations in the proteins.

The most familiar prenatal test is amniocentesis. This is

a very accurate test, detecting over 99.8 percent of all genetic problems in

preborn babies, and has a very low false positive rate. However, it is an

invasive procedure that requires taking amniotic fluid from the mother to

identify fetal cells. The risk of spontaneous abortion due to amniocentesis is

1 in 200 to 1 in 300 women.

The sobering fact is that the advancing technology that

increases our ability to detect genetic abnormalities in preborn babies has

also led to their destruction through abortion. Because the selective abortion

rate is so high for Down syndrome babies in the U.S., Canada, and Britain, the

Down syndrome population has dramatically decreased. Whereas 1,500 children

with Down syndrome should statistically be born per year, only 63 per annum

were listed in the 1995 birth register.

The question is, what justifies our decision to kill?

What quiets our conscience as we kill these disabled babies? It certainly isn't

the result of moral reflection on the ethical implications of abortion. Most

people have no time to think through this momentous, complicated ethical

question. Physicians routinely fail to inform the pregnant patient of her

options other than abortion, such as adoption, support groups for parents with

Down syndrome children, and agencies that help parents with disabled children.

Moreover, doctors and government officials habitually give expectant mothers

outdated information about the life expectancy of, the availability of vitamin

supplemental treatment for, and the remarkable potential of achievement among

Down syndrome children. Down syndrome people have graduated from high school

and gone to college. They have written books about their lives, become actors,

writers, and artists. Yet the authoritative figure of the physician

" warns " the pregnant mother that a Down syndrome baby will be

extremely expensive, that she doesn't have the skills to take care of such a

baby, and that the quality of life of the child will be unacceptable. The

expectant mother is usually intimidated by the doctor's warning. The father's

ego can't handle the dreaded public embarrassment of having a retarded son or

daughter. The decision is made.

This is called eugenics -- the selective elimination of

defective offspring for the purpose of strengthening the genetic stock. It is

as old as the Bible and it is still practiced today in animal and plant

cultivation. But it was also practiced by the Nazis to eliminate disvalued

human beings. Thousands of persons deemed genetically inferior, including Down

syndrome men, women, and children, were murdered by the Nazis so that they

would not pass on their genetic kind to future generations. Whether Jew or

Gentile, it didn't matter. In Hitler's Germany, Down syndrome adults and

children were the offspring of a " mongrelized " race from which

society needed " cleansing. " In the Nazi quest for purity of race,

children and adults who did not mirror the picture of perfection were phased

out of the genetic pool. And what was the Nazi picture of perfection? It was

what that culture called normal, strong, and beautiful. This was considered the

" common good " of German society at that time.

Today, America practices genetic cleansing of its own

people. We are cleansing our society of Down syndrome babies -- all in the name

of perfection and personal choice. Of course, this personal freedom, so dear to

Americans, would not be so destructive if we remembered the Catholic teaching

on the dignity of the human being. Pope II was right when he said

that the most important question of the 21st century would be, " What is a

person? " Today, we stand at the edge of an abyss in which we see a

nightmarish technocracy that has taken on a life of its own. This Dr.

enstein cares little about the Culture of Life, and blusters on with

little regard for moral reasoning. Ours is a society whose technology has

become self-generating and self-justifying. In the meantime, we " cleanse "

our society of a family of people by means of a silent genocide that no one

questions.

Now, someone may say that preborn Down syndrome babies

are not to be compared to preborn babies with horrific heart defects, severe

brain abnormalities, or who have organs developing on the outside of their

bodies. These conditions are considered " lethal abnormalities. " If

born alive, these babies will likely survive a very short time. However, in

Canada, at Edmonton's Royal andra Hospital, Down syndrome is considered a

" lethal abnormality. " Spokesman Donna Angus says that although only a

" handful " of late-term abortions are done, they are reserved for

" lethal abnormalities. " What is chilling is that during an interview,

Ms. Angus admitted that Down syndrome is considered a lethal abnormality

and thus qualifies for a late-term abortion. However, because Canadian law does

not permit abortions of Down syndrome babies beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy, the

hospital sends mothers of preborn Down syndrome babies here to the U.S. to have

their abortions. Hundreds of pregnant Canadian women choose to travel to the

U.S. where genetic cleansing is common practice. Prolife groups denounce

Alberta's practice of sending expectant mothers over the border for what

advocates call " genetic terminations. "

Why this rush to destroy our disabled children? Isn't it

morally worse to kill a disabled preborn baby as compared to a normal one?

Isn't this the worse violation of social justice? Too many American Catholics

demonstrate for the rights of illegal immigrants but keep silent about this

genocide. Too many Catholics are stridently vocal against the death penalty but

say nothing about the genetic cleansing of Down syndrome babies. Are these

Catholics unaware that eugenics has a history in America advocated by the likes

of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a eugenics enthusiast and social Darwinist

( " three generations of imbeciles are enough " )? Don't they know that

at one time eugenics was offered as a solution to the illegal immigration problem

in the U.S.? Are they ignorant of the fact that the Nazi Third Reich awarded

the American eugenicist Davenport an honorary degree for his American

work in " racial hygiene " ? Read about it in Harry Bruinius's book Better

for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's

Quest for Racial Purity (Knopf, 2005). How have we developed this moral

blind spot that allows us to place people into a caste system of

" fit " and " unfit " ? We are systematically eliminating a

community of human beings from American society. Why do our priests and bishops

remain silent about this in their homilies? Why don't our bishops take the

moral leadership and speak against such a heinous practice? Where is their

courage?

Christian is now seven years old, and I watch as he swims

in our backyard pool. He throws a yellow ball to me and I throw it back. When I

miss his throw or drop the ball, he laughs uncontrollably. To think that his

Dad could drop the ball! He misses a step and his head sinks under the water. I

jump out of my chair, but he comes sputtering up, laughing. When he sees my

panic, he says, " Oh, please! " He wants me to know he's all right and

quite capable of swimming on his own. I continue playing catch with him in the

hot summer sun.

In my office at the seminary, I have a picture of

Christian all dressed up in his baseball uniform, his right hand punching the

pocket of the glove on his left hand. Last summer he played on a team in a

league run by the city's recreation department. He loved every minute of it.

After one of his games, we celebrated (he always celebrates, whether his team

wins or loses) at a favorite Chinese restaurant and, of course, opened fortune

cookies when we finished. His fortune happened to read, You don't know what

you can accomplish until you try. I placed that statement as a caption

under his baseball picture because it perfectly describes Christian's attitude

toward life.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of world this would be if

Christian weren't in it, if he had not survived his surgery or if we had lost

him in those dangerous first two years. Or worse, if this child would have been

killed because he was prenatally " diagnosed " with Down syndrome. For

our family, of course, the world would be a different place, an infinitely

lesser place.

Christian comes to the edge of the pool and I lift him up

and dry him off. He tries to push me into the pool and, laughing, says in his

halting speech, " Dad, you almost went swimming! " After dressing he

asks me if we can go to Mc's for a cheeseburger -- his favorite thing to

do. Sitting across from him at Mc's, I look into those same eyes I first

saw on the day of his birth. Then they were tentative and wondering. Now they

are happy and filled with longings for swimming pools and cheeseburgers. I

silently thank the Lord for giving this little boy to our family. I thank Him

for protecting Christian from the dangerous society in which he was conceived.

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