The new eugenics is growing at a horrifying pace. In the UK, a House of Lords, member argued that disabled children should be aborted for their own good. From the story:
Seriously disabled children should be considered non-persons and would be better off having been aborted, according to a Peer speaking in the House of Lords Tuesday. Attempting to couch her assertion in terms of children’s “rights”,
Molly Baroness Meacher told the Lords that children born with severe disabilities are “not viable people”. The comments came as the Lords debated an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, put forward by Lady Swinton, Baroness Masham of Ilton, that would have protected unborn disabled children from abortion after the 24 week gestational time limit. The amendment was defeated by 89 votes to 22.
Under Britain’s abortion law, children judged to have some form of disability, including such comparatively minor disabilities as club foot or cleft palate, can be aborted up to the time of natural birth.
Referring to two children she knows who were born prematurely with severe cerebral palsy, Baroness Meacher said, “They were natural births. Those two children cannot breathe naturally; they have to be helped to breathe. They will never talk. They lie on their backs and can do nothing. My belief is that there are children, born at those very early ages, who are not viable people. It would be in their best interests to have been aborted.”
Why limit the killing of the disabled to abortion? Why not kill babies that make it to birth with serious disabilities like they do regularly in the Netherlands? Indeed, why limit the killing to babies? After seriously injured or ill patients become non viable people let’s just put their heads on the chopping block, so to speak, and put us, er I mean them, out of our, er I mean, their misery?
There was a time when such bigoted sentiments would have led to shunning. People saw it for the naked bigotry that it is. No more. These attitudes permeate the elite and medical intelligentsia and are seeping into society. The only antidote is to say, “Not on my watch,” and mean it.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…