To begin with, when a woman is pregnant she has no choice but to “have the baby.”  The question is whether she will have a live baby or a dead one.  Also, doctors sometimes make mistakes and it is not uncommon for women to give birth to healthy babies after being told that their unborn children had problems. 

Most importantly, however, is that people with disabilities are not less valuable than those without, and no one has the right to decide that their lives are not worth living or protecting – not even their mothers.

One of the most incredible aspects of the abortion lobby’s approach to the disabled is that they try to sell it as compassionate.  What is often overlooked in all this is the fact that the “choice” they offer is not between a life with handicaps or one without, but between a life with handicaps or no life at all.  When abortion apologists call that compassion, let’s recognize for whom this compassion is being shown.  Make no mistake, abortions on the disabled are done for us, not them.

Now, if that is not true, and if we truly believe in this “better-dead-than-disabled” philosophy, why limit our compassion to the unborn?  Perhaps, as the following people are suggesting, “the right to choose” should be extended beyond the womb.

“There is little evidence that termination of an infant’s life in the first few months following extraction from the womb could be looked upon as murder... It would seem to be more ‘inhumane’ to kill an adult chimpanzee than a newborn baby, since the chimpanzee has greater mental awareness.  Murder cannot logically apply to a life form with less mental awareness than a primate.”

Winston L. Duke
Article: The New Biology
Reason magazine, August 1972

“No newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to life.”

Dr. Francis Crick
Nobel Prize winner
Pacific News Service, January, 1978

“In our book, Should the Baby Live, my colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggested that a period of 28 days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others.”

Peter Singer
Professor of Bio-Ethics
Princeton University

“It is reasonable to describe infanticide as post-natal abortion... Infanticide is actually a very humane thing when you are dealing with misbegotten infants.  We might have to encourage it under certain conditionalities of excess population especially when you’re dealing with defective children.”

Joseph Fletcher
Professor of Ethics
Harvard Divinity School
Infanticide and the Value of Life,
Prometheus Books, 1978

“Infanticide has a logical continuity with abortion and even with contraception.”

Edward Pohlman, Researcher
Planned Parenthood
Psychology of Birth Planning
Shankman Publishing
Cambridge MA, 1967

“If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system.  The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering.”

Dr. James D. Watson
Nobel Prize winner
Time magazine, May 28,  1973

These quotes, and many more like them,  come from people with very well-established pro-choice credentials.  Regrettably, attitudes like theirs are now commonplace within the so-called “bio-ethics” community and they force us to consider how long it will be until the right to kill an imperfect child becomes the responsibility to do so.  At a 1986 symposium called, “Prenatal Diagnosis and Its Impact on Society” Dr. James Sorenson, a Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences at Boston University, observed that, “American opinion is rapidly moving toward the position where parents who have an abnormal child may be considered irresponsible.”  To see that this observation is not at all farfetched, compare his quote to the issue of family size. 

In the past, it was common for Americans to have large families.  But now, the prevailing attitude is that couples who have more than one or two children are being selfish and irresponsible.  In fact, it is not unheard of for people who have four or five children to be publically confronted by total strangers.  That is true even for those couples who want – and can easily afford – a large family. 

This attitude was created by the view that large families are no longer “necessary” and that they use up too many public services and resources.  The problem is, those same things could also be said about the handicapped.

Today, there are studies indicating that 90% of all unborn children who are diagnosed with Down syndrome are executed in the womb.  Clearly, we have come to the point that when pre-natal testing reveals a less-than-perfect baby, abortion is the default position.  In fact, women in this situation often say they feel they actually have to justify not having an abortion.  It now seems that when people hear of a handicapped child being born, for many their first thought is, “Didn’t the mother know about this when she was pregnant?”  If that is where we are – and I am convinced it is – then Sorenson’s prediction has already come true. 

Finally, if it is compassionate to execute an unborn child who might have a disability and might live an unpleasant life, it would be even more compassionate to execute a five-year-old who we know is disabled and who we know is living an unpleasant life.  In other words, while the quotes given earlier suggest extending the “right to choose” only a short time past birth, if the underlying principle is sound, why should we stop there?  Again, why put arbitrary limits on our compassion? 

Remember, when the Nazis set out to create the “Master Race,” they began by executing the handicapped and selling it as compassion.  If America is going to embrace that same philosophy, executing the born makes as much sense as executing the unborn.