From Coner Friedersdorf at the Atlantic:
‘I Am a Man With Down Syndrome and My Life Is Worth Living’
Last week, the actor, Special Olympian, and advocate Frank Stephens gave this testimony to Congress: “I am a man with Down syndrome and my life is worth living.”
In fact, he went farther: “I have a great life!”
For those conceived with his developmental disability, it is the best and worst of times. “The life expectancy for someone born with Down syndrome has increased from twenty-five in the early 1980s to more than fifty today,” Caitrin Keiper writes in The New Atlantis. “In many other ways as well, a child born with Down syndrome today has brighter prospects than at any other point in history. Early intervention therapies, more inclusive educational support, legal protections in the workplace, and programs for assisted independent living offer a full, active future in the community.”But as she goes on to explain, “the abortion rate for fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome tops ninety percent.” More.
and from Sohrab Ahmari at Commentary:
Last week’s CBS News report on the virtual eradication of Down Syndrome in Iceland shed rare and necessary light on the growing threats to the dignity of life across the West and in Northern Europe in particular. With new tests that can detect chromosomal abnormalities earlier in the pregnancy and with greater precision, an entire category of human beings faces extermination in societies that claim to prize tolerance and diversity above all.
Well, not if Charlotte “Charlie” Fien has something to say about it.
The 21-year-old from Surrey, England, is fast emerging as one of Europe’s most important anti-eradication advocates. Her activism is especially compelling because Fien is living proof against the argument, frequently proffered by those who support systematic prenatal detection and abortion, that people with the disability are miserable. More.
Meanwhile, a premier “science” culture, Iceland, wants us to know that it is proud as a nation to have eliminated all such people.
People who live with Down syndrome are frontline victims of progressive politics and deserve the support of all people of good will. – O’Leary for News and for Johnny (1948–1957)
And a merry Christmas to you too, Icelanders.
See also: If this is science, yes we do hate it