Maclean‘s Mitchel Raphael reported on the pro-abortion celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Morgentaler decision back in January:
Bloc MP Nicole Demers found the evening particularly moving. Now a grandmother of two, she had four abortions in the years after giving birth to her second son, who had hemophilia, in order to avoid passing the disease onto other male children. (Females are rarely susceptible to hemophilia.)
Four abortions? Because of hemophilia? Reading pieces like this one always makes me think of the line that keeps being re-drawn. Where does the buck stop? (As in, this life is not worth living, this person is better off dead…) And the line is never drawn by those whose life is, well, on the line. In this case, all those Canadians who have hemophilia.
In 2002 I gave birth to a cleft-affected child some asked if I would have had an abortion had I known about her condition in advance. But how can knowing only one thing, albeit a challenging thing, about a child in utero compare to everything else that makes each life unique? I could have spared my daughter the pain of plastic surgery but I would also have denied her all the joys she gets from being a sister, a bright student, a cherished friend and a gifted gymnast. And I would have denied myself the delight she brings into my life, surgery and all.
This is how selective abortion keeps moving the line: We care not a bit about the million things that make each person unique and worthwhile. Because of one illness, we don’t bother finding out.
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Andrea adds: Such a short report and I see even more problems. First of all, it’s as though the story’s spin is to say an abortion because of hemophilia is AOK. Then there’s that number: Four. Four abortions. That’s a special kind of failure to grasp how birth control works. (Oh wait, she did use birth control, except she calls it abortion.) Finally, though not entirely clear, it appears she took those babies’ lives pre-emptively–as in, they might have hemophilia, if they were boys. Words fail.
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Rebecca adds: I’ve always wanted to ask people who opt for eugenic abortions: If you found out your baby had hemophilia only after he was born, would you want him dead? What, after all, is the difference, but for a few weeks’ gestation?