Let Them Live

If you have ever known a Down syndrome person then I am sure that you can testify to the fact that they are wonderful people who contribute to society. Sure they need care, but who doesn’t? Yes, they take up health care resources, but is that a reason to eradicate them? “What you end up having is a world without people with Down syndrome,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of the center for ethics at Emory University.

Does any group of people deserve to be exterminated? Is this not the very definition of genocide?

In Canada approximately 500 children are born with Down syndrome each year. Another 4,500 babies are diagnosed with the condition and then terminated. Our doctors vigorously target these pregnancies with ultrasound investigations once the baby is well formed. Upon examination of facial features and body characteristics doctors may then prescribe invasive tests to determine the abnormality, usually around 20 weeks. The doctors then forcefully recommend termination with an overall 90% success rate.

The result is that people with Down syndrome are becoming scarce. Some government workers lament that they are not able to terminate all of them. Where does such thinking come from?

Until recently, a common name for Down syndrome people was “Mongoloid”. This term is the result of retrograde thinking and junk science. A contemporary of Charles Darwin, Dr. Ernst Haekel established the “biogenetic law” stating “an animal’s embryonic development recapitulates its evolution”. In the 1970’s, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, this so-called law was widely accepted as fact.

The popular television science guy, Carl Sagan, described pregnancy this way:

“By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. But it looks a little like a segmented worm. By the end of the fourth week, it's approximately 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It's recognizable as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill-arches of a fish or an amphibian have become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks something like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception. By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes is apparent, and little buds appear --on their way to becoming arms and legs.

By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeters (about 1/2 inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be. By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian, but somewhat pig-like. By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles a primate, but is still not quite human.”

Scientists postulated that the baby continues to evolve as a Negroid, Mongoloid and then Caucasoid. They believed that a Down syndrome child appears not to have fully developed, resulting in the “Mongoloid” appearance.

This entire theory has been completely debunked and even using these terms is now socially unacceptable. Remarkably, this so-called “law” is still found in almost all high school biology textbooks with some white-washing of terminology.

Surely modern science and civilized thinking can lead us to cease and desist the targeting and terminating of a precious category of human citizens. Their sweet, gentle, kind presence is desperately needed in this cold-hearted world. Respectfully, we must demand that our government pass legislation to stop this “genocide”.