Vital Signs
Chosen People
by Earl E. Appleby, Jr.
New tools have arisen that could create an enormous impact on our traditional concepts of man and the dignity
of life...1) the widespread availability of contraception, 2) the elimination of most legal restraints in abortion, 3) the
acquisition of techniques that enable the detection of defective fetuses before they are born...have provided us with the
ability to determine if and when we will have babies, and what kinds of babies we will have, and whether some defective infants
and children will be allowed to continue living. (Paul Gastonguay, 1976)
The ensuing decade and a half have proven the above prophecy. "People seem less willing to take the reproductive
risks they've always taken," Dr. Dawn Garber, director of genetic counseling at Los Angeles's Cedar Sinai Medical Center,
confirms. "People are astonished that [prenatal tests] won't absolutely guarantee a perfect baby." Writing in Parent
magazine, Arielle Emmett-Arthur concurs, "With the dizzying array of tests available, parents are faced with disturbing choices.
They must also face the possibility that their baby will have a defect for which there is no cure."
Today, with human life as disposable as tissue though considerably more expensive, those we cannot cure we
kill. As the life-affirming research foundation, the Michael Fund, reported, "More than 90 percent of all prenatal genetic
research is aimed at detecting the child with a defect in the womb. The'cure'? Abortion. The easy way. The coward's way."
Cowardly too is the call by self-described "pro-life" bureaucrats for compromised legislative initiatives
that betray babies by sanctioning their abortions when they "would be born with profound and irremediable physical or mental
disabilities." Such genetic genocide is quite properly condemned by Dr. Jack Willke in his seminal Handbook on Abortion
as "prenatal euthanasia."
For the zealots of eugenics, however, the escalation of search-and-destroy missions against babies with
disabilities promises to win the war against disease, or, at any rate, the war against the diseased. "We certainly can
reduce the cases of hemophilia by two-thirds," boasts Dr. Stylianos Antonarakis, of John Hopkins Hospital of Pediatrics,"if
all the women who have an affected fetus elect to abort." (90% kills, it seems, is too low a body count for the gene gestapo.)
Parents as well as physicians fuel the drive to genetic genocide. Wayne and Joyce Sankey's son was born with
disabilities. The disgruntled parents sued the UCLA Medical Center charging they were "deprived of the opportunity to choose
not to have a child with birth defects." But the Sankeys already had "a child with birth defects," what they wanted
was a diagnostic death sentence so they could kill their handicapped son in his mother's womb.
Like Baby Doe, Baby Sankey had Down syndrome, a generic chromosomal abnormality that affects a quarter of
a million Americans. One in 800 to 1,100 babies are born with Down syndrome, which is the leading clinical cause of mental
retardation.
"A pregnant woman's hope is to give birth to a Gerber baby who'll go to an Ivy League college," says Lori
Weigle, of Oakton, Virginia. "The death of dreams is news of Down syndrome."
Often something--someone--more precious than a dream dies, an innocent child. Ninety percent of Moms told
that their babies growing within their wombs have Down syndrome abort them.
But children unwanted by their biological mothers may be wanted desperately by others, and babies denied their
chance to live through prenatal euthanasia could have given life to new dreams in new families denied their chance to love
them.
"We have a family for every Down syndrome child," affirms Janet Marchese, director of the Down Syndrome Adoption
Exchange, which has found loving homes for more than 2,000. Lori Weigle is the president of Parents of Children with Down
Syndrome. Her first-born child, Christopher, has Down syndrome, but Chris, now 11, is not her oldest son. When Chris was 18
months old, the Weigles adopted 12-year-old Nick, then living in an institution for the mentally disabled. "An instant connection,"
Lori recalls with a laugh. Today, at 22, Nick is a valued employee at the local Pizza Hut.
Lori's beat is the area around our nation's capital. It includes some of America's wealthiest suburbs."Here
we give up children far more often than we adopt them," Lori observes. "Yuppies don't adopt."
"The devastation goes away," Lori advises parents facing the choice of life or death for their defenseless
Down syndrome child. "I'm not Pollyanna speaking, but I'm glad I have Chris and Nick.Everyone needs to be accepted for what
he is, and if the biological family can't do that, I'm happy to find a home for the child."
Human Life Reports, September 1992
