Earlier this week, Live Action News writer Sarah Terzo wrote an article detailing the abhorrent treatment that many new parents receive from the medical industry after they are told of a positive diagnosis of Down syndrome. The stories are heartbreaking — unless, of course, you’re a pro-abortion extremist who would rather see all babies with Down syndrome killed off as soon as possible, please. The pro-abortion Chelsea Hoffman responded to Terzo’s piece by denying that such abysmal treatment happens all that regularly, and argues against giving women accurate information about Down syndrome.
The folks at Live Action News are at it again: Shaming women who make the very tough and very personal choices to seek abortions. And like always, they’re targeting women who learn that their unborn children are afflicted with birth defects like Down syndrome and any other variety of chromosomal anomalies. This time they’re blaming doctors for the abortions that are sought upon learning about these diagnoses.
There’s no doubt that some doctors lack that bedside manner that some people need, but it seems as though the latest coming from LAN is nothing more but a broadly stroked brush swiped over the entire medical industry — all based off a handful of stories that, frankly, we don’t even know are 100% true and not the exaggerations of outraged mommies and daddies.
These people believe that women should be forced to sit through educational lectures about how “wonderful” and “fulfilling” it is to have a child with Down syndrome — yet they ignore the fact that they sound no different than the extreme Christian right who want women to be forced to go through vaginal ultrasounds before going through with an abortion altogether.
Whatever happened to “live and let live?” Whatever happened to simply allowing women to make the decisions they feel are right for their bodies and their reproductive systems? For the 90+% of women who go through with abortions after learning that their unborn child has a birth defect like Down syndrome, this situation really isn’t about whether or not pro life groups are being heard well enough. The last thing a woman wants to go through is more forced lecturing over whether or not they should abort.
Hey Chelsea? There’s this newfangled thing called “research”. Maybe you should do some before you run your mouth, because there actually have been multiple studies done that show exactly what Terzo’s article brought to light. Dr. Brian Skotko, considered by many to be a leader in research and advocacy for Down syndrome, conducted a study out of Harvard University, which was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and found that women routinely received negative, outdated information upon being given a diagnosis. Dr. Skotko is a geneticist and the co-director of the Down syndrome program at Massachusetts General Hospital. Another study found that, for every woman who had a positive experience, 2.5 women had a negative one. So for every 100 mothers who had a good experience, 250 had a bad one — but sure, let’s deride them as exaggerations from outraged mommies and daddies.
It’s because of this that many Down syndrome advocates have been encouraging the passage of pro-information bills, which mandate that doctors must give parents receiving a diagnosis, whether prenatally or after birth, up-to-date and accurate information, as well as putting the parents in touch with their state’s First Call program.
First Call gives the new parents the opportunity to be connected with a family of a child with Down syndrome. The new parents are not required to call, but simply should be given the information so that they can take advantage of it if they so choose. In the states where these pro-information bills have passed, there has been almost unanimous bipartisan support, because these are not pro-life or pro-abortion bills. They are pro-information, so that if a parent does choose to fulfill Chelsea Hoffman’s dreams and have an abortion, they are doing so with accurate information and not with a false depiction of what Down syndrome is.
Of course, Live Action News readers may recognize the name Chelsea Hoffman: she’s the same writer who defended the astronomically high abortion rate of babies with Down syndrome, because according to her, Down syndrome is broken DNA. The thing is, Hoffman is far from alone. For some reason, abortion advocates fight hard for babies with Down syndrome to be aborted, and also fight tooth and nail against parents receiving better information with which to make their decision.
Consider that several politicians have advocated for the mandatory abortions of babies with Down syndrome, or said that they should be “put down”. A New York Times writer bemoaned her friend’s lost opportunity to abort her baby with Down syndrome (whether or not her friend actually wished her child was dead is never mentioned, of course).
Pro-abortion site Jezebel threw a fit when they discovered that, thanks to the actions of a priest, parents carrying a child with Down syndrome chose to have the baby adopted rather than aborted. USA Today complained that babies with Down syndrome couldn’t be aborted if a 20 week abortion ban was instituted. The Dr. Phil Show even advocated for the mercy killing of people with disabilities.
Yep, the pro-abortion extremists sure do hate Down syndrome. Yet much to their chagrin, these pro-information bills, ensuring that stories like those in Terzo’s article are less frequent, keep getting passed. This is a bad thing, see, because if people are told that Down syndrome is actually not the end of the world, they’re less likely to kill them, and, well, apparently that would be horrible. Imagine, having to live in a world with other people who are a little bit different from you! It’s like a horror movie.
What Chelsea Hoffman doesn’t want new parents to know is that families that include children with Down syndrome overwhelmingly report being extremely happy and more fulfilled — almost 100% of parents report that they love their child with Down syndrome, and almost 90% of siblings report that they feel their brother or sister with Down syndrome has made them a better person. 99% of people with Down syndrome said that they are happy with themselves, their lives, and who they are.
Another study found the same results, with parents reporting that they had a more positive outlook on life after having their child with Down syndrome. Medical advancements, as well as early intervention services, have also improved not only the life span of people with Down syndrome, but also their quality of life. There is very little that a person with Down syndrome cannot accomplish today — they can work, live on their own, even get married and have children — and parents deserve to be told that. They should not be given outdated, stereotyped, negative information in the hopes that they’ll have an abortion. If a parent who receives a prenatal diagnosis wants to have an abortion, then they at least should be doing so with accurate, up-to-date information.
Why are abortion advocates like Chelsea Hoffman so against that? Do they truly love abortion — or hate Down syndrome — so much that the thought of women getting better information, and possibly choosing to keep their babies, outrages them? It is just another example of the sickening extremism of the pro-abortion movement.
