Is This A Place We Want To Be?

I love Iceland. It is one of my favorite places to visit. Even though I truly hate cold weather, I still find the country fascinating. However, there is something going on there that troubles me deeply.

Herman Cain posted an article on his blog today about one aspect of medical care on Iceland.

The article reports:

Don’t tell me again about the moral imperative to denounce Nazis if you’re going to let this slide.

As Rob mentioned to me when we were discussing who would write this up, the essence of Hitler‘s eugenics program was to filter out children who didn’t have the traits deemed optimal for the Aryan race. Horrifying? Obviously. You’d have a fit if they started aborting babies for having brown skin, or – if there was some way you could tell – for being gay.

And you should have that fit.

But you don’t need to wait. You can have the fit right now, because Iceland is well down this road. There, expectant mothers are given blood tests to determine if there’s a likelihood their baby will have Down Syndrome. And if it looks that way? Well, the mothers are informed that most abort under these circumstances. No one wants a child who doesn’t have the perfect designer genes, you understand, so Iceland is now to the point where almost 100 percent of mothers who are told their babies will probably have Down Syndrome go ahead and have said babies killed.

And CBS News is congratulating Iceland for this rousing success.

The article quotes the CBS News story:

With the rise of prenatal screening tests across Europe and the United States, the number of babies born with Down syndrome has significantly decreased, but few countries have come as close to eradicating Down syndrome births as Iceland.

Since prenatal screening tests were introduced in Iceland in the early 2000s, the vast majority of women — close to 100 percent — who received a positive test for Down syndrome terminated their pregnancy.

While the tests are optional, the government states that all expectant mothers must be informed about availability of screening tests, which reveal the likelihood of a child being born with Down syndrome. Around 80 to 85 percent of pregnant women choose to take the prenatal screening test, according to Landspitali University Hospital in Reykjavik.

Note that they are not eradicating the disease by curing it, but rather by killing those who would be born with it. That really doesn’t seem like a solution to me.

CBS News further states:

Quijano (CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano) noted, “In America, I think some people would be confused about people calling this ‘our child,’ saying a prayer or saying goodbye or having a priest come in — because to them abortion is murder.”

Olafsdottir (at Landspitali University Hospital, Helga Sol Olafsdottir counsels women who have a pregnancy with a chromosomal abnormality) responded, “We don’t look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication… preventing suffering for the child and for the family. And I think that is more right than seeing it as a murder — that’s so black and white. Life isn’t black and white. Life is grey.”

Wow. Just wow. I am appalled at the idea that you can eradicate a disease simply by killing those who have the potential to have it. One wonders how future generations will look upon this.