I dropped the ball Monday when I had meant to draw attention to Meghan Clyne’s troubling New York Post op-ed, “ObamaCare’s brave new world: Disabled just won’t make it to birth.” Here’s a chunk:
Thanks to advances in prenatal testing, it’s now far easier to detect conditions like cystic fibrosis and spina bifida — and our “best and brightest” overwhelmingly counsel parents to destroy the unborn child. It’s estimated that about 90 percent of American babies with Down Syndrome are now aborted.
We’re clearly on our way to the systematic elimination of “imperfect” people. And President Obama’s “health-care reform” would get us there faster, by vastly expanding the government’s influence over private health-care decisions. . . .
So when Obama’s bureaucrats set health-care policies with cost-cutting in mind, don’t be surprised if they “recommend” that OB-GYNs receiving federal funds (which will be all of them) screen for genetic defects as part of routine prenatal care, and “advise” expectant mothers of the “burdens” of raising children with disabling conditions.
The medical establishment will be happy to comply. Brian Skotko, a clinical fellow in genetics at Children’s Hospital Boston, recently surveyed 1,100-plus mothers across the country who’d received a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome. He was told by “the majority of mothers that physicians were often providing inaccurate, incomplete and in the worst cases offensive information about Down Syndrome.” Whether explicit or implied, the “prescription” was often that the children should be aborted.
The social stigma will rise, too. When everyone is on the hook for everyone else’s health-care costs, the result is nannying so hard-core it would make Mary Poppins blush — just look at the scorn already heaped on smokers and the obese. Why should we pay just because some silly woman wouldn’t abort her defective embryo?