Sunday, August 25, 2013

Abortion, disabilities, political correctness, and hypocricy

I'm against abortion because it violates human rights in so many ways. One obvious reason is that it kills a human being, but something that makes me really angry is when people support abortion when the baby has a disability.
Words cannot describe how angry this makes me. It's discrimination. What's worse is that apparently there are people who think that abortion should be required when the unborn child is disabled. Even still, only 8-10% of unborn babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are born. Many people seem to think abortion should be legal up to a certain number of weeks, unless the fetus has a disability (so, people with disabilities become people later on in the pregnancy? I don't get it). There was a lawsuit a while back in which an unborn child with Down Syndrome was misdiagnosed, and the parents said they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had known! You can make it sound normal and okay, but in reality, it is a form of discrimination.
What's worse is that so many people are focused on being politically correct, yet they either support or simply don't fight against killing children in the womb who have disabilities. Here is a comic I drew to illustrate that:


If you couldn't read my terrible handwriting, the text reads:
"That's a retarded argument!"
"Don't say the R-word!"
"Why shouldn't I?"
"It's offensive! It's disrespectful! It's evil!"
"Okay, okay. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. What were we talking about again?"
"You were saying that women have the right to abort if the fetus has Down Syndrome."
It's great that people are advocating for people with disabilities to be treated fairly. But they seem to be forgetting that children with disabilities are also being dehumanized while they're in the womb. I know many people who have special needs (myself included), and even if their disabilities can't always be tested before birth, it still makes me angry that people who have disabilities would be dehumanized like that!
The thing is that many people don't realize that this is discrimination. This is probably because of the messages that abortion-supporters send. Abortion-supporters send the message that abortion is a human rights issue and that restricting abortion is anti-human rights. But is the "right" to have an abortion more important than treating people fairly, regardless of their differences? Apparently not. I have met people who are very much in favor of human rights, and yet they will say something like "what if the fetus has a disability?" when defending abortion.
People may argue that abortion would be the best choice because raising children with disabilities is hard, but there are better alternatives. There are organizations who support parents of children with disabilities, and there are people who adopt children with disabilities.
All human beings should be treated fairly. Why is there an exception when they have a disability and they're in the womb?

--Mary

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