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(LifeSiteNews) — Last fall, I was able to spend a couple of weeks in Ireland, on the road for the Renewal Tour to talk about my book “Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement,” with a lineup of other speakers, detailing a vision for the renewal of a culture of life.

Irish abortion activists have, as pro-lifers predicted, continued to relentlessly push for an expansion of the abortion regime, demanding that flimsy safeguards – such as the three-day waiting period (during which 1,000 women annually change their minds) – be dispensed with.

And then there is the all-out eugenic war on people with Down syndrome.

Societies successfully purging people with Down syndrome are quite literally changing their human landscape. In 2018, when I was in Ireland for a few weeks prior to the abortion referendum, my colleagues and I noticed it: in cities like Dublin, it was not at all unusual to see people with Down syndrome. They are simply part of society. But not until we saw what Irish society looked like did we realize what ours should look like – but does not, because these people have been suctioned from their mothers’ wombs and sealed into biohazardous waste buckets to go out with the garbage.

In Canada and other Western countries nearly all children diagnosed with Down syndrome are killed in the womb. Not some – nearly all. Iceland has boasted about curing Down syndrome, but has in fact simply eliminated people. In the U.K., the cut-off for an abortion is 24 weeks – but you can get an abortion until birth if the child has Down syndrome. The British make an exception if you want to kill one of those people – and a lawsuit by Heidi Crowter, a young woman with Down syndrome who stated that this law disrespected her life and those of the other survivors of this eugenic regime, unfortunately failed to succeed.

READ: Iceland kills 100% of babies with Down syndrome in abortion: New report

And now, Ireland – once a haven for these wonderful people – is following suit. According to the Irish Times on December 26:

About 95 percent of parents whose babies are diagnosed with Down syndrome at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin choose to have an abortion, according to the master of the hospital. Prof. Fergal Malone says the Rotunda strives to be non-directive in its counselling to affected parents. ‘The 95 percent who choose to travel do reach that decision themselves. We very much do not advocate for termination,’ he said. ‘The reality is that the vast majority choose to terminate. I don’t have a view on whether that is the right thing. We don’t advocate for it, that is just the lived experience.’

The Times article is notable in that no ethicists or disability activists were quoted; nobody expressed horror at these numbers. In fact, the Times noted blandly that “Down syndrome, unless accompanied by another life-limiting condition, is not a fatal foetal anomaly under the legislation, so affected women seeking a termination after 12 weeks have to travel abroad for the procedure.” With the number of mothers rejecting their babies with Down syndrome nearing 100 percent, it is likely that activists will soon begin to demand a change in the law – after all, abortion is referred to by the Times throughout the article as “healthcare.”

It is not healthcare for the beautiful children reduced to a bloody pulp because their parents do not want to be inconvenienced or take a chance on them and their country refuses to protect them.

As David Quinn of the Iona Institute noted, this appalling report was met with total silence from abortion activists. Not one of them had the moral courage to speak up on behalf of the children being targeted; not one of them worried aloud that perhaps things might be going too far. They fought for total autonomy, and the price for that was always going to be paid in baby blood. Ireland’s Down syndrome population was the trade-off, and they made it happily.

Coming from a country where this has long been the case, visiting Ireland for the first time was a revelation. We did not know what we were missing until we visited a society that was not missing these people. And suddenly, we saw faces in the crowd that were missing from our crowds and wondered where they were. After a moment’s thought, we knew. We threw them away, because we didn’t want them. It is heartbreaking to think that Ireland, once such a shining example, will now tread this same path – and that the smiling faces that make up their human landscape will, one by one, begin to disappear.

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.

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