(LifeSiteNews) — On March 14, 2019, shortly after abortion was legalized in Ireland, Rebecca Price had an abortion at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin. She had been told that her baby had trisomy 18. Tests done on her baby boy’s corpse after the abortion, however, showed a misdiagnosis – the child was healthy. Price and her “partner” Patrick Kiely took the case to court and won damages. Here is how the Guardian reported the story:
Price said she had suffered all-consuming physical and mental trauma since discovering she had unnecessarily terminated her pregnancy what would have been her first child, a boy to be named Christopher Joseph Kiely. A lawyer representing Merrion Fetal Health Clinic, one of the defendants, called it a “terribly sad” case.
This is a perfect example of the vile eugenicist propaganda that the mainstream press now publishes as a matter of course. The wording indicates that aborting a baby with trisomy 18 is “necessary” due to the baby’s disability. The reporter describes the aborted baby boy as “what would have been her first child.” The inescapable conclusion: Because the boy was thought to have trisomy 18, he was thought to have no value, and so he was killed.
The doctors supported that conclusion; the parents accepted that conclusion; the press simply assumed it to be true. The tragedy here is a double one – that a baby boy was killed by abortion, and that the only reason anyone regrets it is because it turns out he didn’t actually have the disability that prompted his killing to begin with.
This week, the BBC published a similar story – and took an identical tone. According to the BBC’s lede: “Two couples have told the BBC they went through with abortions after an NHS trust mistakenly told them their unborn babies had serious genetic conditions.”
Here is a frank admission that a) unborn babies were aborted, a revealing fact for a pro-abortion outlet to admit. And b) they were aborted because it was assumed that they had serious genetic conditions. Because they did not, the methodical destruction of these children is transformed from a “necessary termination” to a tragedy – solely because of disability.
According to the BBC:
“Our daughter should be here,” says Carly Wesson, who terminated her pregnancy at 14 weeks. Ms Wesson and her partner Carl Everson were expecting their first child in January 2019, when a 12-week scan indicated their baby had a high chance of having Down’s Syndrome. They were offered a test, known as chorionic villus sampling (CVS), to check if their baby had any genetic or chromosomal conditions. Two days later, the foetal care team at City Hospital in Nottingham told them the initial results indicated their daughter had a rare genetic condition called Patau’s Syndrome, which often results in miscarriage, stillbirth, or the baby dying shortly after birth.
They opted for an abortion, only to be told at a follow-up meeting that their baby girl – whom they had nicknamed “Ladybird” – had been healthy. One of the medical staff told them: “Well, you could have miscarried, anyway.” Wesson says that was insensitive, and so it was. But the abortion of Ladybird was only a tragedy if Ladybird was a human being – and if she was, it was just as tragic to abort her because she might have had a chromosomal condition. In fact, nobody seems to even pretend that Ladybird wasn’t a human being:
Anthony May, chief executive at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “I know that we failed Carly, Carl and their baby, Ladybird, in 2019, and for that I am truly sorry. While words will never change the outcome, I can assure them and other families that we have investigated and learnt from this tragic case.” “Since 2019, we have implemented the findings from this incident, ensuring we have robust processes for checking, communicating and monitoring results.”
The second family, who spoke to the BBC anonymously, aborted their baby in 2017 at 24 weeks after being told she might have a genetic condition. They first pursued tests to find out if they were carriers of the condition, but the test results were delayed. They called by the hospital and were told that they had one day to decide whether or not to abort, as they were close to the legal limit of 24 weeks. They decided to have an abortion. A post-mortem confirmed that the baby had been healthy.
“I kept calling the hospital every day asking for those test results, I had my very much-wanted baby kicking inside me,” the mother told the BBC. “I needed to know whether to disconnect from the pregnancy, as I didn’t know if my baby would survive. They never explained we had this time pressure. Then I got a frantic call in the late afternoon one day telling me we had to decide by the following day to terminate or it would be too late. It was horrific.” She had the abortion in the labor ward, while other mothers gave birth to healthy babies all around her.
A third family told the BBC that “a last-minute scan on the day they were due to have an abortion changed their minds and they are now the parents of a healthy nine-year-old boy.” The abortion was booked, because the couple said that they felt “like there was only one choice to make” because their baby didn’t appear to be emptying his bladder. One a final scan, “our little baby emptied his bladder. So we didn’t end the pregnancy.”
The Nottingham University Hospital NHS Trust is doing a full review of their prenatal care, but it is likely that there are more stories just like this. But the coverage of these stories showcases something deeply disturbing about the ableism that pervades our culture. What makes a child go from “precious” to “worthless”? What makes a child’s death a “right,” and what makes it a “tragedy”? If the BBC and the Guardian are to be believed, it has nothing to do with being a child – and everything to do with what results you get on your genetic tests.
