(LifeSiteNews) — A half-century after the West began to move away from eugenics, we have fully embraced it once again. Regular readers of this column will be aware that abortion is used to kill nearly 90 percent of children diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb; the post-Roe debate in the U.S. right now has abortion activists using disabled or sick children as a reason that feticide must be available. They are not trying to hide their worldview, which is we need abortion to be legal so we can get rid of imperfect children.
This is the position of the Democratic Party, as well. First Lady Jill Biden went so far as to invite Kate Cox, the Texas woman who discovered she was pregnant with a disabled baby, tried to get an abortion, and refused — to the State of the Union as her special guest. Wanting to abort a baby with Trisomy 18 is now apparently such a laudable thing that it gets you an invite from the White House. What ableist, ghoulish, enemies of the most vulnerable the Bidens are. What a sick culture we live in.
Indeed, the last few years have given rise to the phenomenon of so-called “wrongful birth” lawsuits — which I first wrote about in 2013 — in which parents who discover their child is disabled sue doctors for not letting them know early enough to have the baby killed in the womb. In 2019, one U.S. couple sued Planned Parenthood after a failed abortion for the cost of “raising an additional child.” Later that same year, an Australian couple sued an ultrasound clinic for failing to diagnose their pre-born daughter with Down syndrome — if they’d known, they would have aborted her. She’d be dead; they’d be free.
READ: UK mom wishes she could have aborted 4-year-old, sues govt for ‘wrongful birth’
The latest story is from Austria, where, Live Action reports, a “doctor will be forced to pay out tens of thousands of dollars to parents angry their child was born with a disability, and they were not given the chance to have an abortion.” The couple was apparently excited that they were expecting a baby, but were livid when their daughter was born and they discovered that she had a disability: “a missing left arm, shortened collarbone, and a ‘malformed’ chest and shoulder area.” The report notes that the little girl will likely have a normal lifespan, but that, to the parents, seems to be the problem.
According to Karin Prutsch-Lang, the lawyer for the reluctant parents: “The doctor overlooked the child’s severe disability. If the diagnosis was correct, the parents would have decided to terminate the pregnancy. If the prenatal diagnostician had paid due attention, he could have recognized during the first trimester ultrasound screening that there was a severe physical disability.” The case went all the way to the Austrian Supreme Court, which ruled in the parents’ favor, determining that they should have been given the opportunity to abort their daughter.
According to Prutsch-Lang, the decision is momentous. “The OGH confirms that doctors are liable for the full maintenance costs of the child, regardless of the child’s state of health, if the birth could have been prevented through professional information or treatment,” she said. “In the future, further claims amounting to several hundred thousand euros will be made for the parents of the disabled child. This ruling could have far-reaching implications for medical practice and patient rights.” According to Live Action: “The doctor will now have to pay all costs for the child and has already been made to pay around $83,000.”
In short, the Austrian Supreme Court ruled that this little girl should not have been born, and that the cost of raising her should be borne by the doctor who failed to identify her imperfections in time to facilitate her feticide. This is eugenics in its most naked form. Eugenics means “good birth”— ensuring that only “worthy” people are born. To claim that some children have been “wrongfully born” is to affirm those premises entirely not only in the attitudes of selfish parents, but from the highest courts in the land.
READ: Austrian doctor ordered to pay parents for failing to spot disability of baby they would’ve aborted
