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MINNESOTA, January 8, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – While acknowledging his son with Down syndrome has “intrinsic” value “as a human,” a University of Minnesota professor nevertheless defended the “right” to “eugenic abortion” in a 1,600+ word essay at The Nation.

“If individuals want to terminate an otherwise wanted pregnancy due to a prenatal diagnosis, I support their decision,” Professor David M. Perry declared. “It’s time to affirmatively support the right to eugenic abortion, even as we fight the need for it.”

“The anti-choice movement is trying to use the public’s positive feelings about cute kids with Down syndrome, like my son, to undermine reproductive rights,” he complained while, at the same time, arguing that his son, who is born, has intrinsic value and rights.

Perry blasted pro-lifers for allegedly not caring for people with Down syndrome after they are born, apparently missing the irony that as many as 90 percent of babies diagnosed with the chromosomal abnormality are brutally killed while in utero.

“Right now, Down syndrome and other genetic anomalies are being politicized as Republicans try to take away autonomy by playing on fears of eugenics,” Perry fretted.

“It’s time to defang that threat by affirming that a pregnant individual has the right to make whatever choice they wish to make, under any circumstances,” he wrote. “This affirmation serves, rather than works against, the broader campaign for disability rights.”

Perry interviewed liberal ethicists about how to respond “when people with Down syndrome come out in favor of these anti-choice laws.”

People with Down syndrome are “no more than anyone else in the position to make a decision about a body that’s not their own,” Shain Neumeier, responded.

Pro-lifers, however, point out that it is, in fact, abortion that allows a woman to make a decision about a body that’s not her own, namely the body of her preborn child. 

Neumeier also suggested the “pro-neurodiversity, anti-eugenics, and pro-choice” movements unite.

“For anyone to promote eugenics is downright disgusting, but to have a professor and academic adviser promote eugenics is even worse,” said Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life of America. “Perry is just another example of an extremely pro-abortion professor who preaches an anti-life message and lacks any sort of coherent moral framework.”

In November 2017, a mother named Jen Gann wrote in New York Magazine that she is pursuing a “wrongful birth” lawsuit against the doctors who delivered her son. Had she known he had cystic fibrosis, she would have aborted him, Gann wrote.

“The more I discuss the abortion I didn’t have, the easier that part gets to say aloud: I would have ended the pregnancy. I would have terminated. I would have had an abortion,” she wrote.

“In Jen Gann's article, which reads like [a] woe-is-me-my-life-has-been-disrupted-by-CF pity party, she states that she ‘hates’ mothers like me,” Hawkins responded. “Mothers like me who didn’t take the risk of prenatal tests and gave birth to a child with cystic fibrosis. I would assume she hates me doubly as after my first son, Gunner, was born with CF, and I went on to reproduce, gasp. My fourth child, my only daughter, Gracie, also lives with cystic fibrosis.”

Hawkins said she finds it “extremely troubling” that her tax dollars are potentially funding Perry’s eugenics advocacy.

“As a parent of two children with Cystic fibrosis and a taxpayer in Minnesota, it is extremely troubling that taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize Perry’s writings,” Hawkins concluded.