Nothing To Worry About HerePlease Move Along

We have only now come upon this story in The Sunday Times (of London) on May 28:

MORE than 20 babies have been aborted in advanced pregnancy because scans showed that they had club feet, a deformity readily corrected by surgery or physiotherapy.

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics covering the years from 1996 to 2004, a further four babies were aborted because they had webbed fingers or extra digits, which are also corrected by simple surgery. All the terminations took place late in pregnancy, after 20 weeks.

Last year, according to campaigners, a healthy baby was aborted in the sixth month at a hospital in southeast England after ultrasound images indicated part of its foot was missing.

News of the terminations has reignited the debate over how scanning and gene technology may enable the creation of “designer babies”. In 2002 it emerged that a baby had been aborted late — at 28 weeks — after scans found that it had a cleft palate, another readily corrected condition.

These actions may require difficult decisions, but it cannot be denied that they lead to greater racial purity, and eliminate genetic defects from our race's gene pool.

While you try to recover your composure, we found even more disturbing the fact that the suggestion for an abortion appears frequently to have come from medical personnel, who are in the best position to know that these are trifling defects. These are the folk whose professional judgment, experience and rigid ethics are oft-cited by the "death with dignity" crowd.

"It was strongly suggested that we consider abortion after they found our baby had a club foot," said David Wildgrove, 41, a computer programmer from Sheffield, whose son Alexander was born in 1996. "I was appalled. We resisted, the problem was treated and he now runs around and plays football with everyone else."

Pippa Spriggs from Cambridge, whose son Isaac will celebrate his second birthday in July, was also dismayed when a scan halfway through the pregnancy revealed that her baby had the defect.

“Abortion certainly was not openly advised, but it was made clear to me it was available,” she said. “In fact he has been treated and the condition has not slowed him down at all.”

Don't worry, Dad! We need a doctor's signature before Little Chucky can pull the plug on your dialysis machine, and stop paying for your feeding tube.