Anne, your post reminded me of this piece from the New York Times (H/T The Corner) about how support for abortion forces leftists into collision with what was once their most cherished ideal: equal treatment for all, including those with disabilities.

Abortion rights supporters — who believe that a woman has the right to make decisions about her own body — have had to grapple with the reality that the right to choose may well be used selectively to abort fetuses deemed genetically undesirable. And many are finding that, while they support a woman’s right to have an abortion if she does not want to have a baby, they are less comfortable when abortion is used by women who don’t want to have a particular baby. . . .

“If the response is simply, ‘You all are just anti-women’s-right-to-choose,’ I think that misses some of the important disabilities rights issues that are being raised,” said Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People With Disabilities.

Mr. Imparato said he was disturbed to learn recently that in several states with legislative efforts to restrict abortion rights, groups like Planned Parenthood often lobby for an exemption for women who learn their child would have a disability.

But he said that the person who alerted him was a Planned Parenthood lobbyist who was herself troubled by the tactic because it seemed to run counter to the progressive political agenda that supports both choice and tolerance of human difference.

Wouldn't it be poetic justice if the very ones so often used as a justification for abortion -- the disabled in the womb -- should turn out to be the ones who force liberal abortion supporters to rethink the whole issue? God does have a sense of humor.

Comments

[BDB]

You are right. I remember a Christian Human Rights professor who pointed out years ago that in some countries abortion was being used to eliminate female babies because males were more desireable.