In September 2012, a new blood test that screens
preborn babies for Down syndrome was put on the market in Germany, Austria,
Switzerland and Lichtenstein by LifeCodexx, the biotech business that developed
it. Kurt Kondrich, whose 9-year-old
daughter Chloe has Down syndrome, responded to the news in an article entitled
“The Silent Repeat of Eugenic History” that was originally posted by
RenewAmerica* and reprinted by American Life League at www.all.org.
The new
prenatal test is “targeted exclusively toward women in their 12th week of
pregnancy and beyond who are at an increased risk” of having a child born with
Down syndrome, and the reality of this test is that it places unborn children
with Down syndrome at a higher risk of abortion. “In the near future, the
PrenaTest will also be able to identify other chromosomal mutations such as
trisomy 13 and 18,” said Dr. Michael Lutz, CEO of LifeCodexx, and the goal
seems to be a society free of ... “imperfections”. Cardinal Christoph
Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, very strongly criticized the test by stating:
“The issue here is artificial selection or eugenics, pure and simple. Is the
infernal expression ‘life not worth living’ going to become reality again?”
The German Down Syndrome Information Centre sums up the issue well: “People with trisomy 21 will, in the
long run, be the first people with a different genetic makeup to disappear from
our society, and with the tacit approval of the majority.” Eugenic
history in German-speaking Europe is recent and very well documented, and there
are survivors who can recount the dark horrors of this movement....
Current
statistics indicate that 90%+ of children diagnosed prenatally with Down
syndrome are indentified, targeted and terminated. This new prenatal test will
only make it easier to select abortion over life, and it may lead to the
extinction of all human beings deemed defective by a culture of death.
Kondrich refers his readers to the website of a strong advocate in
New Zealand of those with mental disabilities: http://www.savingdowns.com/.
North American readers may also be interested in the English-speaking branch of
the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, with a website at http://lejeuneusa.org/ .
*Excerpts reprinted with permission from RenewAmerica.