{"id":233159,"date":"2020-10-20T15:57:14","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T20:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=233159"},"modified":"2020-10-21T18:56:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T23:56:26","slug":"parents-balk-sibling-funeral-down-syndrome-aborted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/parents-balk-sibling-funeral-down-syndrome-aborted\/","title":{"rendered":"Heartbreaking: Parents balk as sibling asks for funeral for aborted sibling with Down syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A series of disturbing posts on Reddit detail a mother’s decision to have a eugenic abortion, and the effect it had on her preteen daughter. Writing on the “Parenting” and “Abortion” subreddits, the woman laid out her plan to have a late-term abortion after discovering her child had Down syndrome.<\/p>\n

In her first post, the woman explained she had four children, and was pregnant with her fifth. Because of “complications,” she decided to have an abortion. The post was deleted, but was able to be accessed through Removeddit.<\/p>\n

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She then followed up, explaining that the “complications” she mentioned actually constituted a diagnosis of Down syndrome.<\/p>\n

“In our town in Germany there are no other families with a child with DS,” she wrote. “That means that when the child grew up they would have no playmates like them. There are no other parents we could talk to as well.” Asserting that her child with Down syndrome would have no future, she claimed this was another justification for her abortion. “[W]hile children with DS are seen as loveable I fear that when the child is 20,30,40+ they will be see as a burden. No one will hire them,” she said. “When my husband and I die, they would become a ward or one of our children would have to become the bearer of my responsibility.”<\/p>\n

According to the woman’s post, she also rationalized that having a child with Down syndrome would upset her family’s comfortable lifestyle. “We are living comfortably. We have money to travel, to buy our kids nice things, to pay for several luxuries,” she continued. “But, a child with DS (more than likely) will have several heart, eye, lung, and other body problems. If they don\u2019t the cost of special schooling would be tremendous.”<\/p>\n

Finally, she summed up the crux of the argument: she just didn’t want a child with a disability.<\/em> “We just don\u2019t want to,” she concluded bluntly. “I know it seems cruel, but we just don\u2019t want a disabled child. No one does. The stigma, the stares, the rejection is just too much to consider.”<\/p>\n

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When one commenter pushed back against the idea of Down syndrome making abortion necessary, the woman claimed her child would suffer, and that allowing her child to live with a disability wasn’t something she would even do to a “dog.”<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0‘Nobody Told Me\u2019: Book tells parents of children with Down syndrome of unexpected joys<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead, she would be potentially submitting her child to a dilation and evacuation<\/a>, or D&E, abortion procedure \u2014\u00a0the most common type for the second trimester of pregnancy. A D&E is particularly violent and takes several days. After dilating the woman’s cervix with laminaria, the woman must return to the abortion facility one to two days later, where her cervix will be manually dilated further. After emptying the uterus of amniotic fluid using a suction catheter, the abortionist then uses a sopher clamp \u2014 a grasping instrument with rows of sharp \u201cteeth\u201d \u2014 to literally tear the child apart limb from torso. The procedure is finished when the abortionist finds the child’s head and crushes it.<\/p>\n