Abortion – the killing of unborn children – has become one of the shibboleths that liberals worship, none more so than Ruth Marcus, one of the Washington Post’s leading opinion writers.

However, this week Ms. Marcus hit a new low in her advocacy of baby killing by advocating the unrestricted killing of children with Down syndrome.

The trigger for Ms. Marcus’ screed was the fact that North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana and Louisiana have passed legislation to prohibit doctors from performing abortions if the sole reason is because of a diagnosis of Down syndrome; Utah’s legislature is debating such a bill.

Marcus says these laws are flatly inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, reaffirmed in 1992, that “it is a constitutional liberty of the woman to have some freedom to terminate her pregnancy.” Of the woman. As U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt concluded in striking down the Indiana law in September, the high court’s determination “leaves no room for the state to examine, let alone prohibit, the basis or bases upon which a woman makes her choice.”

But there is more to Ms. Marcus’ argument than a Supreme Court decision.

As she recounts, she was old enough, when she became pregnant, that it made sense to do the testing for Down syndrome. Back then, she says, it was amniocentesis, performed after 15 weeks; now, chorionic villus sampling can provide a conclusive determination as early as nine weeks.

Marcus writes that she can say without hesitation that, tragic as it would have felt and ghastly as a second-trimester abortion would have been, she would have terminated those pregnancies had the testing come back positive. She would have, she says, grieved the loss and moved on, writing:

I’m going to be blunt here: That was not the child I wanted. That was not the choice I would have made. You can call me selfish, or worse, but I am in good company. The evidence is clear that most women confronted with the same unhappy alternative would make the same decision.

That was not the child I wanted?

One must ask where does this end if that is the criterion by which all children are brought to term?

In 2015 UCLA molecular biologist Tuck C. Ngun reported that in studying the genetic material of 47 pairs of identical male twins, he identified "epigenetic marks" in nine areas of the human genome that are strongly linked to male homosexuality.

If a genetic marker for genetically determined homosexuality is discovered, and there are indications that such markers may exist, would that be a valid reason for deciding that the child should be killed?

How many parents, if confronted with that “unhappy alternative,” as Ms. Marcus puts it, would choose to kill their homosexual baby?

Or what about alcoholism? Few behavioral problems are more destructive of families and lives than alcoholism, and there is ample evidence of a genetic basis for the condition.

Back in 2004, investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Indiana University School of Medicine and other centers have identified a gene that appears to increase the risk of alcoholism.

Why take the risk, better to avoid the “unhappy alternative” and kill the baby before it grows up to destroy the family through its genetically encoded addictive behavior.

Ruth Marcus claims that more than two-thirds of American women would choose abortion if faced with the prospect of having a Down syndrome baby, in Red China that prospect is fast disappearing.

What’s On Weibo reports that in Red China, Down syndrome is slowly disappearing from society. Around 95% of women terminate their pregnancy after learning the baby has DS, which is close to similarly high numbers in countries like Denmark or Hungary. Unborn babies with Down syndrome are allowed to be aborted to up to the ninth month of pregnancy; 21% of Down-related abortions in Red China occur during or after the seventh month.

So, should the United States emulate Red China’s eugenics program for Down Syndrome, if so then how about its culture of sex-selective abortion?

Why would a family faced with the “unhappy alternative” of having its name extinguished not want to abort a female child to make room for a male heir?

The United Nations Population Fund (no friend of the right-to-life) says that around 117 million women are believed to be "missing" in Asia and Eastern Europe – the result of son preference and gender-biased sex selection, which it terms a form of sex discrimination.

But if one follows Ms. Marcus’ logic, then the practice of sex-selective abortion, now technically against the law even in abortion-friendly Red China, should be a “choice” left up to the mother.

Pro-abortion advocates, such as Ruth Marcus, claim they are standing up for the rights of American women. The reality is what they are advocating is a new wave of eugenics through which those who can, through pre-natal genetic testing, be determined to have Down syndrome or who are otherwise deemed undesirable are hunted down and killed.

We urge CHQ readers to support the right-to-life and to contact their legislators and urge them to support pro-life legislation, such as the North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana and Louisiana laws now moving through courts and legislatures across the country.

George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie's ConservativeHQ.com. A veteran of over 300 political campaigns, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle, as Director of Policy and Communication for Congressman Adam Putnam (FL-12) then Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and as spokesman for Rep. Mac Thornberry now-Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.