Eugenics is back, and the reasons are selfish as ever

The limits of evil in modern society, and the levels to which they will be accepted, have truly reached new bounds. In a Daily Mail U.K. article published in October 2014, and recently retweeted by shocked writer Sohrab Ahmari, Gillian Relf announces she wished she had aborted her Down syndrome-affected child. This is not a statement issued from a mother in the heat of the moment, but rather more than a four-decades-long desire that began when the child was still in the womb. In a more disgusting twist, she appears not to wish this for the child's well-being, but rather to have avoided her own discomfort with her son. This selfishness is clear from the beginning of the article, where she discusses her humiliation at her son's outburst on a plane that she decided to bring him on after knowing he has problems being on something as mundane as a local bus. Her refusal to rearrange her own family vacation for the sake of...well...her family screams her "me" mindset to the heavens.

She attempts to moralize her statement of "if I could go back, I'd abort him in an instant" by arguing that her life "would have been happier and far less complicated if he had never been born." Her heartless reasoning goes on for more than ten paragraphs to follow, discussing how she was "physically pained" seeing her son miss the normal milestones, how she despaired in washing his laundry, and how she eventually wished to throw him down the stairs to end her suffering. Again, not her son's suffering – her own. Her wish for normalcy, whatever that may be for her, is apparently more important than the life of a child who presents her with the challenges of Downs. She even goes on to blatantly state she wishes she had not authorized a life-saving surgery for her son, merely to save herself a great deal of pain. While one can sympathize with the emotional toil parents of disabled children face, this type of murderous rhetoric must be decried by those who hold life sacred as exactly what it is: evil. There is a difference between having an abortion as a frightened young girl and arguing forty-seven years later that you wish you'd murdered your child due to your own humiliation. Throwing away a child due to a physical or mental ailment, especially when the reasoning is your own comfort and guilt, should never be accepted in our society. The fact that this person feels so comfortable in stating her desires for her son's death (in fact, his never being born) speaks to something deeper in our culture. No longer do people feel shunned to moral silence in wishing for what amounts to a genocide of the disabled; they shout it from major newspapers, proudly putting their picture as well as the pictures of those they want destroyed out for the world to see. It is, especially in the age of Trump Derangement, perhaps overused hyperbole to scream "Hitler!" at anything or anyone we don't agree with politically. However, the argument made by this woman (and supported by many commentators who call her anything from "brave" to "heroic") follows in the same line as those who desire a perfect master race via the use of eugenics. We have seen this model of thought echoed in Iceland's policy regarding Downs destruction, where they have nearly eradicated (via abortion) Down syndrome from their population. They of course justify this policy with the argument of cost savings in their nationalized health care. While this is likely cheered by many on the left who celebrate abortion as a rite of passage, this ideology should not be allowed to fester in the last bastion of true Western society. There is not that large of a step from wishing abortion upon the disabled to lining them up in the VX showers, and we must not allow such discussion to be had without confronting the despicable moralizing of murder in such a way that no person could accept this modern play at eugenics without accepting the loss of their soul in the process. Imagine the outcry if this policy were aimed at those of the LGBT community rather than those who may not have the ability to speak for themselves. Would it be accepted as a cost-saving measure at that point? Why should we have any less passion for the disabled than we would anyone else murdered for his skin color, orientation, or religion?