By Wanda Franz, Ph.D.

This year, West Virginians for Life is supporting passage of the Unborn Child with Down Syndrome Protection and Education Act. This bill will outlaw abortions when the sole reason for the abortion is to prevent the birth of a child with Down syndrome or other disability.

These are eugenic abortions that are designed to eliminate disabilities by killing those who have the disability. Here in West Virginia, families who receive a diagnosis of Down syndrome or some other disability during pregnancy are under tremendous pressure to abort their disabled family members.

The diagnosis of a disability is possible because of new screening tests that can be used beginning at 10 weeks. With these tests, there is a 98.6% chance of identifying a baby with  Down syndrome. All screening tests must be followed up with diagnostic tests that give 100% accuracy, although there is a 1% risk of damage to the baby.

However, for other disabilities, the screening tests have very high “false positive” rates. That is, the tests show that babies have a disability when they don’t.  The chance that a test’s positive results are wrong is 81% for DiGeorge syndrome, 80% for Cri-du-chat syndrome, 86% for Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome and 93% for Prader-Willi and Angelman syndromes. Stress to the family going through these testing procedures is very high, especially  when they are being asked to make life and death decisions

Families should never be made to decide if their disabled family member should live or die. Our bill will protect these families from this eugenic coercion and provide for support and education to help them care for all the members of their family.

Please ask your state legislators to support this important legislation. For contact information click here.