Wednesday 23 October 2013

Pre-viability induction used as abortion method in The Netherlands

Last week Maaike Rosendal, a Dutch expatriate pro-lifer working in Canada, reported on the trend in Holland of Dutch parents choosing to abort their children diagnosed as disabled and then burying their children dainty little coffins. She writes:
"But it gets worse. A simple internet search shows that most Dutch hospitals, on their websites, accept this as the new normal. Some even recommend induction over suction curettage abortions, as this allows parents a better opportunity to “say farewell to the child” in its final moments. The “a-word” isn’t mentioned once—after all, the only thing that happened was the forced birth of a child who wasn’t able to survive outside the womb yet. Barely an abortion, right?

Wrong! An elective abortion is an action that brings about the death of the embryo or fetus who was previously alive. Call it what you want, but when a woman’s labour is induced to cause birth, while knowing that the child cannot survive that process yet, by its very definition, that is an abortion. When parents with “a preference for fetal death prior to birth” are offered a lethal injection into the fetal heart to give them a more peaceful experience when the child is “still-born,” who are we kidding? That’s an abortion. And when you force your baby to leave the place where she is naturally supposed to be, then watch her struggle to survive with tiny, undeveloped organs to finally succumb to her pre-term birth, don’t speak of a compassionate choice for a child that couldn’t live. It’s no different than saying a child died by drowning when in reality, you pushed him into the canal, knowing he couldn’t swim.

For some reason, this beautifully packaged way of killing imperfect children seems even worse than the decapitation, dismemberment, and disembowelment of similar children in Canada. At least when we see the latter, we recognize it as injustice. But when Dutch gynaecologists describe induced, pre-term birth as the most desirable way to get rid of one’s offspring—because “it causes no harm to the uterus” and “does not require anesthesia”—and counselors describe how meaningful a funeral or cremation can be to symbolize the life of the lost child—never mind that our actions actually killed it—something is utterly wrong."
Maaike Rosendal's blogpost both explains and gives evidence for the same pro-life logic which SPUC has been sharing recently, and which the Catholic Church has taught for well over a hundred years: pre-viability induction is abortion. See:
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