Sarah's Choice

By William D. Zeranski

The great and present danger now concerning the Canadian medical establishment apparently is not the cost of health care, but how Sara Palin's choice not to abort a Down syndrome baby will affect Canadian abortions.

U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's loving and highly-publicized acceptance of her Down's syndrome child Trig has some Canadian doctors worried that her example may lead to mothers shunning abortion after diagnosis of Down syndrome.

Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC), told the Globe and Mail yesterday, "Palin's decision to keep her baby, knowing he would be born with the condition, may inadvertently influence other women who may lack the necessary emotional and financial support to do the same."

Considering we are talking about Canada with the greatest health care, and presumably the best mental health care, in the North American Hemisphere, why can't the Canadian government shell out a few bucks to the financially distressed?

Okay, it is too easy to be sarcastic, but just the same, in Canada as well as the US, choice is considered a problem, and Dr. Andre Lalonde continues:

"The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in Canada," he said.

Under the facade of "freedom to choose", Lalonde said that "popular messages" [...] "could have detrimental effects on women and their families."

So, sometimes "freedom to choose" is actually bad, even in Canada. But what is worse for abortion proponents is that fact that Palin's inconvenient choice forces Canadian physicians to address the issue of Eugenic Abortion, which is the aborting of a baby because of possible fetal defects. The operative word here is possible, not probable.

We can move beyond predicting fetal defects by simply stating, a Eugenic Abortion is the procedure of choice after determining the baby has the wrong sex organs, that is mommy and daddy want a boy first. The list of other genetic implications grows in leaps and bounds and should make everyone cringe.

Sara Palin's choice, and John McCain's choice of her as VP, appears to have dragged something nasty into the public light. Something that many in other nations wished would've stayed hidden behind the clinic doors.