This Spring, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has before it an unprecedented number of court cases relating directly to abortion. And because the principles established by the ECHR obtain for 47 member states, Europe will see cases settled that are uniquely decisive for human dignity and respect for life:
Among the cases that the European Court must now judge on, there is the case of a Polish mother who complained of difficulties in obtaining permission for her minor daughter to have an abortion, there is also the case of a woman who died during pregnancy, (allegedly) due to conscientious objection exercised by doctors. In another case, a woman who became sterile following an abortion complained of not having been properly informed of the risks. In two other cases before the Court, the women who gave birth to children with disabilities complain of not being able to have abortions. Finally, on a related topic, the Court also has before it a case involving a ban by the Italian legislature of pre-implantation diagnosis.
These cases turn on the simple, scary question of whether or not eugenics is a human right. While religion’s standing as an important voice in the public square has suffered in Europe, it still isn’t a safe bet that the ECHR will vote in favor of eugenics. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution 1829 which outlines in detail the negative repercussions abortions often have for society, and made the unexpected conclusion that abortion must not be available without restriction. Let’s hope to be surprised this month.
Read more here.
April 5th, 2012 | 2:42 pm
I have what is probably going to seem to some people like a quibble over the use of the word eugenics.
I think it is exceedingly rare for anyone procuring, recommending, or performing an abortion to be thinking beyond the immediate situation of those involved and considering the race. Even Denmark’s very disturbing program to try to screen all pregnancies and abort all the unborn with Down syndrome is not, strictly speaking, eugenics, since Down syndrome is not passed from generation to generation.
April 5th, 2012 | 4:42 pm
I think it is exceedingly rare for anyone procuring, recommending, or performing an abortion to be thinking beyond the immediate situation of those involved and considering the race.
I don’t think it’s at all rare.
We are only just now coming to hear details about all the tens of thousands of people who were sterilized against their will (and often without their consent) throughout the 20th century. The justification for this was entirely eugenic.
Legal forced sterilization ended in the mid-1970s. We are just starting to hear about it now.
Since then, there has continued to be a great deal of concern over good and bad genes and how to control genetic situations. While left wingers spin paranoid fantasies about overpopulation – and pleasurable fantasies about Utopias that specifically don’t have room for dissidents or defectives – researchers openly admit that they are trying to “cure” autism by finding a test that will enable parents to detect and abort autistic children – as we currently do for Down’s syndrome.
It’s a bit naive to assume that the pro-abortion crowd differs from the rest of the left wing.
April 5th, 2012 | 4:44 pm
Legal forced sterilization ended in the mid-1970s. We are just starting to hear about it now.
This, by the way, is creepier than anything else: to read in a respectable news media article that the state of South Carolina is weighing whether to apologize for crimes that quite frankly I had thought totally beyond what America is capable of.
But we’re not incapable of it. We just don’t hear about it. It turns out, atrocities of this sort are a commonplace wherever “the Enlightenment” has “enlightened” the populace.
April 5th, 2012 | 5:06 pm
Blake,
The topic is abortion, not sterilization. The North Carolina sterilizations were definitely part of a eugenics program, and it is good that they are being exposed and some reparations are being contemplated. But that has nothing to do with abortions in Europe.
April 5th, 2012 | 8:25 pm
The topic is abortion, not sterilization.
I’m sorry you didn’t understand the point of my comment.
April 6th, 2012 | 8:40 am
Blake – Sounds like it’s time for you to engage in some investigative journalism! You could be as famous as Woodward and Bernstein.
April 6th, 2012 | 9:55 am
Most European countries have laws against any form of Eugenics
The provision of the French Penal Code, under the title, “Crimes against Humanity,” provides
ARTICLE 214-1
(Inserted by Act No. 2004-800 of 6 August 2004, article 28 I; Official Journal, 7 August 2004)
The implementing of any eugenic practice aimed at organising the selection of persons is punished by thirty years’ criminal imprisonment and a fine of €7,500,000.
iA provison that has been duplicated in every European Penal Code I know of. since 1945.
April 6th, 2012 | 9:26 pm
Blake – Sounds like it’s time for you to engage in some investigative journalism! You could be as famous as Woodward and Bernstein.
Sorry, but CBS has already covered the eugenics and forced sterilization in the USA.
So much for my Pulitzer :(
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact