Genetic testing and abortion

Alasdair Palmer warns that new testing technology that identifies genetic defects more safely and easily than before "raises the spectre of an enormous proliferation of abortions." Reminding us of the utterly wicked practice of murdering Down Syndrome babies, Palmer asks how the law could allow abortions for some genetic defects and not for others, how we decide and where we draw the line.

Placing that line should be easy: Don't kill any babies, for any reason.

How can one argue that killing a child for convenience is acceptable and should be legal, but it is not allowable to kill a child because he will allegedly have a "poor quality of life" or will place an unreasonable burden on the parents? After all, "severe fetal deformity" has joined rape, incest and life of the mother as part of the "hard cases" used to justify abortions. How are we to define severe fetal deformity, anyway?

It is damning that we are questioning under what circumstances it is proper to kill babies, rather than recoiling in horror at the idea of killing babies in the first place. This really demonstrates how sick our society has become. We might as well be arguing over which groups of people the Nazis should be permitted to send to the death camps, rather than stopping them from setting up death camps in the first place.