So says columnist Nicholas Provenzo, the latest asshat in a series of asshats to make attacks on Sarah Palin using her son Trig.
As everyone in the United States knows, Sarah Palin found out early in her pregnancy that her son would have Down’s Syndrome. Rather than aborting Trig, she went through with the pregnancy and now has a five-month-old beautiful baby boy. Even if you are pro-abortion, it’s a good story, right? Every woman has the right to “choose”, as they like to say. Except you’re supposed to choose what liberals tell you to choose.
Provenzo isn’t the first to suggest Trig should have been aborted. But he is the latest, and here’s some excerpts from his disgusting column:
Like many, I am troubled by the implications of Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome. Given that Palin’s decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)–a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.
A parent has a moral obligation to provide for his or her children until these children are equipped to provide for themselves. Because a person afflicted with Down syndrome is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all) and requires constant care and supervision, unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child’s life upon others.
So while anti-abortion commentators such as Michael Franc of the National Review sees Down syndrome’s victims as “ambassadors of God” who “offer us the opportunity to rise to that greatest of all challenges,” for many, that opportunity for challenge is little more than a lifetime of endless burden. In this light, it is completely legitimate for a woman to look at the circumstances of her life and decide that having a child with Down syndrome (or any child for that matter) is not an obligation that she can accept. After all, the choice to have a child is a profoundly selfish choice; that is, a choice that is an expression of the parent’s personal desire to create new life.
And most parents seek to create healthy life; in the case of the unborn fetuses shown to have severe developmental disabilities, one study reports that over 90% of these fetuses are aborted prior to birth. But if you notice, the anti-abortion zealots try to attach a dirty little slur to these abortions, labeling them a form of eugenics.
…
[W]e need the mentally retarded to teach us how to better sacrifice our lives and divest ourselves of our self-interested ways more than they need us to care for them. At Noodlefood, Diana Hsieh condemns such a stand as “the worship of retardation.” Given that Palin had complete foreknowledge of her child’s severe disability yet nevertheless chose to have it, it is hard not to see her choice as anything less.
Pretty vile stuff.
So, I guess in this guy’s mind, we should have no Helen Kellers or Franklin D. Roosevelts; no Lord Byrons, Lord Nelsons, or Beethovens. Is that the argument? That unless you’re 100% “healthy” — and by whose standards is “healthy” defined anyway? — you don’t have a right to live? And what gives this guy the right to decide?
And just so you know, this guy is no small potatoes columnist either. He’s written for the Washington Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He’s been on Bill Maher’s show. He isn’t some minor-league columnist who no one knows and has never heard of.
Views such as his are despicable and indefensible. I can only imagine how families with disabled children must feel upon reading this. Not only does this man think that it’s wrong to proceed with a pregnancy that will bear a child with a disability, but he thinks you are selfish and irresponsible. That child’s life is not a blessing to him, but a burden. And not only is his position the correct position, but it’s the moral one!
How crazy can you get?
What’s so ridiculous is that this isn’t his child to be upset over. It was Todd and Sarah Palin’s decision to have Trig, and no one else’s. To them, Trig’s birth was not a burden. So what is he complaining about? I guess you could say that maybe a family that is not as well-off financially as the Palins’ might see a disabled child as a burden — but if they don’t see it that way, then what’s the problem?!
It’s sad that someone can’t see anything but hatred and negativity in the beauty of a child with a disability like Down’s Syndrome. (And FYI, Nicholas, Down’s Syndrome does not automatically mean a lifetime of care and supervision with zero productivity, asshat.)
Just a little personal story: my brother worked at a summer camp for children with disabilities, right up until weeks before he passed away. I can tell you with complete and total honesty that he loved doing it. He got so much joy out of being with those children. Some of them were mildly disabled and completely capable of taking care of themselves. Others were severely disabled, requiring constant 24/7 supervision. My brother worked his way up to the severely disabled kids, and loved every second of it. He never complained or thought it was too hard. And I can tell you he certainly never saw any of “his” kids’ lives as a waste or a burden. He loved those children, heart and soul. And when I say loved, I mean it. He truly and sincerely loved them. I don’t think he would have been prouder of anything else he had done in his life.
But to this guy, people like my brother, and Sarah Palin, and other parents and friends and caretakers of people with disabilities are idiots who are not only dumb and selfish, but immoral. How sickening.
To close, does all the talk about Trig Palin needing to be aborted simply because he has a disability remind anyone else of Hitler’s talk of a perfect Aryan race?
Oh, but wait. I forgot. These guys are the “tolerant” ones.
Hat Tip: Newsbusters
