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Calls to legalise sex selective destruction of embryos is Orwellian eugenics

Thursday, June 19, 2008 Source: NZ
Posted in Eugenics | Tagged Eugenics

Pregnancy tests, blood tests and ultrasounds are routinely offered to expectant mothers as part of their programme of pre-natal care. These, and other forms of pre-birth testing, can be used to identify genetic disorders, diseases and physical disorders such as Cystic Fibrosis and Down syndrome. Thousands of women undergo screening every year and enjoy routine pregnancies.

But pre-birth testing also allows many families to avoid having children who suffer from painful, disabling or fatal conditions, and allows others time to adjust to a baby being born with a disability or a medical condition.

Technology is rapidly expanding the range of tests available - and expanding the range of choices parents and society are faced with in deciding who gets born.

Over the course of a year Toi te Taiao: the Bioethics Council engaged New Zealanders on these issues through a process of intensive deliberation. Deliberation encourages people to move beyond individual preferences to consider the needs of the whole community.

More than 700 joined in - both in person and online.

It’s the first time such an approach has been used to inform New Zealand policy makers on public opinion.

Today the Bioethics Council releases its advice to Government on pre-birth testing.

Entitled Who Gets Born? the report contains recommendations to Government on the cultural, spiritual and ethical issues associated with pre-birth testing, in light of public opinion and the implications of rapidly changing technology.

Bioethics Council Chair Associate Professor Martin Wilkinson says the time was right to engage with New Zealanders.

“Parents are facing more choices as the range of pre-birth testing expands, and Government is working on new guidelines to govern the growing availability - and consequences - of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.”

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, is the testing of embryos created outside the mother’s body.

“Take IVF for example. Most people think of it as a way to allow people with fertility problems to have a baby.

“But access to PGD means people who don’t necessarily have fertility problems may decide to use IVF for a different reason, namely to test embryos for genetic conditions. Only embryos that don’t have the condition are implanted.”

Martin Wilkinson says considerations around pre-birth testing aren’t only medical.

“They touch on cultural, spiritual and ethical issues - and these were at the fore when we set out to find out what people really thought and felt.

“These recommendations come from the Bioethics Council, but they also reflect the feedback of those who helped frame the range of possible approaches to pre-birth testing and consider their consequences.

“For many New Zealanders this is a very emotional issue and we’re privileged so many engaged so thoughtfully and passionately,” Martin Wilkinson says.

Who Gets Born? is available online at www.bioethics.org.nz

Press Release: Bioethics Council

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EDITORIAL: Modern Eugenics and Genocide in the Name of Freedom

The recent recommendation by the New Zealand Bioethics Council that parents using In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) and Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) should be allowed to freely choose the gender of their children is another step forward in an ever expanding eugenics industry.

This downward spiral into a systematic genocide of the genetically undesirable is based on giving parents the freedom to choose. Up until recently this choice was exercised predominantly through the use of technologies based on ultrasound and testing of the embryonic fluid for conditions like Down’s syndrome. When informed of so-called “unhealthy abnormalities” the parents were then able to exercise the choice over whether to abort the baby or not.

This has been allowed to happen despite the fact that New Zealand abortion law is supposed to only allow abortions in extreme circumstances for those women whose own life is put at risk or risk of it creating severe mental health issues. In reality abortion is by demand and nobody has ever stood up and said the only reason a women wants to abort a baby is because it does not meet her personal standard of what a healthy baby should be. And so this slow descent into the eugenic mass genocide of the genetically undesirable based on the wonderful notion of free choice of parents has taken us to the abyss of the new genetic technologies of PGD, cloning and genetic engineering.

In all prior human history children have been a lottery in every way. As parents we all have our fears, hopes and dreams as to what we would like and what we hope could be, but in reality a child is what it is - a human being with a randomly assigned genetic makeup and talents and skills (or lack of them) which, may or may not end up gaining the approval of the parents or society. This basic premise has been true to every human in every society, religion, caste or socio-economic class - what you got was what you got and you just have to make the best of it as a parent. In the best of times parents can let go of their prejudices and find that despite expectations to the contrary love and satisfaction can flourish between parent/s and child in the most adverse of circumstances. In other words children need to be accepted as ends in themselves and not the means to someone else’s expectations.

When someone chooses to kill another human being because they do not like how they might turn out in the future this is a very sad commentary on this person as an individual. What does it say about a society that deliberately sets out to create the technology that allows this state of affairs to become a normal part of the health system that oversees the pregnancy of all women? The child in a women’s foetus is subjected to any number of tests through various technologies with only one goal in mind - will this child meet the expectations of the parents (and thus society) for what they believe a human being should be - and if it doesn’t then, in most cases, it will be killed off to try again. Genocide - mass systematic genocide of the undesirable and unwanted all courtesy of the public health system (in New Zealand). A nation built on the genocide of innocents is not a healthy nation.
One can make the argument about that it is in the babies best interest, they would have a diminished quality of life, they would not live as long, they could not do the things most people take for granted, it would be a shame for them to suffer and so on. But make no mistake the people who exercise the choice to abort babies on that basis are still participating in a eugenic program of systematic mass genocide that is forever altering the human gene pool. And now thanks to IVF and PGD the Bioethics Council want to take that choice even further from not just using it to screen out health defects, but to allowing parents to have the right to choose the gender of their children simply on the basis of their personal preference and no other reason. Some say this is a step too far, but in reality it is just a logical conclusion to allow for this choice of choosing ones baby’s gender given what society already allows now. This is the new improved program of eugenics as it does not involve the need for abortion.

In reality if we as a society do not believe that every human being is equal and has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as best they can then the whole social basis of our society will break down. And break it will as new technologies of cloning and genetic engineering are allowed to be developed and perfected so that the scientists can one day say that it is now “safe” to clone and genetically engineer human babies. The New Zealand Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act originally wanted to legalise human cloning and genetic engineering, but thanks to a campaign waged by GE Free NZ Inc. and the Greens this was defeated. Unfortunately, it was only a temporary victory as scientists are still allowed to create cloned and genetically engineered human sperm, eggs and embryos for research purposes. This still leaves the question as to why they want to do this research - for medical advances? Nobody has yet come up with one convincing argument to support this claim. It is for one purpose and one purpose alone that this research has been allowed - to develop the “safe” cloning and genetic engineering of future human babies. So that one day prominent medical scientists like Robert Winston can stand and say there are no longer any rational objections not to allow parents the freedom to choose the “safe” genetic makeup of their children.

On that day the human race will be ultimately doomed to extinction except for those kept in slavery to carry out the menial tasks of that future society. All because of the freedom to choose. The reality is that the only choice we as free human beings can make is to respect each and every individual human being as equal no matter what their genetic makeup may be and to stop the systematic eugenic medical genocide of those deemed unwanted by parents and society no matter what technology is used to do this.

Adam Smith
Editor Prism Webcast News

  http://prismwebcastnews.com/2008/06/22/interview-with-co-leader-of-nz-greens-editorial-modern-eugenics-and-genocide-in-the-name-of-freedom/#more-3060 

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Sex selective destruction of embyos is eugenics

Today’s recommendation from the NZ Bioethics Council that couples should be allowed to destroy embryos based on their sex is frightening Orwellian eugenics, and it would see unborn Kiwis destroyed purely because of they don’t happen to be the right gender criteria.

Any change in the New Zealand law to allow such a practice would be heinously unjust, prejudice and would be expose our society to serious risks.

In China, which currently allows sex selective abortions, the male and female population have become so imbalanced that the future sustainability of their population has been placed at threat.

If the law in New Zealand is changed to allow this frightening practice, then this would simply result in the further commodification of children, turning them into products that can are made to order on the whim of adults, instead of respecting all children as gifts.

We already allow the destruction of unborn human beings based on whether they are disabled or not, a grossly inhuman practice in itself, and for years Family Life International has been warning that this practice would lead to the sex selective destruction of children, and eventually to the destruction of children who fail to meet other socially defined, or state mandated characteristics.

It’s time that New Zealander’s asked themselves whether they wish to live in a society where a person can be destroyed purely because they are disabled, or because they are the wrong sex, and exactly where such an inhuman practice is going to lead us to next?

PRESS RELEASE
A press release from Family Life International, New Zealand
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Gender Selection New Aisle in the Family Supermkt

Family First NZ is opposing the recommendation of the Bioethics Council to give parents the right to choose the sex of their unborn babies.

“Many people describe children as a gift and we believe this is a very healthy understanding,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “Gender selection turns the ‘gift’ of children into a shopping experience for parents, and creates a level of control which is not in the best interests of the child or the parents.”
“Children should be created without an underlying pressure to fulfil parental wants or expectations.”

“The next step is parents wanting to ‘order’a blue eyed blond haired rugby playing sensitive male baby. Where does the selection process stop?”

A recent UK report warned that with a 1 in 10 failure rate, the relationship between the ‘wrong gendered’ child and their parents would be damaged. Even where a child of the preferred sex is produced, there was concern that parents might have stereotypical expectations of how their child will behave.

The director of the UK watchdog group Human Genetics Alert, Dr David King says “sex selection is the exercise of sexism at its most profound level — deciding who gets to live. If you are not prepared to accept and parent both a boy or a girl, you should not be a parent.”

The Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine warned that “sex selection holds even greater risk of unwarranted gender bias, social harm and the diversion of medical resources from genuine medical need. It therefore should be discouraged.”

“A child has a right to be loved and accepted into a family, irrespective of its gender,” says Mr McCoskrie. “Sex selection crosses a dangerous line of seeing children as a commodity to be pre-ordered online rather than as a gift.”

Press Release: Family First

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Socialists made eugenics fashionable

Michael Coren, National Post  Published: Tuesday, June 17, 2008

An exhibition of the history of those scientific ideas that gave a grimy intellectual veneer to the Nazi genocide opened recently at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The collection centres on eugenics, the notion that humanity can be improved and perfected by selective breeding and the elimination of individuals and groups considered to be undesirable. Entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, it reveals how it was not thoughtless right-wing thugs as much as writers and scientists, the intellectual elite, who led the movement.

Rest of Article can be found here:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=592291