Report: Nearly All Women in Iceland Who Receive Down Syndrome Diagnosis Obtain Abortion
REYKJAVIK — A new report by CBS is raising concern as it highlights the fact that nearly all women in the Nordic nation of Iceland who receive a Down syndrome diagnosis obtain an abortion—to the point that children with Down syndrome have been nearly eradicated.
“We don’t look at abortion as a murder,” Helga Sol Olafsdottir of Landspitali University Hospital in Ryekjavik told the outlet. “We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication … preventing suffering for the child and for the family.”
“And I think that is more right than seeing it as a murder. That’s so black and white. Life isn’t black and white. Life is grey,” she asserted.
In Iceland, an estimated 80 to 85 percent of pregnant women choose to take the Combination Test, which is able to determine whether or not a child in the womb has an extra chromosome or similar abnormality. The number of Down syndrome babies born each year has therefore decreased to only two or three, since the vast majority of preborn children with the condition are aborted.
When asked if some women experience guilt for killing their child, Olafsdottir replied, “Of course,” but advised that she tells the mothers, “This is your life. You have the right to choose how your life will look like.”
While Iceland has a nearly 100 percent abortion rate surrounding Downs diagnoses, other nations are not far behind. In Denmark, the rate is 98 percent, and in France, 77 percent of Down syndrome babies never get to have birthday. A reported 67 percent of American women also choose an abortion due to a Down syndrome diagnosis.
View the full report below.
The CBS report has been startling for a number of viewers, including Kurt Kondrich of Human Coalition Pittsburgh, whose 14-year-old daughter Chloe has Down syndrome.
“This represents the ultimate, extreme form of eugenics,” he told Christian News Network, “and there should be an international outcry to end this genocide against beautiful people who fill the world with unconditional love and genuine purity.”
As previously reported, Chloe was the inspiration behind a Pennsylvania bill, signed into law in 2014, that aims to help save the lives of Down syndrome babies who would otherwise be aborted. She also visited the UN this past year to speak against the murder of children like herself, and met with Vice President Mike Pence as well to be a voice for life.
“In 1928, capital punishment was abolished in Iceland,” Kondrich noted, “but now this country is systematically executing a group of citizens prenatally who have committed no crimes, hurt and offended no one, and who do not deserve prenatal capital punishment when they are completely innocent.”
“The culture of Iceland and many other countries are truly disabled by allowing this prenatal slaughter of diverse, beautiful people who have many abilities and commit no horrific acts of hate, violence, prejudice or racism in a world filled with evil,” he lamented.
Kondrich said that he believes that prenatal testing, such as the Combination Test, is a slippery slope that can result in other forms of eugenics in order to weed out those society finds to be imperfect or undesirable.
“As science rapidly increases and genetic codes are unlocked, we should ask who will be targeted next prenatally,” he explained. “What if the genetic codes for depression, autism, ADHD, baldness, shortness, brown eyes, etc. are unlocked and then used to prenatally eliminate more people our society labels ‘defective?’ In some cultures, prenatal testing is used to identify and terminate females because women are viewed as inferior; where is the outcry from women’s rights groups?”
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