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.
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Originally Posted by Aristotle
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