The Miracle of Birth

When the unborn join the ranks of the undead

There’s a guy out front of the Convention Center with a mic and a PA system and a very clear position of the issue of abortion. He proffers, although that surely is not the word he would use, an absolutely astounding piece of data, perhaps the DNC’s most jaw-dropping: “Ninety percent of Down syndrome babies born in this country are killed in the womb!”

Let that wash over you for a minute. Feel the rational processes of your mind break down and float away. For this is not a mere plank in an argument or talking point but a koan, a piece of illogic so folded in on itself that it solves its own problem, settles its own debate. He means, of course, that an estimated 90 percent of women terminate their pregnancies after prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome; but the number, cited often in anti-abortion literature and famously by Rick Santorum, comes from a 13-year-old study at a medical school in London, so the argument fails even when you give him the benefit of coherence.

So we might as well stick with the original. By Randall Terry, I think the fellow’s got this abortion issue licked. I wish him well in his fight for the rights of the post-birth unborn.