About a year and a half ago I was at an all-day event with friends. For the most part, the day consisted of a lot of sitting around in lawn chairs, chatting and eating too much food.

Since we were a group of my friends, and their friends, it’s not surprising that eventually the conversation came around to a divisive topic. Someone brought up his recent trip to Northern Europe and how he thought it was (I’m paraphrasing) “so amazing that you never saw anyone there with a disability. They must be doing something right!”

This of course started a discussion on how Europeans haven’t somehow waved their magic wands and ended the occurrence of disabilities in the next generation, they’ve ended their births. They’re aborting them.

“Ending their pregnancies,” as they like to call it. And they’re doing it because a test showed that those children weren’t quite “perfect.” (A test that can be wrong, by the way.)

More simply put, they’re murdering their children.

Those Countries Don’t Call It Murder

Now, I know many people disagree that abortion is murder. And the laws of those countries don’t call it murder. But the Bible calls intentionally killing a human being in any circumstance, other than self-defense, capital punishment and just warfare, murder.

And I’ll take the Bible’s authority over that of any nation’s laws. After all, German law made killing Jews in concentration camps legal during Nazi rule. Anything can be legalized if enough people support it. As someone participating in this discussion pointed out, those Europeans who are aborting all those Down syndrome babies “are completing the work of the Nazis.”

How true. And how sad that most people my age don’t see the connection. They don’t know their history, and because of that, it’s repeating itself.

I’m very hesitant to use the term “Nazi” or “denier” in any discussion. For the most part they’re pejorative terms used to shut down discussion on any given topic.

Still, when it’s appropriate, I’ll use it. And it’s appropriate here.

Evil People Murdered Jews, and Those with Down Syndrome

It’s been seventy-two years since our grandparents fought and died to stop evil people from murdering Jews, Roma (Gypsies), those with Down syndrome and other disabilities, and everyone else they thought inferior. And now we’re having to fight the same fight in a different form.

A fight we’ve clearly been losing for some time as, according to CBS News,

The United States has an estimated termination rate for Down syndrome of 67 percent (1995-2011); in France it’s 77 percent (2015); and Denmark, 98 percent (2015). The law in Iceland permits abortion after 16 weeks if the fetus has a deformity — and Down Syndrome is included in this category.

CBS’s twitter account lauded these statistics by advertising its article with this tweet:

What has our world come to? Look at that precious girl!

Now, in all fairness to CBS, the article does present an opposing view to the murder of those with Down syndrome, but that tweet treats abortion as if it were just a medical procedure to prevent disease.

Against the Madness

As Christians we absolutely must take a stand against this madness. Genesis 1:26-28 states:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

This is a lesson that can be applied throughout society today, all humans are made in the image of God and have inherent worth — including those with Down syndrome.

Megan Toombs is the Director of Communications for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and Editor of EarthRisingBlog.com. You can follow her on Twitter @MeganToombs.