On August 14, CBS News advertised for a program about Iceland by tweeting, "Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion."
Pro-life actress Patricia Heaton blasted back, "Iceland isn't actually eliminating Down Syndrome. They're just killing everybody that has it. Big difference."
On Monday, Heaton elaborated on her feelings in the pages of the Jesuit magazine America.
“Not only was the tweet scientifically inaccurate,” Heaton, star of ‘The Middle,” wrote, “it did not really reflect the accompanying story. Yes, close to 100 percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome in Iceland are, horrifically, aborted. But some of the people interviewed in the piece did not seem 100 percent sure it was the right thing to do.”
Heaton observed that “families and people with Down syndrome are speaking up and sharing their experiences.” She wrote about Karen Gaffney a woman whose “Down syndrome did not prevent her from swimming the English Channel” or being “a compelling speaker—her TED Talk is a must-see.” Then there is the Global Down Syndrome Foundation is a public nonprofit dedicated to significantly improving the lives of people with Down syndrome through research, medical care, education and advocacy.
Heaton argued that "many parents have complained that doctors tend to paint an extremely dire picture when counseling parents upon discovering they are pregnant with a Down syndrome son or daughter.”
She concluded:
Finally, as Christians, we must always engage in this battle by being a voice for the voiceless and taking seriously Christ’s command to care for the least among us. In a world where we are daily conditioned to expect an environment that caters to our every need and desire, we must remind ourselves that the value of our lives and the lives of others is based not on material wealth or accomplishments but on the intrinsic worth we all possess as human beings created by God and in his image. As St. John Paul II said, ‘A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members, and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying.’”
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