The Hypocrisy of Britain's Paralympics
Blogged by James Preece on 7th September 2012
James Parker, Catholic coordinator of the paralympic games...
"What is astounding is that Britain is enabling the eyes of the world to be opened to the giftedness and potential of those with disabilities through its hosting of the Paralympic Games. However, its own laws vehemently and shockingly discriminate against any new life in the womb that might possibly be affected by a physical handicap, genetic problems or a mental defect."
Parker also noted that in conversations with a number of Paralympians during the games, he was astonished to discover that many didn't realize that had they or their teammates been conceived today in Britain, they would most likely be aborted. "If Britain wishes to retain its place towards the head of the medals table at future Paralympic Games in decades to come then it needs to seriously consider changing its laws to stop discriminating against what is presently termed as an ‘unacceptable quality of life.' Games aside, any society that wishes to be healthy needs to increasingly value disability and non-disability equally," he said.
“The Christian community needs as a whole, along with others who share our beliefs on the dignity of human life, to continue to take the lead and, like St. Lawrence, to stridently work towards changing Britain’s discriminatory and outdated abortion laws," Parker concluded. "If this issue is not addressed as we wave goodbye to the Paralympic Games from our shores, then it is hard to imagine when another opportunity of this sort will pass our way when British society and the world as a whole is celebrating the incredulous achievements of those with disabilities."
[link]
Doesn't he know?
People who can run or play basketball are clearly people. People who cannot do those things are clearly not people. It isn't hard.
If you need your mother's womb to survive then you are clearly not a person. Everybody knows that personhood depends on your ability to keep yourself alive unaided. If you can't survive without help then clearly you have no right to survival. If your mother wasn't planning on having a disabled baby then that's your bad luck.
Not every disabled person is going to win a gold medal so clearly not every disabled person has the right to life. That much is obvious.
The important thing is to kill the weakest ones first...
Reader Comments
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Nicolas Bellord said...
I am not sure that "hypocrisy" is the right word to use in the heading to your post. I would hope that the Paralympics have served to make everyone think about disability. It is not just our awful abortion laws but the whole idea that there can be lives not worth living. Here are people who have overcome disability and found a meaning to their lives despite suffering dreadfully.
It is sad that Tony Nicklinson did not find that meaning but has been used by those who wish to promote the culture of death with euthanasia.
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New Friend said...
The Paralympics is a completely positive event which enables us all to fully see those with disabilities, when before some of us were blind to them. Only somneone with a twisted mind would wish to seek to make a link to the obsessively repetitive theme of abortion.
Surely the Paralmpics will have a benificial impact on attitudes which should be welcomed and not condemned. Shame on those who are determined to be negative about such an uplifting event.
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mike cliffson said...
"They cut down all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum *
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot"
Shame on Mitchell for writing this? trees remain more important than humans so perhaps she's ok.
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Part-Time Pilgrim said...
Whilst it is wrong to label the Paralympics themselves as hypocritical only a closed mind would fail to see the contrast between the attitude the celebrates the achievements of those with physical disabilities on the one hand and discriminates against them in the womb on the other.
Of course there's a link between the two.
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Mike Carroll said...
"If a single living cell was found on a distant planet, scientists, would exclaim that we have found life elsewhere in the universe.
So why is a single living cell found in the womb of a pregnant woman not considered life?"
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Nicolas Bellord said...
Only someone with a twisted mind would think it right to abort a baby who has some disability even though birth might be only a week or so away.
P.S. New Friend: This is not aimed at you!
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VOAT said...
Eisenhower, upon finding the victims of the death camps, ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead. He wrote the following to General Marshall after visiting a German internment camp near Gotha, Germany:
The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to "propaganda
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New Friend said...
Just in case anyone is in any doubt I do not approve of abortion solely on the basis that a disability has been diagnosed. I also don't approve of abortion on demand, as an alternative to effective contraception.
To Mike I reply that I have never heard anyone suggest that a single cell in the womb of a pregnant woman is not "life". That is not the question. It is how that "life" is to be regarded.
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Ebeneezer said...
NF: Your scare quotes are a distraction. You haven't just conceded it's "life"; you've conceded it's life. But once you've conceded this, it's hard to see how to avoid the further concessions that it's *human* life, and *innocent* life, in the sense of not harming in a way that warrants killing in self-defence (with the rare exception of danger to the mother's life in bringing the baby to term). But then it's also hard to see what further question there is as to how that innocent, human life is to be regarded.
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