While Denmark is objecting to the claim that it has an official government policy to eradicate Down syndrome in the country, the facts speak for themselves: early prenatal testing has led 98 percent of all children diagnosed prenatally in Denmark with Down syndrome to be aborted.
According to The Irish Times, Danish Ambassador to Ireland, Carsten Søndergaard, objected when a pro-lifer testified in defense of Ireland’s 8th Amendment (currently under fire from abortion advocates) that Denmark had a governmental policy “to eradicate Down Syndrome by abortion by 2030.” Søndergaard said this is untrue… but in doing so, he inadvertently revealed that while it may not be the government’s ‘official policy’ to eliminate Down syndrome, the desire to find and diagnose Down syndrome (and other chromosomal disorders) seems to be resulting in the eugenic elimination of certain human beings.
“In general it should be noted that it is not the policy of the Danish health authorities to eradicate Down’s syndrome,” Søndergaard wrote to the Oireachtas committee, “but it is their duty to provide the pregnant woman with the best possible basis for her to make her own decision about her pregnancy.”
Back in 2015, the CPH Post Online reported that “since 2004 all pregnant women [in Denmark] have been offered a DS scan – called a nuchal scan – and the number of abortions involving DS children has increased dramatically. Last year [2014], 98 percent of pregnant women who were revealed to be carrying an unborn child with DS chose to have an abortion.”
A 2008 study on Danish women revealed that “[t]he introduction of a combined risk assessment during the first trimester at a national level in Denmark halved the number of infants born with Down’s syndrome.”
2016 was no different, according to Søndergaard’s own admission. He wrote to the committee, “In 2016, there were four children born in Denmark with Down’s syndrome after prenatal diagnosis and there were 20 children born with Down’s syndrome diagnosed after birth.” According to the Iona Institute, and according to the country’s official tables, 133 out of 137 babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome were aborted in Denmark in 2016. Twenty babies with Down syndrome were born because they were not diagnosed prenatally:
To put it another way, while 97pc of babies found to have Down Syndrome while still in the womb were aborted, 85pc were aborted overall, still a staggering total.
In 2015, only one baby found to have Down Syndrome while in the womb was born out of the 144 scanned, so 99.3pc were aborted!
The Iona Institute continues, saying that the official figures in Denmark, from the “2017 Guideline for Foetal Diagnostic produced by the National Board of Health,” show that 97 percent of pregnant women in Denmark will be tested for fetal abnormalities, and 95 percent will choose to abort if one is found.
The Institute opines, “These data speak for themselves and are utterly damning and the members of the Committee on the Eighth Amendment should be aware of them and not fixate on whether the elimination of babies with fetal abnormalities is official Danish policy or not.”
In Denmark, abortion is allowed for any reason up to 12 weeks, and after if the baby has a chance of a serious mental or physical disability or disease.
