By Dave Andrusko
A month after the bill was passed by the North Carolina House, “A pair of North Carolina Senate committees voted Wednesday to advance a bill that would prevent women from seeking abortions because of race, sex or a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome,” the Associated Press’ Bryan Anderson reported.
House Bill 453–The Human Life Non-Discrimination Act/No Eugenics bill– was approved in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Health Committee. “It now goes to the chamber’s rules committee,” Anderson added. “If approved, it would then head to the Senate floor for a final vote.”
Speaking prior to the vote in the Senate Health Committee, Sen. Joyce Krawiec said, “I believe we will all be judged by how we treat our most vulnerable citizens, and these tiny babies are those citizens.”
Democrats, naturally opposed, although there is no provision in the bill for any civil liabilities or criminal penalties in addition to the state’s existing abortion laws. The ACLU, for example, insisted the HB 453 “violates a woman’s right to privacy.”
Anderson reported that most speakers at Wednesday’s health committee hearing
supported the bill, bringing up personal stories of living with Down syndrome or raising children with the disability. Some pointed to false positive prenatal testing rates and said inaccurate results may prompt a woman not to go forward with her pregnancy.
Dr. Wing Ng, a physician at UNC Health and father of a girl with Down syndrome, said prenatal testing cannot accurately predict how someone like his daughter would fare in life.
“When babies are aborted for having Down syndrome, we are killing a piece of our own humanity,” Ng said. “Babies with Down syndrome have every right to exist as God intended. They should be afforded that fighting chance to live and to succeed.”