By You should listen when someone tells you who they are, especially when they’re in charge of a political party. In the case of Michael Hugo, a leader of the Massachusetts Democrats, he recently joined the growing trend among liberals touting abortion as an economic solution for disabled children.
Back in the day, we used to call this kind of language eugenics. Now it’s something that some Democrats say out loud.
The New York Post writes, “In a letter sent to city council members several hours before the meeting and obtained by Fox News, Hugo provided a preview of his remarks reported to the Source, asking if the state will ‘cover the medical costs for a fetus that had sound medical reason to be terminated.’
He questioned if the state would ‘cover the costs of special education for a down syndrome-affected child’ and ‘pay for the extraordinary medical expense of a child with an atrial septal defect?’
‘How much does Framingham’s Public School Department pay for unreimbursed special needs school transportation, specialized education and durable supplies?’ he asked.
Hugo also claimed crisis pregnancy centers’ sonographers would likely misdiagnose defects “while proclaiming that it is a beautiful child living inside the mother and handing her an ultrasound photo that nobody can figure out without training, some diapers and a couple of ‘onesies’ for her new baby.”
Massachusetts Democrat’s abortion comments leave parents irate:
“Our fear is that if an unqualified sonographer misdiagnoses… that becomes a very local issue because our school budget will have to absorb the cost of a child in special education."pic.twitter.com/ZE8ioOQaWE
— Kassy Dillon (@KassyDillon) February 24, 2023
The Democrat said he and others are diligently working to prevent pro-life crisis pregnancy centers from opening up in his town.
God forbid those undesirables be allowed to live because someone talked about the natural right to life.
His comments spurred criticism from normal people who do not support liberal eugenics. NBC 10 reported, “Jon Fetherson, who is the father of a special needs son, said he was extremely offended.
‘I was just appalled. It’s a horror to me. He’s a bully and he should be called out for his comments,’ Fetherston said.
“Fetherston organized the protest against the Democratic leader. ‘As a parent of an autistic child, I read those comments and go ‘what?”‘ he said, according to The Daily Mail.
“‘A peer of mine thinks that I should’ve aborted my child because he was going to be a burden to a school budget?’
‘This is discrimination plain and simple,’ added Kristan Hawkins, a mother of two children with cystic fibrosis.
‘This is eugenics, this is eugenics in 2023 America, this is an argument that sadly we’ve heard before and throughout American history, just regurgitated using a bunch of fancy lingo or support for abortion.'”
Fox News reported that Hugo issued an apology, saying, “I am writing to offer my most sincere and humble apology to members of the Framingham Democratic Committee, but more especially my fellow members of Framingham’s disability family community, for comments that I made at the last City Council meeting which were offensive and hurtful.”
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air makes a good point about this ghoul. He writes, “The [Daily Mail] reports that his constituents are ‘disgusted’ by the remarks and want him to resign. Why? He’s offering a fairly common pro-abortion argument, one that’s been around ever since Margaret Sanger. They may not like the eugenics argument made that boldly, but it’s present in every argument about the ‘burden’ on mothers and families that babies present. This is exactly what abortion is — killing a human being for the convenience of those already born.”
This is exactly what many radical pro-choicers believe in some way or another. In January, 200 Democrats voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would protect infants who survive an abortion and require them to receive medical care.
To slam home how much of a burden some Democrats believe carrying a child can be, a liberal judge compared being pregnant to slavery. Politico explained, “A federal judge in Washington, D.C., suggested Monday that there may be a constitutional right to abortion baked into the 13th Amendment — an area she said went unexplored by the Supreme Court in its momentous decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade.
In a pending criminal case against several anti-abortion activists, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concluded only that the 14th Amendment included no right to abortion but stopped short of definitively ruling out other aspects of the Constitution that might apply.
Kollar-Kotelly noted that there is some legal scholarship suggesting that the 13th Amendment — which was ratified at the end of the Civil War and sought to ban slavery and “involuntary servitude” — provides just such a right. She is asking the parties in the criminal case, which involves charges of blocking access to abortion clinics, to present arguments by mid-March.”
Pro-choicers have also praised Iceland for “eliminating Down Syndrome.” In 2017, for example, CBS was almost giddy about the country’s eugenics.
Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion. #CBSNOA learns more, tonight at 10pm ET/PT https://t.co/EB6BKgQFN3 pic.twitter.com/SOKU7oe6a3
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 15, 2017
The network asked: “‘What kind of society do you want to live in?’ Inside the country where Down syndrome is disappearing.”
Pro-life actress Patricia Heaton called out the network for its gruesome article. “I was taken aback when I read the CBS News tweet that stated, “Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion.” But as I tweeted on Aug. 14, the country was not, in fact, eliminating Down syndrome. They were just killing everyone who has it.
Not only was the tweet scientifically inaccurate, 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. The hospital that performs all abortions in Iceland has a special room for the procedure and acknowledges the killing by giving the aborted child’s mother a “prayer” card that lists the baby’s sex and weight, along with the child’s footprints.
The birth of any child is going to bring great change to the parents’ lives; this is all the more true when it is a child with a disability. Whether that change is going to be seen as positive or negative often depends on how the news is delivered. 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. Mark Lawrence Schrad, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University and a self-described pro-choice liberal, describes what he and his wife faced when waiting to hear if their daughter would be born with Down syndrome. ‘Hammering home the momentous difficulties that would await us as parents was clearly a tactical move by the doctor to push us toward an abortion,’ Mr. Schrad wrote.
While countries like Iceland are praised for their state-funded health care, the struggle to keep costs down creates an environment in which those who choose to give birth to a Down syndrome child may be considered selfish for using up precious resources. More recently, the Dutch Ministry of Health published a list of the 10 most expensive diseases, with Down syndrome at the top.”
Hugo wasn’t apologizing for what he thinks. He was merely apologizing for saying the quiet part out loud.
When people tell you who they are: believe them.
