Guilty verdict for murderer of Catholic MP David Amess

Carissa Carroll, pictured with her son Jack, founded the nonprofit organization Jack’s Basket to celebrate babies with Down syndrome / Credit: Screenshot/EWTN Pro-Life Weekly

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 21, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).

As many countries celebrate World Down Syndrome Day on March 21, a panel of pro-life leaders and scholars is calling attention to the threat that prenatal testing poses to preborn children who are diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb.

“[The mother] often faces tremendous internal and external pressure to undergo an abortion,” said J.D. Flynn, who moderated the panel at the Catholic University of America’s Institute for Human Ecology and is himself the father of two children with Down syndrome. 

Prenatal screening within the first 11 through 14 weeks of pregnancy can determine whether a preborn child has a higher likelihood of having Down syndrome, but a follow-up diagnostic test can confirm whether the child has the condition. Although efforts to destigmatize the condition have had some success, the likelihood that a mother will abort her child increases dramatically after such a diagnosis. 

A 2012 study that compiled data from 24 studies between 1995 and 2011 found that more than two-thirds of preborn children who were diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb were killed via abortion. Rates throughout Europe are even higher — more than 90%. In Iceland, nearly all preborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted and only about two or three children with Down syndrome are born every year.

Mary O’Callaghan, a visiting fellow at Notre Dame University’s McGrath Institute for Church Life, noted a disconnect between the “more positive” attitude the public expresses about people with Down syndrome and the “more aggressive targeting” of abortion for preborn children with Down syndrome.

“Those with Down syndrome are increasingly showing us their ability to flourish,” said O’Callaghan, who also has a child with Down syndrome. In spite of this, she said, “we’re in a much worse place in respect to abortion and Down syndrome.”

Bridget Brown, a 36-year-old woman with Down syndrome who serves on the National Catholic Partnership on Disability Council on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, expressed the same concern. 

Noting the trends in countries such as Iceland, Brown said she may be from the last generation of people with Down syndrome: “The world may never again benefit from our gifts.”

“This is genocide — the systematic killing of a whole people,” Brown added, citing a letter she wrote to Pope Francis about the situation in Iceland before meeting the pontiff in 2017.

According to Tracy Winsor, who co-founded an organization to support couples who carry their children to term after a prenatal diagnosis called Be Not Afraid, many women consider abortion after a diagnosis because receiving the news is a “traumatic event” for most couples and is presented as a “worst-case scenario.” 

Winsor noted that doctors will present a lot of information, which “can be overwhelming” at the moment. She advises parents to immediately connect with parents who have children living with Down syndrome and to advocates for individuals with Down syndrome.

O’Callaghan agreed: “Meeting with other parents around this time is very helpful [in reducing abortion].” Prenatal testing, she noted, should be oriented toward preparing for their child.

“They need to think about prenatal testing oriented toward the health of their child,” O’Callaghan said.

Brown similarly noted that like everyone else, her “life is filled with hopes and possibilities” and encouraged couples who receive a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis for their preborn child to approach the situation positively. 

“Make plans based on dreams and not on fears,” Brown said. “Believe in yourself and your child.”

[…]

Pope Francis speaking at the general audience on St. Peter’s Square, Nov. 9, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA

Rome Newsroom, Nov 9, 2022 / 03:34 am (CNA).

Pope Francis said Wednesday his trip to the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain was a new step on the journey to create “fraternal alliances” between Christians and Muslims.

The pope spoke about his Nov. 3-6 visit to Bahrain, a small, overwhelmingly Muslim country in the Persian Gulf, during his weekly public audience in St. Peter’s Square Nov. 9.

“The journey to Bahrain should not be seen as an isolated episode,” he said. “It was part of a process initiated by Saint John Paul II when he went to Morocco.”

This is why, he continued, “the first visit of a pope in Bahrain represents a new step on the journey between Christian and Muslim believers — not to confuse things or water down the faith, but to create fraternal alliances in the name of our Father Abraham, who was a pilgrim on earth under the merciful gaze of the one God of Heaven, the God of peace.”

“And why do I say that dialogue does not water down [the faith]?” Francis said. “Because to dialogue you have to have your own identity, you have to start from your identity. If you do not have identity, you cannot dialogue, because you do not understand what you are either.”

The motto of Pope Francis’ visit to Bahrain was “Peace on earth to people of goodwill.” The trip included encounters with government officials, Muslim leaders, and the small Catholic community, including a Mass with around 30,000 people in Bahrain’s national soccer stadium.

The small Christian minority in Bahrain is mostly made up of immigrants, especially from India and the Philippines.

More than 70% of the total population — 1.5 million — is Muslim, while there are only about 161,000 Catholics living in the country, according to 2020 Vatican statistics.

Pope Francis said Wednesday it was “marvelous” to see the many Christian immigrants in Bahrain.

“The brothers and sisters in the faith, whom I met in Bahrain, truly live ‘on a journey,’” he said. “For the most part, they are immigrant laborers who, far from home, discover their roots in the People of God and their family within the larger family of the Church. And they move ahead joyfully, in the certainty that the hope of God does not disappoint.”

The pope pointed out that the Kingdom of Bahrain is an archipelago of 33 islands, which “helps us understand that it is not necessary to live by isolating ourselves, but by coming closer” — something which aids peace.

He said “dialogue is the ‘oxygen of peace,’” not only in a nation but also in a family: Dialogue can help bring peace to a husband and wife who are fighting, for example.

Throughout his visit to Bahrain, Francis said, he heard several times the desire to increase encounters and strengthen the relationship between Christians and Muslims in the country.

He recalled a custom in that part of the world to place one’s hand on the heart when greeting another person. “I did this too,” he said, “to make room inside me for the person I was meeting.”

“For without this welcome, dialogue remains empty, illusory, it remains on the level of an idea rather than reality,” he said.

Francis encouraged Catholics to have “open hearts,” not closed, hard hearts, and said he would like to transmit the “genuine, simple, and beautiful joy” of the Christian priests, religious, and lay people he met in Bahrain.

“Meeting each other and praying together, we felt we were of one heart and one soul,” he said.

At the beginning of the general audience, Pope Francis drew attention to two “courageous” children who had approached the platform where he was sitting.

These children “didn’t ask permission, they didn’t say, ‘Ah, I’m afraid’ — they came directly,” he said. “They gave us an example of how we are to be with God, with the Lord: go for it.”

“He is always waiting for us,” he continued. “It did me good to see the trust of these two children: it was an example for all of us. This is how we must always approach the Lord: with freedom.”

[…]

Burned vehicles after Good Friday raid on April 7, 2023, in Ngban, Benue state, Nigeria. / Courtesy of Justice, Development, and Peace Commission

St. Louis, Mo., May 2, 2023 / 07:25 am (CNA).
Advocates for persecuted Christians in Nigeria are c… […]