State House Passes Bill Banning 'Modern-Day Eugenics' of Abortion Due to Disabilities
The Florida House of Representatives passed a bill banning abortions due to a fetal diagnosis of a disability, including Down syndrome.
The bill, which passed on a 77-44 vote and will now head to the Florida Senate, prohibits doctors from performing an abortion if they know the mother is obtaining it because the unborn child has been diagnosed with a disability.
Doctors who knowingly perform such abortions would be guilty of a third-degree felony.
Republican state Rep. Tyler Sirois compared abortions based on disabilities to tactics employed by Nazi Germany.
“The concept of ending a pregnancy based on a disability is modern-day eugenics,” Sirois said, according to The Associated Press. “In the 1930s, the Nazis worked to establish a master race. They sought to eliminate from the gene pool … any trait or condition that they deemed unworthy.”
Pro-life advocates praised the bill’s passage.
“Florida is a strongly pro-life state, and its legislators are right to prioritize babies diagnosed with a disability, who are all too frequently targeted for lethal discrimination before they are given a chance at life outside the womb,” Susan B. Anthony List state policy director Sue Liebel said in a statement.
“We strongly encourage the Florida Senate and Governor Ron DeSantis to follow their lead and be swift in passing and signing this bill into law.”
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that an Ohio law banning abortions based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome was “valid in all conceivable cases.”
The law had been challenged by Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.
Judge Alice Batchelder wrote in the majority opinion that the law protects “the integrity and ethics of the medical profession by preventing doctors from becoming knowing participants in Down-syndrome-selective abortions.”
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