A conference has been called by leaders of preeminent human rights organizations across the European Union to create a strategy to battle the idea that killing the disabled is a human right.
"We must work, not only to humanize our view of disability, but also to 'rehumanize' human rights, because there is a tendency to develop a very abstract and disembodied idea of man, an idea which may finally prove inhuman, as demonstrated by the consecration of a 'right to eugenics,'" said Gregor Puppinck, director of the European Center for Law and Justice.
The conference -- June 28 in Strasbourg, France -- will feature as speakers Patrick Clarke of Down Syndrome Ireland, Jean-Marie Le Mene of the Fondation Jerome Lejuene, Luca Volonte of the European People's Party and Puppinck.
Representatives of dozens of other groups will be in attendance.
At issue is the concept of eugenics and worry over what might be coming soon from court officials deliberating on it.
At the tip of the movement advocating eugenics is a legal case brought by Anita Kruzmane, a Latvian woman who accuses her doctor of failing to conduct a "screening-elimination" test that would have notified her of her daughter's Down syndrome.
Her case, now before the European Court of Human Rights, essentially is seeking a determination that the mother had the right to know about her daughter's Down syndrome, and along with that had the right to eliminate her based on that condition.
It's the first time so many organizations have assembled to mobilize against eugenics, officials said.
Some 25 national organizations from across the region already have signed an online statement headlined "Eugenics is not a human right."
The event will be a roundtable discussion to raise awareness about the "eugenic current" in European society, as portrayed in the pending court case.
"Kruzmane complains that her Down syndrome daughter survived the eugenic procedure of 'screening-elimination,'" the organization explains.
Also discussed will be a draft resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe titled "Combating eugenics and discrimination against people with disabilities."
"This resolution will remind the states of their obligations toward people with disabilities who now face the tragedy of their systematic elimination and discrimination," a conference statement said.
"Under European and international law, states have an obligation to protect the life and health of every person, in particular people with disabilities," the conference announcement said.
Yet, even as preparation for the event continue, it was confirmed that in France, 96 percent of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are "eliminated."
Delegations from Italy, Russia, Poland, Spain, France, Germany and Ireland as well as officials with the Council of Europe will be on hand.
"The content of human rights is dependent upon our conception of human nature," Puppinck said.
At the Stop Eugenics Now website, campaign supporters wrote: "We (associations, disabled people and their families), call upon the court to reaffirm the principle of the prohibition of eugenics, and the obligation of the member states to protect the life of every person, including of the disabled before their birth. What is at stake is how our European society defines humanity."
The ECLJ also is arguing in the court cases against Kruzmane's complaint.
"Pretending the existence of a direct causal link between the absence of testing and the birth of her daughter with Down syndrome, the applicant claims to have suffered a violation of her right to respect for private life, a private life which includes – according to the applicant – the right to decide to have an abortion," the ECLJ filing explains.
The ECLJ said the claim – which effectively seeks to make eugenics a human right – may sound crazy, but it didn't "shock the court" or it would have been rejected.
The group cautioned that the case and a number of others pending before the court appear to be strategically advancing rights to abortions and eugenics in Europe, which could have binding effects on all 47 member states.
"The next few months will be decisive for the respect for human life and dignity," said the ECLJ.
Among the horrors that could result should the elimination of the disabled be allowed are abortions based on genetics, including sex or health. There's even the possibility of a "postnatal abortion" idea advancing, the group said.
"Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are 'morally irrelevant' and ending their lives is no different to abortion," advocated a team of ethicists in England recently.
Eugenics long has been a means to an end for progressive thinkers such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. She wrote that her "religion of birth control" would ease the "financial load of caring for with public funds … children destined to become a burden to themselves, to their family, and ultimately to the nation." Nazi Germany borrowed ideas from the American eugenics movement in its diabolical effort to ease the nation's "financial load" and "purify" its population.
In a 2008 National Review Online article, Jonah Goldberg pointed to a professor who has followed in Sanger's footsteps, Princeton's Peter Singer, widely hailed as the world's leading ethicist.
Singer, notes Goldberg, "argues that unwanted or disabled babies should be killed in the name of 'compassion.' He also argues that the elderly and other drags on society should be put down when their lives are no longer worth living."
Sanger's 1939 Negro project implored America's black community to "embrace birth control," and there is no denying statistical evidence that a disproportionate number of Planned Parenthood clinics today are found in black neighborhoods.
According to CDC data, in 2008, 471 out of every 1,000 black pregnancies ended in an abortion. For the same reporting period, 152 out of every 1,000 white pregnancies ended in abortion.
Recently in the United States, there have been multiple reports of Planned Parenthood being willing to do abortions based on the sex of the unborn child.