Dutch official proposes forced abortions

by Tom Strode                                                                                                   Vol. XIX, No. 4, May 2006

If you are not going to be loved, you might as well be killed.

That seems to be the essence of a proposal by a Dutch politician. Rotterdam Alderman Marianne van den Anker has called for a debate on mandated abortion, as well as coercive birth control, for mothers who rear unloved children who become victims of abuse, according to a Feb. 18 report by the newspaper NRC Handelsblad on the Expatica website.

Van den Anker, a mother of two, even has some targets for her abortion solution: Teenaged girls from the Antilles Islands of the Caribbean, drug addicts, and mentally impaired people. Children with these parents have an “unacceptable risk” of being unloved and living with “violence, neglect, mistreatment, and sexual abuse,” she said.

The exceptions to this rule, van den Anker said, “can be counted on a pair of hands.”

The decision on which mothers would be forced to have abortions would be made by judges, who rule based on the recommendations of social workers and other experts, she said of her proposal. Such specialists “can see in 95 percent or even 100 percent of cases whether the child has a chance of growing up with love.”

Van den Anker, who is responsible for Rotterdam’s health and security programs, said she has failed repeatedly to prevent child abuse.

Antillean gangs in Rotterdam consist of many young people from unloving families who become rapists, pimps, and street terrorists, she said. “Antillean youths who commit serious crimes have been through everything themselves,” van den Anker said. “History repeats itself, and they visit the tragedy of their life history on others.”

Rotterdam, Netherlands’ second largest city with nearly 600,000 in population, has more than 20,000 residents from the Antilles and Aruba, a Caribbean island. [BP]