Speaking at an event commemorating World Down Syndrome Day, a Vatican diplomat said that “discriminatory and eugenic practices linked to prenatal screening and the selective termination of pregnancies targeting babies diagnosed with Down syndrome must be firmly rejected.”
Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, said that “persons with Down syndrome are more than a diagnosis, more than a condition, and certainly more than the limits others may imagine.”
“All of them, like all of us, possess the same inherent dignity and sacred value, intentionally and lovingly imprinted by the Creator from the very first moment of conception,” he added. “Consequently, like everyone else, they hold the same fundamental rights.”