In Texas, it’s illegal to abort your baby after six weeks of pregnancy and it could soon be illegal to end an unborn child’s life based on a predetermined genetic diagnosis such as Down syndrome. That, however, didn’t stop two soon-to-be-married Texans, contestants on Netflix’s hit reality dating show “Love Is Blind,” from debating whether they would abort their baby if he or she had unwanted physical or mental qualities.
“Love Is Blind” encourages single young adults to blindly communicate with each other in “pods” separated by a blurred screen. If any singles should choose to become couples, they must get engaged before ever seeing each other face to face. After they put a ring on it, they are thrown into a trial run of life together to work out any differences before their big day, which is just mere weeks later. In that phase, they decide to say “I do” or break it off completely.
Much like previous seasons, this third season yielded much drama but none like the debate between Nancy Rodriguez, a 32-year-old landlord and speech-language pathologist, and her fiancé Bartise Bowden, a 27-year-old accountant with a passion for fitness.
Shortly after the couple became engaged and moved in with each other, Nancy expressed worry that the longer she waits to have children, the higher risk those kids would be at for having birth defects.
“What would you do if you did find out that your child had a birth defect and you could abort the pregnancy? Do you want to keep the baby?” Nancy asked.
“Keep the baby,” Bartise responded confidently. “What the f-ck. I could not. F-ck no. They could be boy, girl. They could be transgender. They could do whatever. I just want to love that kid no matter what. Three legs, whatever it comes out is like going to be my — our — kid.”
Nancy, a speech-language pathologist, tried to justify her belief in selective breeding, which is effectively outlawed under Texas’s six-week abortion ban, by claiming “I’ve seen so much in my field.”
“It was so emotionally draining and so sad that I would cry almost every day. A lot of times even just with Down syndrome, there are so many complications, medical and also learning complications,” she said. “I see the amount of trauma that it does to, like, the family. For me, if I knew that I could try again and hope that the second time it’s better, then I would go that route.”
“I would never, I could never do that,” Bartise responded. “Especially knowing that we were trying to have a kid, just abort mission because they’re gonna have some challenges and we’re gonna have some challenges. I am mentally tough enough to handle whatever challenge that may present. And I just couldn’t ever pull the plug like that. Yeah, that’s f-cking rough. I could not do that. I’m sorry.”
For the crime of not wanting to abort a child that doesn’t come out looking or acting a certain way, Bartise was smeared by the corporate media and blue checkmarks on Twitter as an “Anti-Abortion Villain.”
Bartise is certainly no pro-life hero, especially after revealing that he believes women get “one pass” for abortion if the pregnancy is “unplanned,” the result of rape, or the result of “stealthing,” a practice where men remove their condoms during sex unbeknownst to their female partners. He also said he has no issues with Plan B.
But his reaction to Nancy’s suggestion — that unborn babies be killed off just because they will lead different lives than others — is more than appropriate.
Justifying abortions based on an unborn baby’s sex or race, or on the assumption that the baby’s or mother’s “quality of life” might not make giving birth worthwhile, is all too common. That’s because abortion in the U.S. was popularized thanks to eugenicists like Margaret Sanger, whose decision to found and operate abortion giant Planned Parenthood was rooted in her desire to “exterminate the Negro population.”
Like Sanger, Nancy, who claimed she is a “reasonable” person, believes it is perfectly acceptable to discount or end a life based on certain physical qualities an unborn child may or may not possess. That’s not a reasonable position, especially considering the fact that several states have laws against killing children based on pre-birth diagnoses.
Keep in mind, Nancy is the same cast member who disclosed in a previous conversation that she supplied 25 to 30 of her eggs to a fertility clinic eight times to help pay for graduate school. Nancy said she lost friends for selling her biological matter and leaving the door open for any children manufactured with her eggs to contact her when they come of age. Regardless, she says she doesn’t think of any of those children as her own.
“I’m not their mother and I don’t see these offspring as my children,” Nancy said.
Nancy’s shallow understanding of life created with her biological matter and blatant disregard for anyone she deems defective is disconcerting, disheartening, and inhumane, yet is still celebrated by the corrupt corporate media.
“How Love Is Blind‘s Nancy Talks About Abortion Should Be a Roadmap for Everyone,” one headline in Jezebel, a website named after the Biblical queen who thrived on deception and killing, blared.
Those who have personally experienced Down syndrome or have parented a child with an extra chromosome, however, strongly disagree with the media’s Nancy cheerleading.
“Do NOT speak for us and what you think our life is like – because honey, you are dead wrong,” one mother wrote on Instagram. “There is something incredibly special about having a child with Down Syndrome. The love Vaughn shows and gives so freely is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. [Nancy] you are the one missing out on something so beautiful. The joy outweighs the challenges over and over again each day.”
“I want you to know that his life isn’t a burden. I want you to look at these videos, look at this profile & see that there are no burdens over here. Only life’s being lived to their very fullest with so much joy, even on the hard days,” @rebeccaprice___ wrote alongside a compilation of her son giggling.
Even one self-professedly pro-abortion mother of a child with Down syndrome wrote off Nancy’s comments as an “extremely inaccurate narrative to spread.”
“[Y]ou should not be selling this narrative to the masses especially when people with Down syndrome will hear this and once again be told they aren’t worthy. There is also a difference between pro choice and pro eugenics. Just because we may have difficulties and a different way of life at times, it does not make people with Down syndrome any less worthy of life. We do not live a life … with trauma because we have a son with Down syndrome,” @toni_lovelee wrote on Instagram.
Bartise’s sister expressed similar thoughts during her first meet-up with Nancy.
“I’m passionate about this,” Bartise’s sister said through tears. “[Children] are such blessings. So to think that it’s able for them just to not be here, that’s crazy.”
Nancy said she was “sad” to see her potential future sister-in-law cry but completely missed the point all of Bartise’s family tried to make about abortion based on so-called defects.
Down syndrome and other conditions are life-altering, but they should never constitute a death sentence for an unborn child. And conditions like that certainly shouldn’t be used as an excuse for pro-abortion activists like Nancy to justify her radical, modern-day eugenics beliefs.