It is completely natural for would-be parents to want their child to be healthy and normal. However life is never as simple as that.

Currently, pregnant women, especially those considered "at high risk" of carrying a child with Down's syndrome, may choose to have invasive tests such as chorionic villus sampling (CVS) or amniocentesis, to determine if their child is affected by Down's syndrome. In many countries, the mothers are then offered a choice to abort their baby if the test is positive.

In a recent article in the New Scientist, October 8, Celeste Biever talks about a new breakthrough test. She states that: "A drop of mum's blood could soon be all it takes to tell whether an unborn baby has Down's syndrome." Later on in the same article Ms Biever states: "The tests allow women to abort if they do not want a child with Down's syndrome." In this sentence alone is evidence of the bizarre contradictions that the culture of choice brings about. What is "mum" supposed to do if she discovers that her baby indeed has Down's syndrome? Is she now expected to turn back the clock and "un-mum herself" and then have an abortion?

If she is indeed a mum before these test results, by what rational argument is her definition of motherhood somehow now changed after that drop of blood is provided and the test-results return positive for Down's? Why has that child's human value altered to the point of being worthy of death by parental choice?

Jane Fisher, of the UK charity, Antenatal Results and Choices in London, writing in this same scientific paper says: "I can't tell you how much parents struggle with that decision." Ms Fisher is referring to the choice whether to have an abortion or not. But of course they would struggle! The article then goes on to say that a child with Down's may be legally aborted in the United Kingdom and many parts of Europe if the parents choose not to have it. Now we are no longer hearing that this is not a human individual, but that human individuals who have Downs may be legally killed. Evidently, the culture of choice has reached a new and terrifying level.

Proponents of choice no longer bother trying to disguise what the choice they seek is really all about. Such proponents used to try to convince everyone that the human individual is not produced at conception. The choice of abortion would then not feel so bad since removing "a mere batch of cells" does not sound so dreadful. Now no such disguise and word games seem necessary any longer. Choice itself has become absolute, even of higher value than life itself, and so innocent human individuals may be killed at will.

A new, global, extreme creed has taken hold. Its supreme god is "choice". It is blasphemous and scandalous to question this new deity.

Those who dare to protest are held as guilty of high treason by this new god and its valiant defenders. The priests of choice declare their message from the diverse pulpits of liberal media. They proclaim their theology as though it were the real and only way of living democracy and the freedom of expression, and very "democratically" silence, ridicule and persecute anyone who to them holds "heretical" views.

Meanwhile, the sacrifices to this new insatiable deity lie motionless, mutilated and silent, piling up on the cold altars of "choice".