Wednesday, April 19, 2006

O Brave New World of Tolerance and Diversity!

Roe Meets a Brave New World
Four months pregnant with her first child, Lisa and her husband went to her doctor for an amniocentesis, a prenatal test to determine genetic or chromosomal abnormalities.

The test results were life-altering. Lisa's son would be born with Down's syndrome. .... Lisa and her husband agonized for three days. .... In the end, they were swayed by their doctor. If they chose to birth him, the doctor warned, their son would be "their shadow for the rest of their lives." The doctor was right, Lisa told the Blitz, but not in the way she originally thought. "Our son," she said, "is still our shadow."

Is a child with Down syndrome really such a hideous tragedy? Hardly. Where is our culture of "tolerance" and "diversity" when we are encouraging women to abort babies because they'll look different and their minds will work a little differently?
Lisa's tragedy is not uncommon. She is one of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of women who have had a "therapeutic" abortion.

There's a special spot in Hell for whoever coined the oxymoronic term, "therapeutic abortion." First of all, it's never therapeutic for the baby, who ends up dead. And judging from the growing Silent No More movement, a whole lot of the supposed beneficiaries don't consider it to be all that therapeutic for themselves, either.
Pro-choice advocates .... like former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, celebrate the new "freedom." In 1990 the Clinton-appointee praised the "important and positive public health effect" abortion had in reducing "the number of children afflicted with severe defects."

Again, there's tolerance and diversity for you. If they don't look like us, think like us, sense like us, eliminate them.
Former Washington Post reporter Patricia Bauer ... is disturbed by the eugenics-styled arguments of many pro-choice advocates. "What I don't understand,” she wrote, "is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value."

It's "tolerance" and "diversity" in action, Patricia! Your daughter is a tad too diverse for some people's liking.
A report from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital revealed over 80 percent of pre-natal diagnoses of Down’s syndrome led to the termination of the pregnancy. That’s not much less than a 1991 study of 14 hospitals in southeastern states. Researchers in that study concluded that such pregnancies were terminated 90 percent of the time.

Tolerance and diversity. If you won't meet our criteria for "normalcy," you must be eliminated.
Bauer .... relayed the story of an Ivy League ethics professor who, while seated next to her at a dinner party, opined that it was "immoral" not to terminate children pre-natally diagnosed with disabilities.

Tolerance and diversity. If you won't meet our criteria for "normalcy," you must be eliminated.
People with Down's syndrome are now living independently.... A primer from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development notes that people with Down’s syndrome are now living "fuller, richer lives than ever before as family members and contributors to their community."

Nevertheless, it asks too much of the "tolerant" to have them wandering about at large.
Meanwhile, waiting lists for adoptions of children with Down's syndrome continue to grow. As reported by the Associated Press in early February, it takes interested couples up to three years to adopt a child with Down's syndrome.

I wonder how many women facing a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome are told this? I'd bet that it's hovering at around 0%.
Though there are no national statistics available, the Down Syndrome Association of Cincinnati might serve as a sample case. Started in 1983, the DSAC placed three children with Down’s syndrome with new families in its first year. Today, they place three to five children a week.

Are women told this when considering aborting a child with Down syndrome?
It is things like these that give hope to Lisa. As society seems to inch closer towards acceptance of "therapeutic" abortion, these small groups are fighting back in their own small ways. Lisa does her part to help, offering testimonials on pro-life websites and spreading information to mothers in the same confusing situation she found herself in eleven years ago.

In the end, she told the Blitz, she has just one goal for her activities. "Honor my son," she said. "Just honor my son."

And maybe, just maybe, the proponents of "tolerance," "diversity," and "choice" will start to listen to women like Lisa, and to people with disabilities who are sick to death of getting lip service given to how much they have to contribute by a society that advocates weeding them out in the womb.

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