Currently 90%+ of children diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome are "excluded" from ever shining their bright light in a lost world that has become obsessed with perfection and unrealistic traits. If the proper practice of medicine in our culture includes the skill of identifying and eliminating a prenatal twin who fails to meet the criteria of "normal", then we truly do need a massive overhaul of the "health care" system, and it is the soul of our nation that is "deformed".
Our society's war on children with Down syndrome has at least 13 times the level of collateral damage of combat bombing missions in Afghanistan. For every 100 terrorists, suicide bombers, and IED-planting "insurgents" that we kill, we accidentally kill no more than 22 non-targeted civilians. But for every 100 kids with Down syndrome that we detect in-utero and abort, we cause the deaths of 300 genetically standard "civilian" babies.
What are we so afraid of, that this is an acceptable level of collateral damage?
Where is our supposed love of "diversity" when we're willing as a society to kill three normal babies in order to weed out one that looks different, thinks differently?
Who can look at a child like Chloe and decide that she's a greater threat to our way of life than a dozen armed and aggressive terrorists hell-bent on jihad?
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Much as I support legal abortion, I just don't get why people -- including my own husband -- think Downs pregnancies should be aborted.
ReplyDeleteI think women who are pregnant with Down-Syndrome fetuses should decide for themselves whether to grow them or to abort them.
ReplyDeleteWell, OperationCounterstrike, I believe that women with HEALTHY fetuses should decide for themselves to grow them or abort them -- I'm just saying I don't understand why people abort them just for that reason. I would understand aborting for multiple, serious health problems, but I know people with Downs living happy, productive lives.
ReplyDeleteL., my experience is similiar. I have worked in direct care with the MR/DD population for 2 years now and have seen most individuals living with Down Syndrome living happy, productive lives. Unfortuantly, I think there are still a lot of antiquated misconceptions and a general lack of understanding of Down Syndrome and other developmental disabilities, as well as a lack knowledge of the various resources and support groups out there for parents and care givers.
ReplyDeleteAnd unfortuantly, I think all too often doctors in speaking to parents and families, reduce Down syndrome to a medical condition and focus on the medical condition, rather than seeing a patient-an individual with this medical condition and understanding and describing people with Down syndrome as whole—emotionally, physically, and socially.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was working at the institution in Texas, I read a book with the premise that we should ditch the idea of people who have low IQ scores having some sort of "condition". Specifically he was arguing that we should ditch the concept of "mental retardation". And at first I thought, "Well, that's nuts!"
ReplyDeleteBut his argument makes sense. Everybody's gonna be somewhere on the bell curve. People at the high end of the IQ bell curve are just seen as normal human variation. Why are people at the other end (after all, SOMEBODY has to be there) treated like a pathology? Why don't we just see it as normal human variation?
It was an epiphany for me.