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Almost abortion consensus
Finally, something pro-life Sen. Sam Brownback and pro-abortion Sen. Ted Kennedy can agree on: a bill that values unborn Down Syndrome children.
According to the New York Times, more parents are getting Down Syndrome diagnoses for their unborn children and 90% choose to abort their Down Syndrome babies. Kennedy and Brownback’s bill just passed its Senate committee and would ensure these families understand the condition and the resources available to them. It would also create a national registry of families seeking to adopt Down Syndrome children.
On MotherJones.com, Debra Dickerson tosses some grudging praise at a bipartisan effort to reduce abortions. Then she slashes all consensus to pieces with a polarizing rant on pro-lifers’ unwillingness to adopt the children they would force others to keep. She makes a cynical prediction:
This national registry will flop. Protesting outside of clinics is quite different from agreeing to raise a fundamentally disabled child, as birth parents are oh-so-blithely instructed to do on pain of hellfire.
Dickerson is wrong about pro-lifers. Most pro-life organizations link to adoption agencies for special needs children, and these pro-life people are a few of many taking special needs children into their homes.
But Dickerson seems to assume that no one else would want to adopt a fundamentally disabled child, either. She seems to think this registry depends on pro-lifers walking the walk. Where’s her confidence that pro-choicers would pick up the slack?
Unlike Brownback, Kennedy, and even the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Dickerson misses the point. People – both pro-life and not – who know Down Syndrome sufferers cherish them. Here’s a PBS essay from a teen about the lessons her disabled brother teaches her, a mother who says her Down Syndrome son changed her perspective on life, another recent article about a couple who would have aborted their daughter if they’d known she was disabled, and a Boston Globe column from a woman who calls her granddaughter an “ambassador against fear.”
When pro-life people and “abortion grays” can reach consensus, why politicize and polarize?
back to top10 Comments to “Almost abortion consensus”
As I understand it, a woman can’t even get the test unless she is planning to abort if it’s positive, because the test itself causes a risk of miscarriage that there’s no need to introduce if you plan to keep the baby regardless. That explains the high percentage of positive tests that lead to abortion. (In fact, if it’s only 90 percent, that means at least a few change their minds.)
I think Dickerson’s piece is too pessimistic, but it does have a kernel of truth. I’ve known a lot of people who were anti-abortion and, on this issue, I think they’d fall into three groups:
The first group really does fit the stereotype: People who find it easy to wave a sign, yell at women at a clinic or write angry letters to the newspaper, but don’t really care about the babies after they’re born. I think this group is the minority, but they do exist. I’ve known some of them.
The second group is also a minority .. those who care deeply about life and who would happily adopt a Down Syndrome baby, and who have the necessary resources to do so.
The third group, I think, is the largest: People who care and who would be willing to adopt such a baby, but who are not able to. Often they already have as many children as they can reasonably care for (or are not in a stage of their lives where they could reasonably care for any) and simply don’t have the financial — or emotional — resources to take on the added burden of a special-needs child. (Which is also the reason, I believe, that at least some women choose to abort.)
So I think Dickerson’s prognosis might be close to the truth, but for a much less cynical reason — it’s not that people who care about these children aren’t willing to take them, but many of them simply cannot.
All that said, I hope the bill passes. It is a compromise measure of the sort I was dicussion elsewhere, and deserves a chance.
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Uh oh. Just hit my hot button. When I was 16 weeks pregnant my doctor ran the Fetal Alpha Protein (I think) test. The numbers came back high for Down’s Syndrome. My doctor councelled me and asked if it would make a difference and recommended I not have the amnio test done. I went home and thought about it and chose to have the amnio so that if the baby DID have Down’s I could choose to deliver in Birminham at UAB or at USA Women’s and Children’s in Mobile. I did not want to be in one hospital and deliver a baby with Down’s and them take her away from me because of a heart defect or anything else. This is where my experience of Chloe batting the needle at 18 weeks comes from. I can’t be the only woman who thinks/thought this way. I also have a friend who was told her baby would be born severely retarded and not survive, she chose to carry it to term with the thought that there are a lot of newborns and babies who need organ transplants and she would do what she could for as long as she could. Charlie turned 11 in December and except for slight asthma is as healthy and normal as the rest of us.
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As I understand it, a woman can’t even get the test unless she is planning to abort if it’s positive, because the test itself causes a risk of miscarriage that there’s no need to introduce if you plan to keep the baby regardless. That explains the high percentage of positive tests that lead to abortion.
That would make sense, but it isn’t so. The blood test carries no risk of miscarriage, but has an extremely high (95%) false positive rate. Until recently, a positive blood test was followed by a genetic amniocentesis, with a 1:200 risk of miscarriage. Now, a positive blood test is followed by an ultrasound. Under certain circumstances, an amnio may still be recommended.
But, I digress. The point is that ACOG guidelines state that every pregnant woman should be offered (maybe “recommended” — I can’t recall the exact wording, but ACOG thinks it’s important) the blood test. So, almost everyone gets it, which starts a chain of events that the patient might never have wanted to start.
Not to disagree with you on the real point: This bill is a good idea.
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As I understand it, a woman can’t even get the test unless she is planning to abort if it’s positive, because the test itself causes a risk of miscarriage that there’s no need to introduce if you plan to keep the baby regardless. That explains the high percentage of positive tests that lead to abortion.
I’m no doctor, but it seems to me that the New York Times article this piece is based on answers that : “The Doctors have long recommended an amniocentesis test for pregnant women 35 and over, whose age puts them at greater risk for chromosomal defects. But because it carries a small risk of miscarriage, it has not been routinely offered to younger women, who give birth to the majority of children with Down syndrome.
“Now, with a first-trimester sonogram and two blood tests, doctors can gauge whether a fetus has the extra 21st chromosome that causes Down syndrome with a high degree of accuracy and without endangering the pregnancy.”
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Thanks Subito. If they are now able to test for Down Syndrome in a way that doesn’t carry the risk of miscarriage and begin doing it more routinely, I would expect the percentage of women who choose abortion after getting the news would drop … they won’t be testing only the ones who already know that’s what they plan to do in that case.
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It’s apparent that Dickerson assumes most readers are as selfish as she is.
Gene Stallings and his wife were already the parents of 3 daughters when they discovered Johnny was on the way. (This would have been the early 60s late 50s time frame). Gene the football coach Bear Bryant protege (he would later achieve fame in the NFL) was excited about a son to play ball with, go hunting with etc.
In the L&D ward doctors came to Gene and his wife and in the brutal un-sugar coated manner of the time told them: “We think your baby is a Mongoloid.” Gene’s wife said the real heartbreak was being at a gathering of other young moms. Everyone oohed and aahed at the “normal” children but few really wanted to look at or hold Johnny.
Johnny grew up to be at his Dad’s side. Coach Stallings couldnt have asked for a better assistant. Johnny earned a special place in the lives of the players and he helped Gene be a better coach. Coach Stallings said when a young man was giving it his all out on the field, his experience with Johnny made him a better coach.
Gene Stallings and his wife later established a previously unheard of school at UA Birmingham to assist parents of Down Syndrome kids.
Johnny meanwhile is there with Gene who is enjoying retiremt. Gene and his son’s best friend for many many years was a frequent visitor from Dallas, Coach Tom Landry.
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I really like the adoption idea. Some people talk very highly about the joy that their Downs children bring them because of their typically open, loving personalities.
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As a child I recall reading a column in the local daily called Today’s Child. More or less an advert for adoption, the column almost always featured a down’s baby, other handicapped children,minority children or older children, thus backing up the assertion that these particular children were less likely to be adopted. Today, these children remain wards of the state while the white upper middle class scour the eastern Europe looking for a “normal” child and the more socially conscious go to Asia for a girl.
As much as we would like to disagree with Dickerson, she raises a valid point which agrees with my experience. SteveG’s less cynical view may be more appealing but I wonder which person has a more apt view of human nature.
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I want to shed some light on the adoption questions. The Down Syndrome Association of Greater Cincinnati has a National Adoption Awareness Program that was started in 1982. There are over two hundred families registered to adopt a child with Down syndrome across the country. The Coordinator works with some 2000 families a year providing information and support to both families interested in adopting and parents who may choose to make an adoption plan. Ninety nine percent of families that want to adopt have had a favorable experience with someone with Down syndrome whether they are already parents, siblings, co-workers, neighbors, teachers, etc.
I can tell you of hundreds of families who say that the family member with Down syndrome has been a blessing to them and everyone around them so I’m not surprised that there are over 200 families registered with us.
The goal of our National Adoption Awareness program is that every child born with Down syndrome has the opportunity to grow up in a loving family. We support the Kennedy-Brownback bill that will help make this goal a reality.
Janet Gora
Executive Director
Down Syndrome Association of Greater Cincinnati
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Teddy seems to be in an odd position here. Normal ‘clumps of tissue parasiting in a woman’s body’ are utterly disposable right until the moment they completely clear the birth canal. But ‘clumps of tissue parasiting in a woman’s body’ with a particular defect are to warrant some protection/assistance? Very anti-evolutionary there.
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