Comments on: Give Life a Chance

By: Wendy

Wendy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:08:34 +0000

I read the same study and called my mother right afterward, my brother has DS. He is the joy of our life. My parents wanted a large family, by large 10 bio children and then opening their home to fosteer care. They instead got Shawn. A child forever. We cannot believe that noone would want such joy in their life…but I understand that we are lucky. I was also born with a sever disablity. When my sister and sister-in-law were pregnant they had testing. My mother was very put off by this. My sister said it wasn’t to terminate the baby but to allow the doctor’s to have the information possible to give their babies a chance of a healthy or as healthy as possible life.
As an adult I have worked with children with disablties as a Special Education Teacher then as a Program Director at a children’s psych hospital. Being a parent is hard and scrary and having a child who is “different” is even more scrary. They need love and support. If we keep selecting whether to keep these babies we will infact limit money that will go to research and education.

By: Evy Rosebrook

Evy Rosebrook — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:31:10 +0000

Gosh Ronnica, it has been so long since I have found my way over here. What an interesting post to read. I had a Downs sister. She passed away on Dec 31 1999 at the age of 35. She was a blessing to our entire family and dearly missed by all of us. She brought a light and love that we would have never experienced without her. I am so sad when I hear of people who dispose of their baby like it is something dirty or untouchable or to be ashamed of.
I remember one day after my sister died, I was led to approach a young mother with a Downs baby in her stroller. As I was talking to her and cooing over the baby, I looked at the mother and said to her, “You know you were chosen to be this babies mother. God chose you to do a job no other mother could do.” I did not mean to but I made her cry. Fortunately her mother was there with her and she wrapped her arms around her and said to her, “See honey, that is what I have been telling you all along.” It was so out of character for me, and I know God had a hand in it.
Thanks for an amazing insight to this.

By: jennifer

jennifer — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:17:44 +0000

The comments on this post were fascinating. The statistics were mind boggling. I love your boldness Ronnica. We give money to a pro life women’s center. I love that you give your voice.

By: Tara

Tara — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:30:05 +0000

As the mother of a perfect little boy who happens to have Down syndrome, the statistics are appalling to me. I lurk on a “termination for medical reasons” board. Most of the women terminate for T21 (Down syndrome) and the ignorance is shocking. These women are pushed by medical practitioners to terminate and are rushed to make a decision so they have time to do so. Many of them have not done their homework and have some really ignorant ideas about what Ds means. What really irks me is the notion they seem to hold that they made this difficult decision “for the baby”…like it was so sacrificial to abort. Ugh.

By: Ari

Ari — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:10:13 +0000

I love this. I always thought if I was asked if I wanted screening for that, it would only be so I could prepare myself, learn as much as I could about it, etc. Termination because of that should not be an option, imo.

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:43:20 +0000

Just to add a bit, I think it’s totally fine and healthy for a woman to get screened and even tested for the different genetic defects. We didn’t with our first but we did with our third after the defects that our second had. The decision, for us, was not to decided whether to terminate or not but so that if our baby had any problems, we could prepare our hearts, our lives, and our home for him/her.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:26:05 +0000

Very interesting discussion today. I want to add something to a prior comment: it isn’t just women who choose to do this. One would think that some of the fathers would also have a say in this. Or at least, one would hope so…

By: TRS

TRS — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:25:54 +0000

I think the quality of life in question is that of the parents. They are afraid that because their child may not have a normal life… that THEY IN TURN will not have a normal life, so they selfishly choose to terminate.

@ What a Card, Please go read Angie at Bring The Rain >>http://audreycaroline.blogspot.com/<<. For that is what bravery and love of God and love of a child in your womb, who may not live looks like. Go to the beginning of her blog and read at least up to April 2008.

I once dated a guy who had a history of DS in his family. We talked about the chances of having a child with disabilities if we did get married.
He said, "But TRS, they can test for that."
I said, "Are you suggesting terminating a pregnancy because the child would have Down Syndrome?"
He explained that in his career field, it would be really hard to support a child with disabilities. I bit my tongue before I said that if that were the case, he might have to get a real job.

We broke up shortly after.
And I only date Catholic men now.

By: Ronnica

Ronnica — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:31:36 +0000

WAC: Thanks for the correction. Did a little more research, and an error in an amniocentesis only happens 1 out of 1000 times, which are good odds, and certainly much better than a screening. Though there probably are SOME parents who would abort based on a screening (if women will kill their children for little/no reason, certainly some would find that reason enough), I would imagine that stastic is referring to those who received news of DS based on an amniocentesis.

By: WhatACard

WhatACard — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:18:37 +0000

Ronnica, an amniocentesis will give you definite results as to whether your child has DS. It’s just the screening test that is not sure…it only tells you the risk that your child has a condition, and then compares that to the “normal” risk. I.e., a friend just got a screening test that came back as a 1 in 35 risk of Trisomy 18, which is considered a positive (as in, bad) result. She had an amnio, which thankfully showed the baby was chromosomally normal.

I don’t think that people are terminating pregnancies based on the screening tests, or at least I hope not. I think they’re using the screening tests to decide to have more invasive tests (amnio or CVS) which can give definitive results since they check the DNA.

Not that I’m saying that makes it okay, but just wanted to make sure you knew it’s not like people are having abortions based on imprecise screening tests.

Interesting discussion today.