This weekend I attended our county's Special Olympics banquet. During the banquet the MC discussed an article called Life's Curveballs. The article discussed Jim Erskine the son of Carl Erskine.  Jim Erskine is an individual with Down's Syndrome.  The article in many ways can be summed up with the following quote from the article.

-- Erskine has watched a society go from warehousing people with intellectual disabilities to job opportunities, group homes and public education.  “It would be great if there was total community acceptance; for mainstream people not to have a fear of people with intellectual disabilities and to be more embracing,” he asserted.--

While listening to the presentation I began thinking how far we have come and also where society has moved backwards.  Today there are many more opportunities for individuals with developmental disabilities then there was in the past but in one major way we have moved backwards.

Society while offering more opportunities has also created an acceptable form of eugenics.  With the advent of prenatal testing  children with downs syndrome are now target for extermination.  In the United States 84% to 91% of children who are diagnosed with Downs syndrome through prenatal testing are aborted. ^1,2,3,4

While we can rejoice at the fact that children with developmental disabilities have more opportunities, the only response to the mass abortion of children with Down Syndrome can only be horror and sadness.  We as a society must show the parents of unborn Down Syndrome children that those children are gifts from God, made in the  image of God, and truly blessings.  We also must demand that the medical community stop targeting these children.  It is the medical community that truly is the one to blame here.  By telling parents all the possible horrors and not the blessings they manipulate parents to commit the unthinkable.  Parents must be given support to raise their children not manipulated to have an abortion.

The medical community and the pro-abortion community have scared parents into thinking Downs syndrome is a terrible thing that offers no quality of life rather then one of the many life struggles  that can in the midst of the struggle offer blessings to the parent, the child, and society as a whole.

In my years of working with people with developmental disabilities I have never meet  a person with down syndrome or any developmental disability that really was not like everyone else.  There are times they can be a struggle and drive you nuts but they can also bring great joy to your life.  So let us help people rejoice in their children rather then to fear them.

Footnotes

1 Forrester MB, Merz RD. 1999. Prenatal diagnosis and elective termination of Down syndrome in a racially mixed population in Hawaii, 1987-1996. Prenat Diagn 19(2):136-41.

2 Kramer RL, Jarve RK, Yaron Y, Johnson MP, Lampinen J, Kasperski SB, Evans MI. 1998. Determinants of parental decisions after the prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. Am J Med Genet 79:172-174.

3 Caruso TM, Westgate MN, Holmes LB. 1998. Impact of prenatal screening on the birth status of fetuses with Down syndrome at an urban hospital, 1972-1994. Genet Med 1(1): 22-8.

4 Wertz, DC. 1997. The Impact of Prenatal Diagnosis on Down Syndrome, Anencephaly and Spina Bifida. GeneSage, GeneLetter. Accessed at: www.genesage.com/professionals/geneletter/archives/theimpact.html