Father explains why he aborted his baby with Down syndrome

Clinic Quotes ^ | Jan 24, 2018 | Sarah Terzo

[Midwesterner53]

He stood over the little boy he allowed to be murdered and then he wept? The child is playing happily and healthy at the feet of Jesus. You too will be there one day and it may not be such a happy time for you and your wife. Jesus: Look over there sir, that’s your son. Tell me what happened to him, why he arrived here so early? Man: Well Jesus, my wife and I had important jobs that came first and..... gone.

[Mrs. Don-o]

These points are, for the most part, realistic, and I think I understand your concerns. However, I would expand on one in order to show a contrast:

You wrote:

2) If a family has other children... it *will* diminish the care, upbringing and quality of life of the other children. So it is not just the parent’s sacrifice. Not just money, but time, and opportunities for personal enrichment.

Many brothers and sisters of Down's children see this in quite a different sense. They might rewrite it thus:

2) If a family has other children... it can increase their capacity for compassion, and an appreciation of simple humanity. Seeing their parents make sacrifices for their "different" sibling will give them the priceless life-experience of knowing what real love is. When they are drawn into being involved in care, they will learn to be caring people. When they see their parents deal with difficulty, they will learn courage.

So it can enrich the "normal" siblings, not with money, but with opportunities for interpersonal depth based on the daily, up-close, hands-on experience of generosity, empathy, patience and hope.

You wrote:

4) But this cannot be determined prior to birth.

I would say this applies to all of life. You do not know if the person you chose to marry will develop a gradual neuro-degenerative disease and you will have to give greater and greater degrees of care to him or her for decades. You do not know if YOU will BE that declining spouse.

You don't know how much care your parents or your spouse's parents will need. You don't know if your great, highly-rewarding, creative important job will cease to exist, dry up and blow away. You don't know if a fire will consume your home and all that you own.

You don't really know what lurks around the corner at the next intersection: and life is full of intersections.

And do you know your purpose in life? Maybe you think your purpose in life is to be healthy, financially secure and have enriching experiences with your attractive wife and two orthodontically perfect and accomplished kids; when actually in God's eyes, your purpose in life is to learn humanity from a child with a misshapen mouth who will never stop drooling.

In an Almighty, Sovereign and Infinite God's eyes, perhaps you are a drooler--- a drooler He loves.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

If you’ve ever “hated” anybody, you are just as guilty as murder as this guy is.

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

I have worked with, and for, people with Down Syndrome for many, many moons. If you have a soul, you quickly realize that they are just another person, with the same wants, needs, dreams and desires as any other person on God’s green Earth. In fact, I would much rather be with a person with Down Syndrome than be with most liberals.

Furthermore, people with Down Syndrome do not enjoy being described with the adjective ‘Downs.’ You can notice in my writing above that I use ‘person with’ and ‘people with’ Down Syndrome. Much of my career has involved developing careers for people with developmental challenges. As I stated above, they are born with all the same wants and desires, including a house, a home, a family and a job. Many of the employers ask for more recruits with Down Syndrome since they show up to work more often and do not call in sick with just the sniffles. In fact, one time I received a call from the employer that they had to send my client home because he came to work with a fever of 105. While he did not feel well, he was expected to show up at work. The employer asked if I could clone the worker and send more dedicated, responsible workers.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

My point was *solely* that a blanket solution for a very complicated situation almost never works. Many people will choose a simple solution to a complex problem, and they don’t care how many are injured or killed trying to conform to their simple solution. They do this because more complicated, even individualized answers make their head hurt. Too much thinking, not enough knee-jerk feeling.

Please don’t be like that. This is a situation involving children, and their parents, and their families as a whole. Their lives, all of them, cannot be solved by an armchair ponderer who doesn’t even know them, just the idea he thinks they represent.

All of them, and all at once, as a faceless group, all with the same problem. At least as far as you are concerned.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Peace, yefrag. Did I once say there was a simple solution?

There is indeed a simple negative: Don't kill anybody.

But the "solution" is life, which is complicated, varied, challenging, complex, crushing, real, redemptive.

I hope I gave that impression.

And as for "an armchair ponderer who doesn’t even know them," you don't know how many "them" I have in my own family.

[Yaelle]

Good thing your parents felt having you was more important to the universe than killing you, no matter how important their jobs were.

I know someone who aborted a child with DS because of her other children. She thought it would hold them back. I have met many families with a special needs kid including my own, and the siblings might be put out a bit with a special needs kid in the family, but they end up being very compassionate to differences in others, and helpful, good citizens. It’s a plus. We all have obstacles in our lives.

It was hard for me to have kids and I told G.D. whichever kid he gives me, I will do anything I can to take care of it. He trusted me. I won’t let Him down.

[Yaelle]

Wait til they one day sit at a table with an adult with Down Syndrome who has a job, a hobby, favorite tv shows, a boyfriend, and excitedly tells them about her life. Who is the exact age their child would have been. Wait til THAT sorrow hits them.

Who the f is anyone to say another person’s life isn’t good enough to keep living.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

And the “them” you have in your family, do you want outsiders to make life and death decisions for them, though they do not know “them”, do not know what is involved in their condition, and are in truth indifferent to “them” at more than a hypothetical basis, lumped together with every other person that they think is out there that they think is like them?

The emphasis here is not on life, or even the decision to choose life, but on those who make armchair decisions about the lives of others *without thought* and *without knowledge*.

This is one of the biggest failings of the left. That they must assemble what they know in terms of groups of people, because they cannot handle the complexity of individuality. So they are both intellectually dependent on government for all things, and because “government can control it” is the simplest way to have simple solutions to complex problems.

Even if government *can’t* control it, and fouls up in every way imaginable, hurting and even killing people in the process. The left doesn’t care, because it is a simple solution, even if it is a final solution.

All so they don’t have to think about it. Incredibly lazy.

The bottom line is that from a human point of view you are right. Life deserves respect. But it is also beyond us, in that we don’t really control it. When life is given up, it is done beyond our control. So ceding control of life, one way or another, to government, is a vain thing to do.

A choice we shouldn’t make, but must. Choosing life must be done with humbleness.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I can get the sense of everything you’re saying there, with a certain heat which I can appreciate as well.

My point is that nobody —— not the church, not the state, not the military, not the medicos, not the man and not the woman -— nobody gets to choose death for the baby.

Agreed?

[RGSpincich]

It was a lot more selfish than money. It was comfort level. All that job rhetoric is jive.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Yes, but add to that no one can choose life for the baby, either. All we can really do is try. Try to support life and fend off death. Knowing all the while that sooner or later we will lose.