May not be prolife, but looks like you are pro zot.
Posted on 07/24/2014 1:20:20 PM PDT by Morgana
LifeNews recently published an article by Mark Leach about what happened when his baby was born with Down syndrome. Leach describes how he and his wife felt abandoned by the medical establishment and how the hospital gave them outdated and scant information about Down syndrome.
In response to his experience, and the experiences of many other Down syndrome parents, he has become the bioethics specialist at the National Center for Prenatal & Postnatal Down Syndrome Resources, and works to get positive, life-affirming information into the hands of new Down syndrome parents and those who go through prenatal testing for Down syndrome. Leach says:
Parents have long described receiving the [Down syndrome] diagnosis negatively. A study of moms reported awful stories both pre- and post-natally. A study just last year reported that parents have a negative experience by a ratio of 2.5 to 1–so for every 100 sets of parents who had a positive experience with their health team, there were 250 who had a negative one.
In the book Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, researcher Rayna Rapp documents three such negative experiences.
One mother, whose child with Down syndrome, Amelia, was four at the time of the interview, related the following:
So they diagnosed Amelia right away, on the delivery table. She was barely out, I barely got a chance to catch my breath or marvel at my first baby when the doctor pours this bad news all over us. “She’s got Down syndrome,” he says to us, very coldly. And after he tells us about blood testing and confirmations and all this stuff, we say to him, “But what does this mean? What should we expect?” And just as coldly he says, “Don’t expect much. Maybe she’ll grow up to be an elevator operator. Don’t expect much.” We clung to each other and cried. (Rapp 263)
h down syndromeThis appalling treatment no doubt added to the confusion and grief that the parents felt over finding out that their baby would face unforeseen challenges in life. If this doctor was so callous towards them after the birth of their baby, one wonders how he would treat his patients who tested positive for a Down syndrome child and were still pregnant. Would he push them towards abortion?
Another mother spoke about how angry her doctor was when she gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome:
My doctor was so angry with me. He couldn’t believe I didn’t take that test. “How could you let this happen?” He yelled at me. “You’re 40!” But I think something else: even though he’s mentally retarded, he could be a good person… It’s just like finding out you have a new job. You just do it, and you accept it, that’s all there is to it. (Rapp 263)
Even more heartless was the reaction of a third doctor, to another couple whose baby had Down syndrome:
She was tiny, but she was great, like she was just the cutest thing. And then my husband comes in, and he looked weird and immediately he said, “The baby, something is wrong…” And all I could think of was that she’s blind, I guess that was probably the worst thing I could ever have imagined. But the doctor had just called him and told him that Rose was a Mongoloid. We took a half hour to get it out of him, like he couldn’t finish telling me the story, and then the doctor came in and said, “What your husband just told you is right.” He was, like, very down on the whole thing, very negative. He said, “The only blessing is that they don’t tend to live very long.” So he thought it would be a good thing if our new baby would die. What more can I say? (Rapp 266 – 267)
These responses by doctors show how vitally important the work of the National Center for Prenatal & Postnatal Down Syndrome Resources is. Pro-lifers should support families with children who have Down syndrome or other disabilities, and support organizations that help them.
Mine too.
Except of course for you and Lazamataz.
(Those rumors are true, right?)
May not be prolife, but looks like you are pro zot.
1/200 is a dinosaur number from the 1980’s. WebMD should be updated.
The accepted number is 1/1600:
“The amniocentesis-related potential fetal loss was calculated based on the traditional fetal loss rate of 1/200 as well as the recently published loss rate of 1/1600 ...
CONCLUSIONS:
Our analysis suggests that the benefit of genetic amniocentesis for the sole indication of AMA far outweighs the potential amniocentesis-related fetal loss rate...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18999912
“Eddleman et al compared pregnancy losses between 31,907 women in the FASTER trial who did not undergo amniocentesis with 3096 who did, and found that the difference between the 2 groups was 0.06% or 1/1600. 21
Odibo et al compared outcomes in 11,746 women undergoing amniocentesis with 39,811 controls not having amniocentesis.23 The fetal loss rate prior to 24 weeks was not significantly different between the 2 groups
...Compared to amniocentesis, CVS may be associated with a higher pregnancy loss rate (defined either as total losses or losses up to 28 weeks) of 0.9% (Table 1).
Are you employed or employable?
Trolling internet forums is not employment.
Perhaps, by your troll logic, your mother should have... Naaah.
Enjoy your zot.
Please do not advocate for abortion on FR for any reason whatsoever. The child is innocent in all cases.
Several cell-free fetal DNA and RNA technologies are under development to test a pregnancy for aneuploidy, mostly focusing on Down syndrome testing. Sampling of cffDNA from maternal blood for analysis by massively parallel sequencing (MPSS) is estimated to have a sensitivity of between 96 and 100%, and a specificity between 94 and 100% for detecting Down syndrome. It can be performed at 10 weeks of gestational age. (Wikipedia)
That, of course, still leaves the moral issue that 92% of diagnosed Down's children are aborted. With no risk and very high selectivity and specificity, however, it will not be possible to argue against testing. MPSS sequencing of cffDNA also tests for other conditions. It will become standard for all pregnancies.
Abortion in the case of a positive DS diagnosis will remain both a public policy and personal morality issue, but many of the concerns discussed above will become mute.
>> And pro lifer absolutists lost most of the moral standing
Abort ‘em cuz the rents ain’t smiling?
What about the visibly perfect child that turns to methamphetamine. Are his parents still smiling?
>> The child is innocent in all cases.
Exactly!
The troll’s comments were like something you would have expected from the eugenics movement in the 1930s....
Oh like the modern day Democrats? I couldn’t agree more.
It wouldn’t be the first time....
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:bluedogpdx/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change
Blueplum, bluedogpdx, both 2007 signups, both advocating for abortion on a conservative forum.
Hmm..
Tagteam?
His screen name included the phrase “blue dog”. Is anyone surprised?
At any given time, look at just about any parent of a teenager and see if they smile when asked about their child's attitude, etc.
In the General/Chat forum, on a thread titled Doctors respond to parents of Down syndrome newborns with cruelty and callousness, blueplum wrote:
“Genetic counseling for middle-aged couples, prior to pregnancy, done together, followed by timely screening for abnormalities that both parents are made aware of, is as essential for a successful outcome for the child as is testing for incompatible blood types between 18yo potential newlyweds.”
Nonsense. “Genetic Counseling” is a fraud. EVERY time friends of mine have been through that fraud, “abnormalities” have been found. Thankfully they all ignored the “science” and carried the child to term. All but one have been fine, that one is a darling little girl with Down’s - and the happiest child I know.
A very good friend of mine has a downs syndrome daughter and she is married to a downs syndrome man. They are very happy and keep very busy. Through my friend I have met several downs syndrome children and adults, they are wonderful people.
Hi, Skink. Nice to see you.
Yes! The Kitties must be fed, and regularly. :)
When we lived in California, the home for challenged children took a small group of their charges to the
grocery store at the same time and on the same day of the week as I went.
Those children and young adults were the sweetest people I’ve ever met. They enjoyed being greeted and
remembered from week to week, and the slightest compliment would light up their faces with big smiles.
Seeing them each week is one of the things I miss the most about living in California.
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