Posted on 01/01/2007 5:45:43 AM PST by shrinkermd
There's a big change coming for pregnant women: Down syndrome testing no longer hinges on whether they're older or younger than 35. This week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists begins recommending that every pregnant woman, regardless of age, be offered a choice of tests for this common birth defect.
The main reason: Tests far less invasive than the long-used amniocentesis are now widely available, some that can tell in the first trimester the risk of a fetus having Down syndrome or other chromosomal defects.
It's a change that promises to decrease unnecessary amnios - giving mothers-to-be peace of mind without the ordeal - while also detecting Down syndrome in moms who otherwise would have gone unchecked.
The new guideline is published in the January issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
About one in 800 babies has Down syndrome, a condition where having an extra chromosome causes mental retardation, a characteristic broad, flat face and small head and, often, serious heart defects.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
How will these people justify this sin when they meet their maker?
They are loving, christian parents who never would have aborted, but it was a very traumatic experience for them. It started when her OBGYN yelled at the hospital staff after the birth because no one had told him it was a DS baby. Lovely. Little B also had to have heart surgery at 2 months. It was a very emotional ordeal that could have been helped had they had a chance to prepare for it.
Fortunately, when Little B was 2-3 weeks old, his parents were introduced to Special Kids. Special Kids made all the difference for this family. I just wished that they could have helped the parents before the birth so they could have avoided the ugly scene in the delivery room and all the unanswered questions at the very beginning.
Ever notice how the "perfect" or beautiful" people treat each other, much less the "less" perfect?
The word "compassion" is a foreign concept, something to be used only as a p.r. gimmick to sell their next movie.
Sometimes I think God made some of us less than"perfect" to teach us true compassion for our fellow man.
"What motivation other than cruelty would insist that a child be born who is crippled, retarded, in need of terribly expensive medical care before painfully dying at a young age?"
Not having a life at all.
I speak as an s an disabled person myself.
If the test showed serious mental deficiencies you could move to Massachusetts and have the child represent you in the Senate.
Actually, predators target the sick and weak because they are easier prey - therefore, "severely disabled animals, as well as humans, usually die because they are unable to survive in the real world". This leaves the healthy animals that survive to reproduce.
You are right - nature also kills the healthy - but not usually. The weak and sick animals are easier prey for lions and wolves in Nature which results in the survival of the fittest.
Exactly! Downs kids are the BEST. Yeah, they aren't perfect in a world that almost demands it, but they'll love you to pieces when nobody else will. I love them.
Yes very Gattaca....
Yep. What difference does it make? You raise and love what God gives you.
In the bigger picture, it's not just about the parents and child in question. The ratio of helpers to helpees in the world is badly skewed, and having parents and medical professionals devoting large amounts of scarce resources to raising a child and maintaining an adult who has no possibility of ever joining the ranks of helpers, is ensuring that more would-be helpees never get the help they desperately need. With millions of AIDS orphans in Africa, and hundreds of thousands of North Koreans starving and being tortured in prison camps, it's not selfish to take into consideration how much help could be provided to people who are already born and suffering, with the resources that would otherwise be spent on a single severely disabled child in a Western country.
I picked your response because you at least ask a rhetorical question.
The difference between prenatal life and life is experience. Once a child is born it is a creature of experience, and as such should be afforded respect. And I also grant that a well developed child in the womb should also be given such respect.
However, there is a sound medical basis for what I suggest. And one based in genetics. It has been proven that in many inherited genetic diseases there are four possible outcomes for a fetus. It may be free of the abnormality, half of its genes may have the abnormality, or it may be fully disposed to the disease or malfunction.
On testing, parents who carry the disease can discover that if their child is free of the abnormality, then they, and their descent, will be free of its curse forever. This is the child those parents crave.
Or, they can discover that their child has half of that trait. This may mean full dysfunction, some degree of dysfunction, or no dysfunction. And yet that child in turn may have to have their potential spouse tested to insure that they do not have the dilemma, lest they curse their child with the full disease. This is very common in genetic diseases like Fragile X.
Or, they discover that the child already is cursed with the full dysfunction. And these are the children who might not ever be. There are a few strong people out there who can bear to have and raise severely handicapped children. But it is a terrible burden on them, and steals much of the joy from their life, even if they deny it out of respect to their offspring.
For the other posters, obsessed with Nazism and mass murder of infants, your histrionics are uncalled for. Most people just do not have the strength to have and raise the severely handicapped, at great expense, for a precious few years followed by agonizing loss. And disposing of the child as an orphan just compounds the cruelty.
Yes, your parents gave you life, and it is their decision to give that gift, not yours, and not any other person's. Nor should it be.
Exactly. Current policy in the US is to forcibly confiscate large sums of money from healthy productive people to support the unnatural levels of reproduction and survival among utterly non-productive and irresponsible people. Research on animals is showing that the effects of in utero conditions affect gene expression for multiple succeeding generations. A crack whore's baby may survive with millions of dollars of medical and special ed care, but is still incapable of producing mentally and physically healthy offspring, but it will produce unhealthy offspring -- usually many, as it capable of doing little beyond basic animal activities such as eating and reproducing. Meanwhile, mentally/physically healthy and responsible people are limiting and postponing their reproduction due to the huge tax burden of supporting the ever-expanding non-productive class. If this trend isn't reversed soon, the results will be awful, and inconsistent with the survival of anything remotely resembling the form of government that our Constitution was designed to promote.
My children are now 29 and 32. There was nothing to do back in those days, hence my comment to the doctor that I didn't intend to murder my baby in my womb if it was not perfect.
"If the trend isn't reversed soon, the result will be awful" very true - I'll find out what the future holds when "Idiocracy" is released in a week on DVD.
What will the country be like when it is filled with morons? From noticing the current popularity and adulation of Obama, Hillary, Oprah, and Jerry Springer, we aren't far from that fate now.
So who is going to say who gets to live and who gets to die? I'm not sure I trust the motives and judgement of those who might sit in that seat.
I think our society is already bearing a huge cost because of the "cheapening" of human life that we have seen, especially since abortion became legal. No one can dispute that things have gotten better over the last 40 years!
Despite women having the option of abortion - unwanted babies are still born, abused & neglected. Enabled by a government check - babies are born, never to be raised by their fathers. Unfortunately, we don't leave it to "the strong surviving" - we encourage the weakest, laziest, dumbest to survive & even thrive - on government subsidy & help. Many disable people live productive, happy lives - while many able-bodied people sit on their unemployed butts, unable to work - but still able to breed - still able to rob & steal to buy crack.
Educational requirements are lessened to accomodate those "dumbed down" students we keep churning out. People would begrudge money spent for "extraordinary" measures to keep severely disabled people alive - in the hopes that at least a few of them will make it - but they don't begrudge all the money society spends to pay for those who don't appreciate the life they do have.
It seems that things are backwards - we punish the innocent & encourage the guilty. I don't think such a society can ever flourish, or have a "Golden Age" - you think in terms of the "strong" being the physically strong ones - when in fact - the really strong ones are those strong in character, spirit & soul.
Honestly, I'm less concerned with that sort of "morons", than with unmanageable hordes of violent morons demanding all the stuff they've been led to believe they have a "right" to, even after their burgeoning numbers and demands have reduced the productive portion of our population to such a small level that it is simply impossible to keep providing all these handouts to the non-productive. This is basically the situation in many third world countries, and many of them have ended up in a perpetual cycle of violent anarchy and brutal dictatorships.
There are plenty of pockets of this sort of thing in our country already. I work in mid-town Manhattan, near Times Square and many theaters (including the one where David Letterman's show is performed), so not in what you'd think of as the heart of the ghetto. But there's a public high school 3-4 blocks from my office which has a few police cars out front all the time, and hordes of police controlling the sidewalks when "school" lets out every day. The massive numbers of violent young men emerging onto the streets from that "school" every day are an immediate threat to civilized people going about their business in the area, and can only be controlled by force. Realistically, most of these young men have already spawned children, and will spawn a lot more.
I'm sorry, I meant to say - No one can dispute that things haven't gotten better over the last 40 years!
Before birth, parents should be free to make their own decisions. But they should be making them with the understanding that they will be on their own, or have to rely on private charity, to support a disabled child. They should not be free to make the choice for the rest of us that WE will pay for all this special care, while they enjoy thinking of themselves as morally superior for devoting their day-to-day lives to supporting a child they knew in advance could never become a productive member of society.
Human life is "cheapened" when we stop caring about whether or not it has any decent quality.
So by your logic - then people who decide to not support themselves - or their children......or people who decide not to get a good education on their own.....or people who knowingly endanger their health by smoking or eating bad foods.....or mountain climbers who get caught up on mountains & can't come down......or people that drive without seatbelts, or too fast....or people that live in dangerous neighborhoods.......or people that work hazardous jobs.....etc.
Is that what you are saying - is that EVERYONE should be left on their own & tax money should not be used to benefit anyone?
It's an interesting concept & I believe would make for a better society in the long run. In that case - only the truly strong would survive.
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