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A special Santa Claus is touching hearts and bringing an extra dose of holiday cheer to children with Down Syndrome in metro Atlanta. Last year, the Down Syndrome Association of Atlanta decided they wanted to give participants at their annual holiday party the chance to see a Santa Claus who looked like them. That's where Bradley Carlisle stepped in. Carlisle, 36, lives independently in an apartment in Dunwoody. Donning the classic red suit and white beard, his debut left some families who attended the event crying happy tears, the nonprofit said. "It was magical," one parent said. "For our kids...

This article is a transcript of “When there’s a prenatal diagnosis, the medical community often pressures parents to abort.” courtesy of volunteer Ben Tomlin. A few minor changes were made for clarity. If you’re interested in volunteering to transcribe more of our content, please complete our volunteer survey.] The medical community frequently pressures parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis to abort. There’s research to show that a significant number of physicians, genetic counselors—whoever—will self-report that they will emphasize the negative aspects of a diagnosis in order to indirectly pressure parents to abort, or they will just overtly tell them, “You...

I was not sure what to expect when I first interviewed Shannon Pinkerton, but I knew I was in for an epic conversation about adoption, Down syndrome, and what it means to be a family. Shannon (49) and Troy (53) Pinkerton are raising six adopted young men with a learning disability on forty acres in Wyoming, U.S.A. Five of them have Down syndrome, and one has dwarfism and other special needs. They also look after Marybeth, 63, who has Down syndrome. I interviewed Shannon over two phone calls. The second call occurred during a bout with a stomach bug. All...

Destigmatized abortion increases the pressure for women to abort. If abortion is supposed to be a morally neutral option, then it makes sense to expect women to abort if we conceive in difficult circumstances. The circumstances could be conceiving while in poverty or in an abusive relationship, or any number of situations, but the pressure becomes especially clear when we conceive children with disabilities that can be detected prenatally. For example, when discussing options with a woman who receives a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis, a significant number of physicians and genetic professionals will self-report that they emphasize the negative aspects...

“Pure Joy!” commented one of my Facebook friends on the reel I posted of my 23-year-old daughter riding the Carousel. If you consider it uncommon for a 23-year-old to inspire such a comment, you must understand something: my daughter has Down syndrome. Few people live life with such whole-hearted gusto, expressing their joy without reservation as those who have an extra copy of Chromosome 21. They lack the fear of the disapproval of others, of not being ‘cool,’ and thus are free to express their joy without reservations. It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s becoming rarer. That is why it...

Back aways, we reposted a story that told the grim truth about the fate of babies with Down syndrome in Denmark. In 2019 there were virtually none—just 18! When I read “The last children of Down Syndrome” by Sarah Zhan, I immediately thought of the 2017 story from CBS News about Iceland titled “What kind of society do you want to live in? Inside the country where Down syndrome is Disappearing.” Zhan’s is a brilliantly written piece that appears in the Atlantic magazine. The subhead puts the story in the larger context: “Prenatal screening is changing who gets born and...

Editor’s note. We are continuing to post new and old stories celebrating families with children with Down syndrome as a part of October’s Down Syndrome Awareness Month. When Courtney Baker posted a letter to her former doctor on the Parker Myles Facebook page, I don’t suspect she anticipated thousands and thousands and thousands of responses. Her letter, written more in sadness than anger, was to the physician who delivered the news that Emersyn, Baker’s unborn daughter, had Down syndrome–and counseled her to abort. Good Morning America’s Genevieve Shaw Brown says that Baker told her she knew “how important it was...

The family of a disabled man who died after not being given any food for nine days whilst being treated in an NHS hospital has told ITV News “we thought he was having nutrition… but as it turns out, they were starving him”. This comes as an ITV News investigation has revealed a crisis in the care of learning disabled and autistic people. Bereaved families of people with learning disabilities have told ITV News they believe their children died due to failures in NHS learning disability care. "They were starving him" Adrian Poulton, 56, had Down syndrome and was admitted...

It is perfectly fitting that Down Syndrome Awareness Month coincides with Respect Life Month every October. Our brothers and sisters with Down syndrome can teach us many lessons about life. They encourage us to cherish the gift of life, but also not to take ourselves too seriously. They approach life with some of the greatest exuberance and joy. And they remind us that we may each have different abilities, individual gifts, and unique challenges but every human life is valuable. Life with Down syndrome is not without its challenges. People with Down syndrome experience cognitive and developmental delays as well...

An expansive study across more than 30 countries has confirmed that if prenatal testing is made readily available, the number of eugenic abortions will increase. Dr. Brian Skotko — director of the Down Syndrome Program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a Harvard-educated, board-certified medical geneticist, author, and public speaker — is one of the authors of the study. He is a leading researcher on Down syndrome and serves on the Honorary Board of Directors for the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress. Key Takeaways: * A study examining data from 33 countries over 30 years reveals that prenatal testing has...

Iceland, a nation celebrated for its natural beauty and progressive policies, has garnered international criticism for a far more sobering reality: the near-eradication of Down syndrome births through prenatal screening and abortion. Since the early 2000s, about 80–85 percent of Icelandic women choose to undergo prenatal testing, and nearly all who receive a positive result for Down syndrome end their pregnancy through abortion. Today, only one or two children with Down syndrome are born in Iceland annually—usually due to testing errors. The Icelandic Ministry of Welfare insists this is not about eradicating a genetic condition, framing the policy as a...

Cutting-edge technology could one day transform treatment for Down syndrome, as researchers have successfully deleted an extra chromosome in lab-grown cells. Down syndrome - which occurs when a person has three copies of chromosome 21 instead of two - alters brain development and can cause intellectual disability, learning difficulties and other health challenges. It affects about one in 700 births in the US, with an estimated 250,000 people living with the condition. Scientists from Mie University in Japan have used CRISPR-Cas9, a DNA-editing tool often described as 'molecular scissors,' to cut away the surplus chromosome in cells. Their system was...

Veya Vanderbrugghen, a baby girl with Down syndrome and other medical complexities whose parents fought the Canadian health care system to get her the care she needed, has passed away. Key Takeaways: * Krystal Vanderbrugghen believed the Canadian healthcare system was discriminating against her daughter, Veya. * Veya received care at Sick Kids in Toronto at one point, considered the premiere children’s hospital in Canada. * At Sick Kids, Veya’s mother was told her daughter would not receive a breathing tube or a living donor liver transplant. * Vanderbrugghen said it appeared as if doctors were “slow-coding” Veya, and other...

A family is fighting to get their daughter with Down syndrome the health care she needs, as the Canadian health care system pressures them to end her life. Key Takeaways: * Doctors have suggested Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID); in response, Veya’s mother is now trying to obtain the necessary medical records to take Veya to Chicago in the United States for lifesaving health care. * Veya has been denied a living donor liver transplant despite all of her care teams believing she is a good candidate; her family has been given little reasoning — and flimsy reasoning, at that...

facebook sharing button Share twitter sharing button Tweet email sharing button Email Public Health Scotland published new abortion statistics last week, showing that abortions following a Down syndrome diagnosis or a disability diagnosis rose significantly from 2021-2024. Notably, there were 82% more abortions on children with Down syndrome in 2024 than in 2021. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Abortions for Down syndrome rose 15% from 2023 to 2024 — and 82% since 2021. Despite attempts to restrict abortion for a prenatal diagnosis, Scotland and the UK allow these eugenic abortions until birth. Advocates believe that a prenatal screening tool is partially to blame...

As soon as Norwegian couple Jan and Lene Robertsen learned their preborn daughter Olivia had Down syndrome, they were offered an abortion. According to Verdinytt, the Robertsens were happy to be expecting a baby and were having a routine check-up when an ultrasound detected a heart defect typically associated with Down syndrome. The couple chose to undergo an amniocentesis so they could get an official diagnosis and then prepare for their child’s needs at and after birth. Just a few days later, they received the diagnosis. “She has Down syndrome,” the doctor said, and then immediately added, “If you sign...

The time, travel, emotional turmoil and expense of entering into a surrogacy agreement with a woman in another country can only suggest that the baby born at the end of the process is a much-wanted child. However, that assumption has proved tragically false in shocking cases, where parents have abandoned the newborns they claimed to want when circumstances changed after the birth. They include the much-publicised case of Baby Gammy, who was carried, by a Thai surrogate mother for an Australian couple - who took his twin sister and left him behind after it was discovered he had Down's syndrome....

"One of the individuals - a little boy actually - ...had three copies of Chromosome 21. So, he would have had Down syndrome. And, yeah, that was unexpected and quite a moving little glimpse into the world of somebody with a disability in the very, very deep past," Cassidy said. The research team puts the discovery at between 4,000 and 6,000 years old, making it the oldest known case of Down's Syndrome in the world... "What we do, basically, is we powderise that [the petrous temporal bone in the inner ear] and we put the powder in solution and try...

With great effort and dedication, Ana Victoria becomes the fist woman with Down Syndrome to graduate Law from the Autonomous University of Zacatecus.

More than 146,000 years ago, Neanderthals hunted birds and other game during short stays at a Spanish cave called Cova Negra. Anthropologists studying the bones they left behind came across one that stood out: a part of the skull that contains the inner ear bones just a few centimeters long, from a child who lived to about age 6.The bone displays a handful of tiny anomalies most commonly found in people with Down syndrome today. The child likely had this condition and had hearing loss, scientists report today in Science Advances—the oldest known example of the condition. If confirmed, the...