I have been too pressed today. I wanted to post something snarky and piercing. Instead, I post below three paragraphs from a New York Post article by Rich Lowry.
Palin's choice to give birth to Trig after she learned of his condition 13 weeks into her pregnancy endeared her to pro-lifers and contributed to the frenzied excitement among social conservatives about her selection. The national stage she's now been given means her choice could have much wider significance and constitute an enormous symbolic leap ahead for children with Down syndrome and their parents.
As many as an estimated nine out of 10 children with Down syndrome are aborted in the womb, sought out by increasingly sophisticated prenatal tests and eliminated as too flawed, too burdensome, too different to live. This is the ugly eugenic underbelly of American life, even as we congratulate ourselves on our tolerance and diversity.
Parents of children with Down syndrome routinely encounter a "how could you?" disapproval. Former Washington Post reporter Patricia E. Bauer writes that strangers consider her daughter with Down syndrome as falling "into the category of avoidable human suffering. At best, a tragic mistake. At worst, a living embodiment of the pro-life movement. Less than human. A drain on society. That someone I love is regarded that way is unspeakably painful to me."
--Shella
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