Excerpt of a column by Charlotte Moore in the [UK] Guardian:

When the prenatal test is introduced, it will make no sense to decree that a mother can choose to terminate, say, a Down’s baby, but is obliged to keep a potentially autistic one. It’s inevitable that many will be terminated.

Autism often means sleeplessness, eating problems, self-harming, aggression, destructiveness, bizarre behaviour of all kinds. It can destroy marriages, and it certainly doesn’t help your finances. I would never condemn a mother who decided that she couldn’t cope with these possibilities.

But autism also means unique perceptions, special talents, weird humour, a view of the world untainted by greed, envy, malice, vanity, ambition. Our family life is as rich and as meaningful as any other; my sons’ lives are not tragic, and nor is mine. A society that aims to remove all the variables that make human life so fascinatingly complex is not a society I want to live in.

Related post here.

(Guardian photo)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 10:29 am and is filed under abortion, autism, Down syndrome, families, public attitudes, quality of life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.