I’m saying has anyone thought, beyond outrage and the love for your loved ones, what we’re all going to do with over 7 times the population of, for instance, people with DS if that is how it plays in the next
40+ years ? That’s the question. My only ‘answer ‘ is to have less babies, which would make everything better for everyone anyways. Any thoughts ?

So we shouldn’t eliminate the entire population – just most of it?

The hypocrisy of prenatal testing is overwhelming: fetuses with Down’s and spina bifida are considered by the medical profession to be unworthy of life and yet the level of disability is extremely variable and there are disabilities which are far more debilitating, but they cannot be detected in utero.

When those disabilities are diagnosed, if you follow the medical establishment’s thinking, then those persons should be euthanized, too. And if the pressure on parents to prenatally test and terminate pregnancies when the babies have DS or spina bifida continues, I think it is inevitable societal pressure to ‘enforce’ euthanasia for anyone with what others consider a disability is the inevitable road we are on.

The most destructive person I’ve ever known, the unhappiest one, the person who has done the most to make everyone around her unhappy and has never led a ‘useful life’ is my older sister. She has a genius IQ and narcissistic personality disorder.

Maybe she should never have been born. Yet the ‘lack of value’ of her life was only detectable once she was an adult – and her diagnosis cannot be medically proven.

How can you judge the value of someone else’s life before they have even started it?

And just for the record, as a parent who posted previously describes his child’s physical suffering, our daughter is an adult. She broke her ankle once and had a slight heart problem, spent a night in the hospital to be operated on, was home the next day. She has had the chicken pox and 4 or 5 colds in her 20+ years. I should be so lucky.

I don’t know what the answer is. In the natural world disability weeds itself out. We’re far past that now ( on the other hand we’re not, we live on planet, not a mall ) — but we seem to be on a new level of possibility.

We don’t live on a planet of infinite resources and never will. Thinking in terms of ‘the government needs to gives us more money’ is just childish and short sited.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I’ve never heard anyone speak about it either.

I wonder what would happen if, in addition to counting individuals with Down syndrome who would survive and how they would affect our society, we think about the effect of just one Bernie Madoff.

What exactly are you saying?

I found the the number of 5429 cases each year ( and that high 90% abortion number too ) So what would we do with, say over one person with DS life time an increase in the population of 5429 per year.

So Bobby has DS and he’s 5. Say he lives to 70 ( as people with DS live much longer these days )

When he’s 5 the population in the US is 350,000 people with DS.
When he’s 10 that will be 54290 + the survivors of the 350,000 = 404,290
When he’s 20 that will be 542900 + the survivors of the 404290 = 947,190
When he’s 50 that will be 1628700 + the survivors of the 404290 = 2575,890

Of course there is mortality, and I’m sure my figures don’t hold up at all to those who do population statistics, but it does make me wonder. People with with DS are to be loved and respected, but their genetics are no gift, and in any other population of mammels, they wouldn’t be an issue.

I don’t have an answer, but it has to be thought about.

I see a few flaws in the line of thinking of this bill. There has been too much energy put into prenatal diagnosis. If a child has leukemia, sickle cell, diabetes or any other of the myriad of illnesses that are possible for a child to develop, no sane person would say “Aw shucks! we should have gotten rid of them at birth!”

No, but every caring, intelligent person would say, “Let’s help this child and put as much energy as possibly into a cure!” I believe Down Syndrome is one of the only things in the medical field that is looked at with this strange mindset.

I don’t mean to insult parents of children with DS by comparing it to illnesses, but trisomy 21 does medically affect children and adults.

What we as a people need to do is begin to care for one another and stop looking at each other as burdens. If we put as much energy into finding treatment for DS as we do for other medical conditions we may soon be closer to an effective treatment for the effects of the 21st chromosome.

Be careful with selective breeding! As the list of acceptable traits grows smaller it becomes easier and easier to fall from the worthy to the worthless.

God’s existence does not depend on our belief in Him
His laws do not depend on our whims and desires
May He keep us always practicing what is pleasing to Him.

As a mother of a child with Down syndrome, I am outraged that it is now becoming morally and socially acceptable for those with a prenatal positive for Down syndrome to be aborted. Eugenics seems to be becoming a morally acceptable practice. Designing a master race seems eerily like something some others wanted not that very long ago.

Yes, he is a typical child, but gosh darn I wish there was a test to tell me how many health issues he would have so I could have chose to save him from all this pain. Sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Down syndrome happens so often did it occur to anyone that maybe it’s supposed to happen? When we chose to have another child we had one who happened to have DS. Big deal.

And, just to be clear; there is a waiting list to adopt children with Down Syndrome.