Complicated Questions
May. 8th, 2007 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lollardfishNY Times on Testing for Down Syndrome and it's consequences.
An interesting article and a subject I plan to write about down the road. This issue of how you break the news is pretty critical. Once, as Michael Berube wrote in his book, parents were told they had, or were going to have, a "mongoloid idiot" who would never recognize their parents, have an IQ of 20 or so, and would probably die by age 5. We've come a long way.
George Will wants to stop the test because, in his conservative reactionay mode, he wants to deny people information. He doesn't trust people.
I think, in my rosy liberal way, that people need to be educated and then allowed to make whatever choice they think is best, and that how we educate people is critical.
I do think the premise that programs for people with Down Syndrome will vanish if this test is made routine for women under 35 is flawed. Yes, rate of increase may slow, but the population won't vanish and hundreds of babies, at least (instead of the 5500) will still be born with the condition every year.
Anyway, it's complex. I look forward to seeing your comments.
An interesting article and a subject I plan to write about down the road. This issue of how you break the news is pretty critical. Once, as Michael Berube wrote in his book, parents were told they had, or were going to have, a "mongoloid idiot" who would never recognize their parents, have an IQ of 20 or so, and would probably die by age 5. We've come a long way.
George Will wants to stop the test because, in his conservative reactionay mode, he wants to deny people information. He doesn't trust people.
I think, in my rosy liberal way, that people need to be educated and then allowed to make whatever choice they think is best, and that how we educate people is critical.
I do think the premise that programs for people with Down Syndrome will vanish if this test is made routine for women under 35 is flawed. Yes, rate of increase may slow, but the population won't vanish and hundreds of babies, at least (instead of the 5500) will still be born with the condition every year.
Anyway, it's complex. I look forward to seeing your comments.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 06:46 am (UTC)I'm with the above poster. If the testing is readily available and safe, it's obscene not to offer it to everyone. There will always be those who will choose not to take it, and there will always be those who will choose not to end the pregnancy even if the result is positive. But that's their right... as it is also the right of those who don't feel capable of taking up that calling to call a halt and try again.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 01:05 pm (UTC)One part of the problem with Down Syndrome is that parents were routinely misinformed (largely because the doctors were also misinformed), and are still sometimes misinformed, about the range of potential for raising a child with Down Syndrome. We weren't, but we had our baby at the best birthing center in Minnesota, possibly this whole section of the midwest. I'm pretty sure that if we were told our child was going to never recognize us, have no joy in its life, and be so retarded that it would never be able to feed itself, clean itself, or feel any emotions (these are things parents were routinely told as late as the late 70s), termination would start to make sense. It's just not true.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:36 pm (UTC)