October is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month. Although estimates vary, somewhere between 67 and 90 percent of unborn children diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted.
Those of us blessed by the love of someone with an extra twenty-first chromosome look forward to October. October invites me, along with all other parents of children with Down Syndrome, to proclaim loudly that our children live lives worthy of life.
New research on Down syndrome presents an overwhelmingly positive picture of how Down syndrome can affect individuals and families. These findings need to be shared as they will affect decisions made to accept prenatal testing and following a prenatal diagnosis.
It’s tempting to make neat calculations based on what we know in the abstract about Down syndrome. But once an actual child enters into the equation—with all of his strengths and foibles, quirks and habits—we don’t get the answer we expected at all.
While some people resent the imperfection, the inconvenience, and the expense of persons with disabilities, others see in them an invitation to learn how to love deeply without counting the cost. God will demand an accounting. Adapted from remarks delivered at the Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life.
The challenge in preventing abortion of Down syndrome fetuses is not convincing mothers that their child is a human being with a right to life, but of assuring expectant mothers there will be support for their children after they are born.
On this year’s World Down Syndrome Day, Mark Leach discusses the unacknowledged effects of prenatal testing.