ALLOTT: The Trig Palin effect

Great article! The public needs this kind of infomation about Down syndrome. And Monique: Thank you for pointing out exactly what Mr. Allott is talking about. We already told everything you mentioned. What we are not being made aware of is the amazingly powerful, positive effect these children can have on everyone whose lives they touch. EVERYONE. http://elijah.net

Thank you for this wonderful article! You summed it all up beautifully. There is MUCH negativity on the part of people who really don't have much of a clue about what life really is like for people w/Ds and their families. Once parents actually have their child, they come to realize that much of what they were told is just not true. Monique: While it is certainly true that babies with Down syndrome may have medical challenges at first, it is not true that they are always sickly, or more expensive to raise than children who do not have Ds. My son, Danny, was born 10 yrs ago with Ds and a heart defect. He was sick a lot his first year, and had his heart defect repaired when he was 8 months old.Since that time, he has been very healthy. He has a yearly check up with his cardiologist, yearly eye exams, routine dental visits(no cavities;-) and a well child check up once a year. He has a thyroid condition that is well controlled with $6 worth of medicine a month( I have a thyroid condition as well, and my medicine is more expensive than his)He is rarely sick..gets the same colds as his 6 siblings, but that's it(and pretty 'normal') To list all of the possible health problems that a child with Ds *might* have is a very cold and calculated way to look at their right to live, I think. My son has brought far more to my life than I could ever have imagined. He is healthy, happy, loves his life, and is a very loved and valued member of our family. The current abortion rate for a prenatal diagnosis of Ds is 90%..that rate is driven by the negative information presented by people who only know what they read in books..or in the paper..I doubt if many of the people giving negative information have actual first hand experience about Down syndrome. The families that I have talked to, or read comments from, overwhelmingly say that they had no idea how rich their lives would be with their child...that it upsets them to realize that if they had had a prenatal diagnosis, they might have had an abortion...and they just cannot imagine their lives without their child. We are not special. We are not martyrs..we are regular, everyday people who have been changed by the children we are parenting.

We just gave birth to a baby girl in June, she doesn't have DS, she was born with a muscle disorder. I think I even had the same genetic counselor mentioned in this article. I can't tell you how much I agree with everything in this article, this sentence particularly "Reassured by a pro-life doctor, who told her that "a child is a child no matter what condition they come out in,". It was just so reassuring to read that, and a message we haven't heard once in our three month stay in hospitals! Thanks for a great article!

The Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act sounds like a great plan. Of course it should be what physicians ("pro-life" or not) should be doing anyway! Though it is important that the parents are informed of all the positives every child can bring to their life it is even more so important that parents are fully aware of what's in store for them with a child who has any kind of disability. Just because someone is "pro-choice" it doesn't mean they'd automatically abort any child that is in less than perfect health. with increasingly sophisticated prenatal genetic testing, the parents can also properly prepare themselves for raising a child with a disability, not just choose to terminate the pregnancy. It doesn't seem to me to be a partisan issue, but I am curious if there is public assistance (in any form) to accommodate parents of severely disabled children should they have chosen not to have an abortion. Not every case, but in many, the disabled children grow to be disabled adults who cannot live independently and whose elderly parents cannot properly care for them. There is a longer term, bigger picture that every parent must look at when deciding to take the responsibility for another life.