If we could cure Down’s syndrome in the womb, would that be in any way unacceptable to you?

If we can cure the disease, would we be interfering with God’s purpose?

I never actually said that.

That is a step back from suggesting that there is some special purpose to a certain number of babies being born with Down’s syndrome.

I never actually said that either. I said that the children who have Down’s syndrome have a purpose. God sometimes uses our diseases or disabilities to bring glory to His name. He uses our weaknesses as strengths for His purpose. You seem to think that the disease takes away the purpose for a child with Down’s Syndrome. I don’t.

That is a step back from suggesting that there is some special purpose to a certain number of babies being born with Down’s syndrome.

I will not pursue the point further. I know that in your view, once conception has occured, it would be murder of a child to abort because a test shows the cells of a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus, have the extra chromosome pair. I would agree that a new-born baby, a one year old, a five year old, a twenty year old, may not be killed because they suffer from a disease. I know you consider any stage post conception to be exactly the same.

Exactly- he doesn’t immediately think, “Kill it!” He tries to repair it.

If there were a way to operate on the zygote, to restore the normal set of 23 chromosome pairs, thereby curing Down’s syndrome, a micro surgeon would do so.

Whatever, but killing a baby who has Down’s Syndrome, and trying to help find a cure, are TOTALLY separate issues. Punishing a child with death for something they had no control over is maliciously cruel.

Leaving aside the question of a fetus which has the mis-placed chromosomes that inflict Down’s syndrome, what if it were possible to make sure no zygote formed with such a defect? That would be a no brainer.

There is an extremely big difference in preventing conception, and ending a life that has already begun.

Leaving aside the question of a fetus which has the mis-placed chromosomes that inflict Down’s syndrome, what if it were possible to make sure no zygote formed with such a defect? That would be a no brainer.

It “seems like” it because it IS.

The problem here of course is that you CONSTANTLY equate “preventing” suffering with eugenic abortion!

Abortion does not PREVENT suffering – it eliminates a human being based on a disability or disease. It is no different than taking a born person who develops a disease, and instead of trying to find a way to help, you just kill them.

There is nothing wrong with trying to RELIEVE suffering, but trying to KILL someone who you perceive to be suffering is DIFFERENT.

As I’ve said before, I consider that an act of unparalleled cruelty. It may be true that a good number of people don’t want to be bothered caring for people with permanent genetic disabilities, but in this case, it could also be said that this couple brought a blind baby unable to care for himself even as an adult into the world in order to fulfill their own sense of suffering and forbearance. How cruel to use a child like that.

I don’t actually insist on making that judgement — I just note it as a logically valid criticism. There are so many degrees of uncertainty, probability, possibility, perspective, that I believe such decisions are best left up to the parents. The fetus is in no position to be consulted. The parents are going to have to live with the consequences of their decision. These parents did a magnificent job of stepping up to the plate and carrying the responsibilities that came with their decision.

Of course you could not imagine your son Joseph any different than he is now, after years of raising him and living with him as he is. If he had been born without autism, you might still have named him Joseph, and your experience with him would have been a different one.

If we are to accept suffering as part of life, perhaps we should also stop vaccinations for polio and diptheria. I’ve read some quack say that a good dose of whooping cough is the perfect preventive for asthma. Suffering is going to happen in any life, but when there is a possibility of preventing it, we generally choose to do so. Most human endeavor has been devoted to that very purpose.

I know that when the disease is in the very structure of a person’s DNA, it can seem like blaming the individual to say we should remove that gene from the gene pool. I have drawn the line many times, that a live, self-aware person should not be “blamed” for their disease. But I recall once again the woman with a relatively mild case of Down’s syndrome, capable of entering into marriage (with a lot of help from match-making mothers) who chose to have her tubes tied because she did not want to inflict what she had suffered through on her own baby. I respect that as a wise, insightful, compassionate sacrifice on her part.

Yes, exactly! Very well put.

Probverbs 26: 24-26

In this mentality of ‘preventing XXX’ people engage in psychological and spiritual suicide.

Nobody wants illness or suffering in their lives. We all pray for that cup to pass us by. But that is an unrealistic prayer. We are biological organisms who will eventually become diseased and one day die.

If we begin from the perspective that we are willing to prevent those from being born who might be ill, we are really saying that we don’t want to be bothered by the suffering of another. It’s not so altruistic as it sounds.

I have an autistic son whose needs have transformed our lives, our marriage, our children’s lives, our extended families’ lives, etc.

Like it or not, our response to the sufferings of others shapes our character for good or ill. It all depends on our response.

In all of this soft-eugenic talk, what you do is conflate the person with the disease. In so doing, you reject both. As a pro-life scientist, I have worked in research to ameliorate disease, while not losing my value for the person who possesses the disease.

Knowing my son as he is, how far we have brought him and how he has taught us to love, were God to give me the option of going back and not having Joseph at all, or having the child He gave us, there is no doubt in my mind that I would do this all over again.

In truth, I don’t even think I could accept a Joseph without autism if that were a do-over option, as his autism has forged who he is, and who we are.

We cannot avoid suffering. Accepting the culture of hard and soft eugenics in such an attempt is a manifestation of the worst of all human suffering. It is a heart that has closed itself to authentic love, which only grows in response to suffering.

The following quote from Fr. Anthony Padavano is worth meditating on:

“The human heart is not built in a day. It takes a lifetime to make a human heart. It takes all: birth and learning how to talk, making wishes, living with hope, dreaming dreams. The human heart is nourished with yearning for tomorrow, with poetry and devotion, with contemplation and the incessant thought of home. The human heart prays, it strives to find a faithful lover; it does not love until it dies in fidelity for the mystery of another life.

“The human heart suffers, or else it does not grow; it exhausts itself or else it is empty; it waits and hopes, at dawn and dusk, in darkness and daylight.

“The human heart is not built in a day nor can it be built alone. The human heart loses its way unless it receives the promises of others and gives its trust in return… The human heart waits or else it does not live and yet it dies waiting. It breathes the air of hope, and is suffocated in despair”

“If I were married, and my wife were pregnant, I would want to get the amnio test, but ultimately I would have to respect her choice if she declined. I would fully support her decision to abort if there were clear (not maybe 1%) evidence of Down’s syndrome, or particularly of anancephaly. I don’t think of that as killing a baby. I think of it as removing tissue that will grow into a baby with severe disabilities, or even with no brain at all.”

Okay, you have said that you believe that the fetus begins being human when they are about 18 weeks, or when there is brain activity detectable on an EEG.

Amniocentesis is typically performed at about 15-18 weeks of pregnancy- the results are not usually found until 2-3 weeks later. So most unborn children diagnosed with any of these diseases or disabilities will be past the point at which you call them human beings.

You advocate killing human beings for being different than you. You classify certain people as being more worthy of life than others.

And by the way, you assume that a baby with Down’s has no brain activity when this is so clearly not the case. Your deciding “not to think of it as killing a baby” doesn’t make it not so.

Why not just be intellectually honest here? You have admitted that you think that a baby is a human being after a certain point in pregnancy (about 18 weeks past conception), however, you do not mind killing a baby who even according to YOUR definitions is a human being, after finding out that he has something abnormal about him or her.

Therefore, I have to conclude that the only reason that you would not kill a BORN baby with the same condition is because it is illegal. If it became legal, you would be perfectly happy with euthanizing babies born with the same diseases or disabilities.

And let’s not forget that you also advocate euthanizing coma patients, even though there has been much to show that even those diagnosed as vegetative actually do have evidence of brain activity and thought.