Out Of The Closet

Been wanting to talk about this for a very long time. It's been eating me up inside and I just have to get it out. For a long time I've been looking all around me at people who are confessing to all sorts of things from the insane to the inane and now it's my turn. I suspect it has been good for the confessors, too, to get those things off their collective chests. At least that's what the religious pundits agree on. And, as I am only human, I need to vent too.
So here's the deal.
In 1998 our daughter was born with Down Syndrome. We weren't expecting it. It shocked us. We grieved, grew and moved on. She has proven to be a huge blessing to us in ways I will discuss on another occasion. But she also represents a great deal of extra work and stress for us. Especially now that she is starting to go through puberty. There's always something. You don't want to know.
Since that time I have noticed something. People have this general idea, I think, with the exception of medical personnel and special needs workers, that she is somehow disposable. Well, before I take this any further, I don't particularly mean our daughter, but others who share some kind of mental or physical handicap.
See, it goes like this.
In most first world countries, the unborn are not considered human beings. So, thereby, they do not share the legal rights of a human being who has made it, free and clear, out of the womb. Which, as we know, translates into legal abortion on demand. A women's right to do with her bodies as she sees fit, and all that stuff.  I get it. I don't agree, personally, with abortion, but I get why people may want to abort an unborn child. For other reasons. Rape, extreme poverty, under aged mother, ill mother. There are many understandable reasons.
Before our daughter was born, I was asked by my doctor if I wanted genetic counselling. A pretty fancy name and, at the time, I thought she was referring to some new advance in medicine that might help us determine the colour of our children's eyes or some other genetic factor.
After she was born, I found out it actually referred to our right to an abortion, if we found out, before that time, she was severely handicapped; in particular, if she had Down Syndrome or some other genetic disorder or syndrome. Apparently there are many of them.
Needless to say, I did some research on the incidence of Down Syndrome in the general population and it occurs once in about every 700 live births. And more and more, they are being born to very young parents. Additionally, the potential for a false positive Downs amniotic genetic screening test is higher than you might imagine. In fact I met a mother who was told her baby was Downs, who gave birth to a perfect baby girl.
And the genetic counselors did not advise her of the odds.
Strange.
OK, so we've established I am not in favour of abortion. But that isn't what makes my blood boil. Here's what's troubling me.
If we don't want these children, because they are such an inconvenience, than why aren't we doing something to prevent them from being conceived this way? Why isn't there more money pumped into research to see what exactly causes the extra chromosome to develop? Medical science has only been guessing up until now about why it all transpires. They know how it happens but no real inroads have been made into why.
Other than national organizations like the Down Syndrome Association, which raises and provide monies for research of this nature, there are no other real lobby groups who do. As opposed to, say, research for a cure for AIDS and AIDS related illness.
If one were to stack up the figures in dollars for the two, the contrast would be striking. Shameful, may I add. And maybe that is our fault. Maybe if children with Down Syndrome weren't quite so disposable, the powers that be would promulgate vigorous energy towards raising those needed funds. Dare I suggest, to mirror that, if those who contracted AIDS were treated so lightly, with so little compassion or dignity, perhaps there would not be hundreds of millions of research dollars made available for research for a cure for that terrible killer.
So, now you know. It's official. I'm out of the closet.
I think the rights of the unborn handicapped are as important as those who get sick after they are born.