George Will Writes About Jon, His Down Syndrome Son

I blogged previously on this subject, here and here, essentially offering comment and perspective on this report:

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada wants to be fair to pregnant women of all ages, so it will now recommend giving women under 35 the option to abort a child with Down’s Syndrome. Their American counterparts are recommending the same thing, coincidentally at the same time. That certainly tends to makes things more official.

Just today I discovered an article by George Will in Newsweek, about his 25 year old son Jon, who has Down Syndrome.

It's worth the read if you can. Why? Because it highlights and criticizes a [barbaric] culture that demands "every parent's 'right' to a perfect baby." Doesn't this sound surprisingly like "every woman's 'right' to autonomy over her body," etc. etc.

And who pays the price for such selfish, narcissistic breakdown? The unborn pay the price because those who would contemplate such "rights" are bereft of judgment, good reason and compassion.

And because they can do it and get away with it. It's surprising what we humans will do if permitted or if we consider the consequences as minor. That's the reason we need laws to protect us from one another. That's the reason the unborn need legal recognition and full protection.

Which brings us back to Jon:

Medicine now has astonishing and multiplying abilities to treat problems of unborn children in utero, but it has no ability to do anything about Down syndrome (the result of an extra 21st chromosome). So diagnosing Down syndrome can have only the purpose of enabling—and, in a clinically neutral way, of encouraging—parents to choose to reject people like Jon as unworthy of life. And as more is learned about genetic components of other abnormalities, search-and-destroy missions will multiply.

Nothing—nothing—in the professional qualifications of obstetricians and gynecologists gives them standing to adopt policies that predictably will have, and seem intended to have, the effect of increasing abortions in the service of an especially repulsive manifestation of today's entitlement mentality—every parent's "right" to a perfect baby. Happily, that mentality is not yet universal: 214 American families are looking for Down syndrome children to adopt.

h/t