A Good Life

Happy Easter! We had a lovely weekend taking the kids to an Easter Egg Hunt in Hathaway Park on the only sunny day this weekend. Kirk really embraces the competition and enjoys getting out there picking up eggs. Suzanne, on the other hand, couldn't care less about those pushy kids and (in some cases) their equally pushy parents. She picked up 5 eggs and was done. Then she trotted off to the playground where she spent the next hour going down the many slides and swinging on the swings.

Suzanne has a good life. She goes to school on the bus which gives her a little independence, she knows how to play with boys, she works her dad like a pro, she's friends with all the checkers at Safeway and all the parents at little league, she brings sunshine to everyone she meets. Suzanne excels in the important areas.

Which brings me to the reason I haven't blogged for a month. I've really been a tad angry over something I read. Maybe I'm a big dope, but never, NOT ONCE, did I ever contemplate terminating my pregnancy. I'm not noble--it simply didn't occur to me. Yes, I had a clue that Suzanne might be born with DS, but I really thought that the notion that you had an amniocentesis and based on the results, made a decision to have an abortion, was really old fashioned. I really didn't think that people did that anymore, but it seems that I was mistaken.

As it turns out, approximately 90% of fetuses with Down Syndrome are terminated. Yup, you read that right--90%. I read an article by an editorial writer for Salon magazine that talked about the decision he and his now ex-wife made to terminate her pregnancy after they discovered that the child would have DS. The reason they gave was that the child would never have a good quality of life. What a moron...

Okay, perhaps I should be a little more understanding about what parents go through and the agonizing decision they have to make, yadda yadda yadda. Sorry, no can do. The notion that DS kids and adults do not have any "quality of life" is so utterly ridiculous. Who defines "quality" anyway? Your life is what you make of it, and so is Suzanne's. One thing about Suzanne is her ability to get the maximum amount of fun out of everything she does. My job as a parent is to provide her with experiential opportunities and it is up to her to make the most of them.

According to this guy and many others, if you're not going to have a quality of life (as defined by him, I guess) then you should be whacked. That would be called eugenics, a practice that was popular in Nazi Germany. Okay, I'm not calling this guy a Nazi, but eugenics was a bad idea then and it is a bad idea now.

90%. Done ranting now...

Each year in communities around the country various DS organizations sponsor Buddy Walks. These are community walks to raise awareness and acceptance of people with Down Syndrome. If you would like to find out if there is a Buddy Walk in your area, please let me know.

Friends Don't Count Chromosomes...