Et cetera: Extra! Extra!
In keeping with Colnlnonwt'al's usual schedule, only one issue is published each month during July & August. The next issue will be dated August 13. sorted to for "relatively minor defects."...
...Nor should the rewards of caring for a disabled child be romanticized...
...When it comes to decisions about life and death, "feelings" are an unreliable guide...
...More than thirty colloquiums were convened, producing scores of enlightening papers, surveys, and transcripts—some of which appeared in the magazine...
...In addition, it may exacerbate already powerful societal pressures on children to fulfill unrealistic parental expectations...
...Most important, they are capable of giving and receiving much love and happiness...
...It is frequently the case that families who welcome Down syndrome children, or children with physical impairments, find their worlds expanded, not compromised (see David O'Brien's review of Sarge, page 27...
...Read all about it following page 20...
...Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the study sought to learn more about how living, breathing Catholics negotiate American civic life...
...In aborting the "defective," we are creating a smaller, not a braver or a better world...
...Too much is at stake to let personal feelings—and they are perfectly understandable feelings—trump the better angels of our nature...
...Commonweal 6 July 16, 2004...
...Many individuals with Down syndrome are of nearly normal intelligence, can be usefully employed, and con-tribute to society in a variety of ways...
...In caring for those who depend on us, we are reminded of our essential interdependence, and of how our own value as human beings transcends any worldly competence we may possess...
...Down syndrome in particular, which is a fairly common congenital disorder, need not "compromise" a family's "quality of life...
...There are few traditions to turn to, and rarely anyone around who has confronted a similar dilemma," the Times writes of couples making use of the new tests...
...A doctor's obligation "to do no harm" is apparently no longer a consideration, at least when it comes to fetuses...
...Some libertarians have even gone so far as to argue that since the decision to bring a disabled child into the world is now entirely a personal one, society as a whole has no obligation to help care for the handicapped...
...Extra copies of the supplement are available: busmgr@commonwealmagazine.org...
...What will be the unintended consequences of our intolerance of disability...
...Extra...
...Combine human weakness and fear with ready access to abortion and it is not surprising that, as the Times reports, "religious beliefs end up being put aside, trumped by personal feelings...
...One doctor seemed to take special satisfaction in relating his experiences with prolife couples...
...Ethicists and philosophers warn that the ability of parents to abort a fetus for virtually any reason will change our attitudes toward the children we choose to have...
...Quite the contrary...
...This issue of Commonweal contains a special insert, written by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, summarizing the project's findings...
...Our democratic conviction that all persons are created equal ultimately rests on a belief that we have been created in God's image...
...Nor is it hard to see how those expectations are undermining our belief in the intrinsic value of all human persons, regardless of their capacities or achievements...
...Intelligence or physical capacity is too narrow a measure by which to judge the value of another human being...
...For several years, Commonweal, in partnership with the Faith and Reason Institute, has been con-ducting the American Catholics in the Public Square Project...
...It is an image as recognizable in the disabled as it is in the rest of us...
...No one should second guess the anguish of parents who learn their unborn child has a disability...
...As this example illustrates, there are traditions and people, religious and otherwise, that couples can turn to...
...This issue of Commonweal contains a special bonus...
...Families faced with the emotional and financial costs of such care too often do not receive the acceptance and help they have a right to expect from society as a whole...
...A truly human life embraces so much more...
...All parents rightly wish for normal, healthy children...
...That need not be the case...
...The article itself suggests that in strongly Mormon Utah few women who took advantage of the new tests went on to get abortions, while at one hospital in Manhattan more than 90 percent presumably did so...
...Is that actually the case...
...Still, the doctors featured in the story seemed to consider themselves "health-care providers" whose first obligation was to give a consumer what she wanted, even when the physician had grave personal doubts about the morality of the patient's choice...
...In India and China, the aborting of female fetuses already threatens social chaos as more and more young men have reduced prospects of marriage...
...Extra...
...Disabled people warn of the increasing stigma attaching to their conditions in a society where few now question the right of parents to abort a handicapped fetus...
...It is not hard to see how the logic of the marketplace, where performance and productivity alone count, is at work in the expectations couples bring to procreation and family life...
...Couples already caring for a Down syndrome child often opt for abortion if the next child is similarly diagnosed, he added...
...After all, such competence is fleeting...
...They've been against abortion all their lives, but they'll make an exception for themselves," he said...
...Fatal conditions like Tay-Sachs present especially wrenching choices...
Vol. 131 • July 2004 • No. 13
