Not all medical tests save lives.\u00c2\u00a0 Recently one of the free newspapers spread the news that over 80% of babies in Switzerland diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.\u00c2\u00a0 (A bit of checking shows that’s correct and perhaps even an underestimate.)\u00c2\u00a0 They also reported parents of downies who didn’t abort them getting dirty looks or even comments saying, “Why did you bring that<\/i> one into the world?”<\/p>\n
The papers followed that up with write-in reactions of its readers.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think a single one of them was in favor of aborting downies.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, I’m sure it wasn’t a representative sampling, because 20% of Swiss mothers don’t have Down syndrome kids, but what happens between the writing of the rather harsh condemnation of those who abort downies and the 80% abortion rate?\u00c2\u00a0 Or is the write-in reaction so self-selective that those who don’t mind aborting a baby that might be handicapped also don’t really care about the topic?<\/p>\n
I find the report particularly poignant in light of a recently released movie.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about the life of a Spanish Down syndrome patient who graduated university and works as a school teacher.<\/p>\n
And finally, it confirms me in our decision to limit prenatal diagnostics as much as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not all medical tests save lives.\u00c2\u00a0 Recently one of the free newspapers spread the news that over 80% of babies in Switzerland diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.\u00c2\u00a0 (A bit of checking shows that’s correct and perhaps even an underestimate.)\u00c2\u00a0 They also reported parents of downies who didn’t abort them getting dirty looks or even comments saying, “Why did you bring that one into the world?” The papers followed that up with write-in reactions of its readers.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think a single one of them was in favor of aborting downies.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, I’m sure it wasn’t a representative sampling, because 20% of Swiss mothers don’t have Down syndrome kids, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}