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The Spectacle Blog
Happy birthday tomorrow to George Will and to son Jon, about whom the father writes a wonderful and instructive tribute today. An excerpt:
This era has coincided, not just coincidentally, with the full, garish flowering of the baby boomers’ vast sense of entitlement, which encompasses an entitlement to exemption from nature’s mishaps, and to a perfect baby. So today science enables what the ethos ratifies, the choice of killing children with Down syndrome before birth. That is what happens to 90 percent of those whose parents receive a Down syndrome diagnosis through prenatal testing.
Which is unfortunate, and not just for them. Judging by Jon, the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go. It is said we are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and remain greedy. People with Down syndrome must remain brave in order to navigate society’s complexities. They have no choice but to be trusting because, with limited understanding, and limited abilities to communicate misunderstanding, they, like Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” always depend on the kindness of strangers. Judging by Jon’s experience, they almost always receive it.
Less than a month ago I wrote about similar issues here at The American Spectator, mostly about a book by Amy Julia Becker called A Good and Perfect Gift, about her child with Down syndrome. Excerpts:
What is striking is how often even the most well-meaning of Becker’s acquaintances say things about Penny that made Penny sound like a terrible burden rather than a joy. Especially frustrating were the times medical professionals seemed to assume that a baby with Down would be a baby not worth having. They also, rather insistently, pressured Becker to have various forms of pre-natal testing when she again became pregnant. Becker’s observations tracked closely with what Santorum said in a famously contentiousinterview with the clueless Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation.
Here’s what Santorum said: “We’re talking about specifically prenatal testing and specifically amniocentesis, which is a…procedure that creates a risk of miscarriage when you have it and is done for the purpose of identifying maladies of a child in the womb, which in many cases, in fact, most cases, physicians recommend, particularly if there’s a problem, recommend abortion.”….
Pre-echoing Will, there was this:
And here is Amy Julia Becker: “Every day I become more and more clear that Penny is not a ‘Downs kid.’ Penny is a child with wonderful and fascinating aspects to her personality. Penny is a child who knows and loves her family, who has a big vocabulary and loves books, who blows kisses to anyone who says hello, who is learning to climb stairs, and, oh, yes, Penny is also a child who has Down syndrome.”
This is what is missing from so much cultural commentary today— not just about children born with maladies, but in so many aspects of life — what is missing from the way so many of us look at the world: What is missing is the sense of individuals as individuals, not as part of some larger group category….
We have individual worth as human beings. We have individual worth as children of other men and women who themselves are individuals. We have individual worth, mostly, as children of God. That status, alone, is a good and perfect gift.
George and Jon Will, and Amy Julia Becker and daughter Penny, open our eyes to what is real, and good, and important. Bless them. And please do read Will’s whole column, linked in the opening paragraph above.
View all comments (25) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Quin Hillyer
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/05/03/george-wills-moving-column-on
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Bill| 5.3.12 @ 12:23PM
Speaking of entitlements/welfare, deport all 20 millions amigos, and that will save America over $2 trillion/year. See, that was easy.
Oldefarte| 5.3.12 @ 12:39PM
Partially related [though not completely] was a recent news story about a conviction of a mother and her sexual partner for RAPING AN INFANT DAUGHTER. The pedifile male has connected with this mother on the internet, and they hooked up to have deviant sex with her infant. How sick/perverted/immoral. Anyone who abuses a vernerable child for any selfish purposes should be hung by their appendages from a street lamp until dead. Case closed!!!!!!!
WL| 5.4.12 @ 12:44AM
Please don't post things like this you ignorant Moron. Not a single person on this website came here to read this crap you posted about. That garbage is a matter for the police and the hangman...It is horrible, but does not have a place here...just because Quin wrote about Will's column about a child.
You are an abject idiot, and everybody sees it but your dumb egghead ass.
WL| 5.4.12 @ 1:58AM
Every time I click on this article and look forward to sifting through the normally intelligent comments...I see this post of yours. It truly is an example of DUMBASSERY....I mean...what kind of ingrate decides that this Hillyer piece is the right time to post some morbid and perverted stuff like this???? Do you really have your head in your own ass...????...or are you just simply a dumbass?
I can't stand your posts usually, but your inbred brain really has out-done your 6 fingered and 4 toed twit skull this time.
Just get back to sitting on your porch and watching your family flirt with each other you wretch.
WL| 5.4.12 @ 2:07AM
You really should get thrown off of this site you no good Babboon....
Yes, I meant to type BABBOON...because buffoon is not even fitting for your brainless self in this instance....Even CLINT's perverted Van wouldn't welcome this kind of trash in it's bucket seats.
You have a hot coal waiting on your dumbass in hell...IDIOT
WL| 5.4.12 @ 2:10AM
Come on HILLYER!!!!
You don't have a bone in that spine of yours if you don't call out this mongoloid and his introduction of this horrid and un-necessary trip into perversion....on a truly decent article of yours...
WE ARE WAITING HILLYER!!!!
WL| 5.4.12 @ 2:14AM
Really OLD$*(%????????
Are you trying to make EVERY parent with a child who has down think about this sort of thing in the same conversation about their little girl or boy??
Somebody ought to whip your ass, you redneck bastard.
Nancy in NC| 5.4.12 @ 8:57AM
While I would agree that Olde used poor judgement in posting such vilesness, your diatribe doesn't help the situation. Two wrongs still don't make a right. Shame on you both.
Debra| 5.3.12 @ 1:15PM
My older sister was pressured to abort her sixth child by her doctor. She was in her mid 40's and amniocentesis had shown that he had Down's. She refused. She was shown "worst case scenario" photos of babies with horrible birth defects, one with it's spine on the outside. She still refused. Today, my nephew Justin is 22 years old. He is a high functioning young man with a joyful disposition who loves to draw and work in ceramics. He graduated from his school, beloved by his teachers and other students. He loves everyone he meets and never meets a stranger. He just went through 3 years of chemotherapy for ALL His doctors were amazed at how his spirits never failed even when he lost all his hair or had to have another bone marrow test or spinal tap. He is her only child still living at home and she has never ever regretted allowing him to live.
Derek Leaberry| 5.3.12 @ 1:30PM
That 90 percent of women who conceive a Down Syndrome baby abort them only adds another dimension to a squalid, narcissistic culture. The life of a Down child may be quite different than most children but that life is as valuable. Certainly my Down daughter's life is as valuable as the lives of my other five children.
Nancy in NC| 5.4.12 @ 9:00AM
And now they're being aborted if it's not the boy or girl desired. What a pathetic bunch of losers there are out there, but I pray they are still in the minority. Remember, we reap what we sow.
TLP| 5.3.12 @ 5:28PM
I thought that Will's article about his Son, was the best thing I read, all day.
God Bless Jon Will.
WL| 5.4.12 @ 12:47AM
Please keep commenting TLP. Your thoughts and posts are solid and reasonable....I spend alot of time blasting idiots who type in crap...but it's nice to see someone with well-rounded and poignant thoughts.
beebop2| 5.3.12 @ 6:05PM
The joys of life are not the same for all of us nor are they guaranteed results.
My mother was 48 years of age when she delivered my youngest sibling. There was no such thing as genetic testing but I do recall the whispers of "retarded" during my mother's pregnancy. Fortunately, my sister is normal -- well, discounting her lefty tendencies. My father died a brief 18 months later, leaving my mother with three of us less than 12 years of age. I rememer those early days after my father's death and I recall that my infant sister was never far from my mother. She was the reason my mother got up each day. She was the reason my mother put her grief aside and put one foot in front of the other, moving gingerly toward an uncertain future. She was the reason my mother developed the strength to carry on. You don't know what your children are capable of accomplishing in those early hours. Love them. Hold them. Nurture them. Embue them with the values they will need. I will always feel that my sister was my mother's life line. I have never felt anything but gratitude to the God who placed my sister in my mother's arms.
Nancy in NC| 5.4.12 @ 8:56AM
What a lovely post. What a joy it is to read the articles about Jon Will and be uplifted in such a sad, depressing world.
Occam's Tool| 5.3.12 @ 6:46PM
The longer I preactice medicine and observe politics, the more I am convinced that there are plenty of politicians of normal intelligence that the world would have been better off if they had been aborted, and plenty of MR or otherwise "special" kids that were aborted that deserved life.
My son, who is of normal intelligence (possibly above normal), loves to play his dad chess at age 8, is athletic, very strong, draws well, and loves to read and think about dinosaurs. He was born with microtia of his right ear and has a prosthetic ear and a bone anchored hearing aid. His biological mother gave him up for adoption in Guatemala sneering, "who would want to adopt a one eared boy?"
Well, he is the joy of my life, along with his sister. I love him to pieces.
These Liberals and their despicable value judgments I understand less and less.
WL| 5.4.12 @ 12:51AM
I don't mean to diminish the seriousness of your post Occam...
but when reading...and I got the part about the "politicians...better off if they had been aborted" I had to stop and LAUGH MY BUTT OFF!!!!!
You didn't intend it to be funny for sure...but a comedian couldn't have crafted it better!!!
HAA!!!!!
Nancy in NC| 5.4.12 @ 9:11AM
Occam, I believe you would agree with me that doctor's don't help when they insist older mothers go through additional testing. My daughter was pregnant with her 3rd child at age 39 and had to argue with her doctor to avoid amniocentesis. Her point was the results would not change her decision to have the baby and the test might harm her child. ( Perhaps she received extra pressure as her second child was born with a birth defect, bladder extrophy. That little boy is the light of my life) She didn't have the tests and had a healthy baby boy. We are not promised a perfect life or perfect outcomes. Too bad we have a generation who believes they are entitled to it and much more.
Occam's Tool| 5.3.12 @ 6:46PM
Sorry: "practice"
Bret Lythgoe| 5.4.12 @ 4:57AM
George Will has written beautifully about his son, Jon. Those with Down's Syndrome are happy, kind, and deserve to live a full life. George Will mentions that those with Down's Syndrome are brave, and he's absolutely right, and he's brave as well, in speaking out against aborting the unborn.
fiscal| 5.4.12 @ 8:37AM
There is no question that parents who would knowingly keep a fetus with a birth defect would take care of that child. But there is also a high probability that those who wouldn't want to "bother" with a child with defects would not, placing a further burden on the rest of us and raise our taxes.
This is why personal liberty demands that we let people make their own personal decisions and not make government larger by forcing them to comply with primarily a religious viewpoint.
Nancy in NC| 5.4.12 @ 8:53AM
I understand your point, but how can it better for society to allow us to kill the "inconveniences" that we cause?
I am completely baffled with so many different forms of birth control readily available we continue to have so many abovtions. It would seem that some use it as a form of birth control. Could that be because we have accepted it as a society as birth control?
Law will not end abortions, however do we need to encourage it with our tax dollars?
fiscal| 5.4.12 @ 10:37AM
We complain about nanny states -- and those of us who are more libertarian complain the loudest. You can certainly make an argument that helping people get educated and obtain free medical care is highly moral, but if we make the argument there, we need to be consistent and make the argument with abortions as well. Government intervention is not the answer. We need to make government smaller getting rid of all the regulations that inhibit personal liberty -- even if some of those may seem immoral to a portion of the population. In that regard, I have a real problem with social conservatives in that they want bigger government for their causes but smaller government for the causes of others. Government should be minimalistic giving power to individuals to make their own decisions.
fiscal| 5.4.12 @ 10:40AM
By the way, claiming that abortions are promoted with our tax dollars because we don't legislate against them is really faulty logic. We should not legislate either way. Again, let individuals make their own decisions.
Magnificent Moron| 5.4.12 @ 5:41PM
I took your advice and read George Will's column. But I also took the time to read the comments posted by other readers.
It is very revealing to see the depth of insensitivity displayed by some liberal posters who could not resist finding a way to attack George Will for no other reason than his sin of being conservative.
If we really had social justice in this country, these angry, hate-filled people would all be forced to live in some abandoned mine somewhere so they could focus all that hatred upon one another.