Those who know me are aware that my family has been blessed with Rebekah, the third of four children. Rebekah’s a smart, sneaky, hilarious young woman who is nearly 22 years old. Rebekah also has Down syndrome. It’s all caused by an extra 21st chromosome. Rebekah has more of something than most of the population, and it causes her to be slower both mentally and physically, but honestly, most of the time I forget. To us, she’s just Rebekah. And you’d better watch out, because she’s fully aware of people’s perceptions about her, and she’s more than willing to use it against you in one of her many sneaky attempts to get something out of you. She’s quite skilled in the appropriation of a Krispy Kreme and Diet Coke from a kind lady on any given Sunday morning at church, despite everyone’s awareness of her diabetes.
Growing up with a sister with Down syndrome seems quite normal to me. I can’t imagine anything else, and my parents have been absolutely wonderful in their raising of her. Unlike some other families we know, my parents disciplined Rebekah when she did something wrong. They didn’t let her get away with very much; at least, not any more than the rest of us got away with. Rebekah’s grown into a quite intelligent young woman who, despite her faults, does know the difference between right and wrong. Our family just doesn’t accept the idea that we’re unchangeable products of our environment. And Rebekah’s “affliction,” as I’ve seen Down syndrome referred to as of late, wasn’t a death sentence. She doesn’t have a horrible life. In fact, she seems to quite enjoy herself. For her, Prom came and went with zero drama. And if every girl there had been wearing her dress, too? She’d probably have been ecstatic: “Look at all my prom dress buddies!”
Get to know her, and you’ll notice something right away. Rebekah’s got too much love for others to not share it. The beginning of the Sunday morning church service doesn’t seem to be enough to get Rebekah to stop giving hugs and greeting everybody. Her friends have the diversity progressives can only dream about. She really couldn’t care any less about the color of your skin. Her best friend Keila is black. And she doesn’t seem to notice. She just knows that Keila is a lot of fun, and she wants to go bowling with her and the rest of her friends every Saturday at 2:00. (I normally get a text from Rebekah every Saturday around 3:30 to let me know her score. She can, and routinely does, trounce me. Without bumpers. Also, I now refuse to play Scrabble with her. There’s another example of using perceptions of her against you. Her vocabulary is surprisingly sharp.)
She’s clearly had an impact on the people in our community. Our parents arranged for us to each receive a book of congratulatory and encouraging notes from friends and family upon graduation from high school. Rebekah’s was at least three times the size of the rest of our books.
I write this because since the Palin nomination, there have been a slew of self-aggrandizing pundits that are sudden experts on a life with Down syndrome. And while the best of them are trying to be gentle with it, their choice of words shows how they feel about it. To them, hearing that you’re going to have a child with Down syndrome is terrible news. It means your life, and the child’s life, will be fraught with endless doctors visits and complications. It means you’re going to have a “retard” that won’t ever live up to your expectation. Your child will never be the sports star. He or she will never be very smart. It’s going to be so very hard, so why don’t you just abort the baby, right? It’s compassionate, really, because that kid’s life would just be so awful. Not even a life, not one worth living anyway.
It actually turned my stomach to write that, even with tongue firmly planted in cheek. This is the aggregate argument I’ve heard from the progressive left over the last two days. And it makes me so very sick. How dare you claim the right to decide someone else’s life for them? I thought being a progressive was all about creating maximum opportunity for individuals! Killing a living person certainly crushes that dream. Do you think I’m lying? Testing for Down syndrome has gotten more accurate and better at the earlier stages of pregnancy, and a recent study estimates that 91-93% of prenatal Down syndrome diagnoses end in abortion, with various other prenatally diagnosed diseases resulting in abortions to a lesser extent. (This, combined with the startlingly low rate of rape/incest/health-of-the-mother abortions, which sits somewhere at a measly 2-3%, should really be the death of the Pro-Choice movement for most reasonable people. If it’s not for you, grab a look at this chart, and I shall enjoy hearing your argument that abortion somehow isn’t post-coital birth control.)
In a piece written in the Washington Post several years ago about her experiences with a Down syndrome child, Patricia Bauer wrote:
In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same.
Maybe it’s the disgustingly high level of self regard we have as a society that enables justifying the abortion of any baby who might prove to be less than perfect. Our lives are so great, we think, that anything less would be “suffering.” And that is, in fact, the term that is used. And it is used by people who speak with authority in an attempt at compassion, but these fools clearly do not have love for any of these Down syndrome kids. How do I know? Because they observe from a distance. They do not speak with the experience that says, “I have intimately met some of them, and now I realize that they are people, too.” They speak with a ignorant arrogance.
Doctors used to call them “mongoloid idiots” and recommend locking them up in a mental institution. Now we’re so progressive, once prenatal tests reveal the “affliction,” we just kill them. You know, to save them from that horrible life they’ll surely have. Or is it to save ourselves from having to pour our lives into someone else? Tell me, how many kids with Down syndrome have you met that are suffering? I haven’t met any. And I’d wager that if you could actually come up with one example, their suffering would be the result of external factors rather than through mental or physical health complications.
Of course having Rebekah in the family has required extra effort! But her presence in my life has only added to my joy. My mother didn’t know Rebekah had Down syndrome until she looked at my sister’s eyes. But I am so very glad my mother didn’t listen to the “professionals.” A life where my experience with my sister consists of routine visits to some institution is wholly unimaginable to me.
So put your money where your mouth is; being enlightened means actually being even better informed. At least find a friend that has someone with Down syndrome in their family and talk to them at length before letting that overwhelming sense of always-rightness roll you right into making ignorant comments about a real person’s life.
UPDATE: It’s good to see that some pro-choice people are speaking out against the vitriol coming from the eugenics crowd:
Half the comments on Palin and her son Trig from etherpeoples seem to imply she is some kind of religious nutbar simply because she chose not to terminate her pregnancy. Or that she undertook her own misery in order to adhere to a misogynist value system.
Are we seriously not going to entertain the notion that she just plain wanted to complete her pregnancy and raise a child with Down syndrome? Seems perfectly rational to me.
UPDATE II: From a forum post I found here, another personal story about a fella with Down syndrome:
When I was thinking of Trig, I was reminded of an encounter I had a couple of weeks ago on the Delta Shuttle from Washington to New York. It was a mostly empty plane, but I went all the back to the very emptiest part of the plane to spread out and enjoy he quiet. And there was a man sitting in the very back row who immediately piped up, “Hi. I’m Ian. Would you like to sit next to me?”
He was a guy with Down syndrome, maybe in his twenties. I declined the offer, but we struck up a conversation. He was going to New York for a family celebration, including for his birthday. I told him I had a birthday coming up too and he lit up and came over to vigorously shake my hand in congratulations — more delighted by my birthday than his own.
When the plane began to fill up a woman and her daughter came all the way to the back with a huge bag. I began to wonder to myself if I should offer to help them with it, when Ian popped up, told them he’d get it, and lifted it up and shoved it in the overhead compartment. When two men came down the aisle with a box they weren’t sure would fit overhead, he intervened and told them it would — “trust me” — and put it up for them.
He chatted amiably with his neighbors during the flight, and when we landed was up out of his seat first thing to help that woman get her bag down.
From this brief encounter, I dare say Ian is friendlier, better adjusted and more considerate than about half of the people on the streets of Manhattan or San Francisco on any given day. Yet most of those people are perfectly unperturbed by the elimination of babies with Down syndrome in the womb. To hell with them. God bless Sarah Palin for bringing Trig into the world, and may he shower those around him with as much sunshine as the gentleman I met on that flight.
