reply to post by crmanager
"If you don't want to turn this into an abortation debate then why say "She doesn't know what she is getting in to."
If it offends you then why should it offend others?"
Why should saying "She doesn't know what she is getting into" turn this into an abortion debate?
I have no idea what you mean by the 2nd line.
At the moment she does not want an abortion, though it would be okay if she changed her mind. And maybe the woman doesn't know what she's getting
into yet, but likely the hospital will give her some counseling to help her deal with whatever comes down the pike. The kid could die shortly after
birth, the kid could be very sickly and cooped up in an ICU for a long time, she could take the kid home and have to deal with the kid's bad health,
or the kid could be healthy given the circumstances. Anything is possible.
Yes, sometimes parents are overwhelmed by caregiving for a disabled child - I've heard it many times. If you have other children or a spouse, they
can feel neglected, and often there are money crunches. Let's not even get into all the hell you can go through getting services for special needs
children - it can be really bad.
By the way, I have taken care of severely disabled kids with brain damage, and severely disabled without brain damage. I knew a woman, Catholic and
anti-abortion, who had three disabled children in a row. We wondered what was going through her head that she would continue to have these disabled
babies, as was our right to do so, but we wondered about her right to do so too. These babies costed hundreds and thousands of dollars for their
medical treatment and the extremely marginal education they got. When they got older they weren't total leeches on society but still, we just
couldn't see the wisdom of bringing 3 of them into the world.
As healthcare dollars become more and more scarce (Medicaid and Medicare), I wonder where the money is going to come from to pay for these babies. We
have well children who have never been to the doctor for a checkup, and then we have these babies who cost $100,000 their first week of life. I'm
sorry, but cost and ability to live unnassisted is going to matter very very soon in this world - read the newspapers.