A Woman's Right to Choose? - Not to have an Abortion even if Baby has Downs?

reply to post by seeker11


The voice of real experience holds more weight in this type of conversation I think. My Aunt had a similar condition and I saw my Grandfather struggle every day of his life to care for her and his wife who suffered a terrible mental health issue. My Aunt endured taunts and discrimination her whole life. I loved her with all of my heart, I understand where you are coming from.

My sister in law grew up with a girl who had mild downs. When she fell pregnant she talked to her friend about this issue. Her friend said she would never bring a child into this world knowing it would have the condition.

I have a friend who has a daughter with Turners syndrome which is an extra x chromosome. She is a very sweet little girl who will have some problems but should have a fairly normal life. She will need hormones to control puberty and will need IVF if she wants to have a child of her own so not all conditions lead to disability.

Its a really tough one. I honestly could not make the decision so would never judge anyone who has to.

reply to post by Swing80s


Yeah...my mom was in her early thirties. Was not in the family, downs is not hereditary. But the chances of having a downs child definitely increases with age, over 30 is starting to creep up for the risks. And it happened to my mom. She did not know she was having a downs baby until she delivered. My sister had to have open heart surgery at 6 months to close 2 holes in her heart, otherwise she would have died. Thankfully because of our health insurance in canada it covered the over million dollar procedure.

I had a little boy, perfectly healthy.

ETA

It makes me sad watching my little sister grow up and watch her going through all the emotional ups and downs of teenage years. I say this because I watched her go through deep crushes on singers of her fav bands etc. She's very aware and gets really embarrassed if you tease her about it, but it's sad to think she will probably never have a chance to live out those sexual urges, whatever they may be for her. She knows she's different, and I think this has made her feel even more shy. She spends most of her time alone in her room watching dvd's and playing with her toy animals and stuff. But I know she has feelings and thoughts about her life and sees other people's lives and I think she feels out of place. So I think it's important to think of those types of things too.

My best friends mother had to make this decision back in the old days when amniocentesis isnt what it is today.
The test showed the baby as having the syndrome, she chose to have her anyway. Now I have a fantastic best friend with no issues whatsoever.

LET HER DECIDE.

to the person who says they lived into their thirties... the oldest downs person is a guy who is just in his early 80's

there are 2 kinds of downs syndrome, the one is where they have those heart problems and a lot died early way back when because families did not want to treat them. They tend to have higher iq's

the second, they are basically healthy physically, both group have mental retardation to varing degrees.

for a long time they used to throw all the statistics together and come out with an average life span of 13,yes some moron newsreporter on the the tv actually said this, in this day and age!!!!

there are a lot of downs adults in their 60's and seventies today.

so add the age into the equations.