As promised I want to briefly revisit the issue I began to discuss in my last post: the mass extermination of fetuses prenatally diagnosed with Down Syndrome. I thought about this issue all day yesterday and all morning as I worked in the yard weeding the garden and prepping the soil in another planter for our sunflowers. Since it was a holiday, the kids were home and were driving each other crazy I decided to pack them up for a trip to the park. After we unloaded at the park my 3 year old son immediately to the swings and so, while my girls played on the jungle gym, I pushed my son on the "baby" swings. While we were swinging a young boy, about my sons age, came up an wanted to swing too. Unfortunately the other swing was broken so I unloaded my son so this other child could swing; but once I'd taken my son out of the swing he started to talk to this young boy and they ran off to play together on the toddler part of the playground. It was evident that the young boy my son was playing with had Down Syndrome and yet my son didn't think twice about playing with him. He didn't ask about what was "wrong" with the little boy, he didn't ignore him or exclude him, he just saw another child about his age who wanted to play. They got along swimmingly and I was forced to think back to my blog post yesterday. What would it mean for my son's children, my grandchildren, if they didn't get the chance to play with other children with Down Syndrome or other "undesirable" conditions?
Although there are those who would see the "eradication" of Down Syndrome as a triumph of medical and genetic science, I have to admit that I think it would be a tremendous loss. As I worked in the garden this afternoon I was thinking about the words of John Donne: "No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind" from his Meditation XVII. I can think of no more a propos expression for my feelings on this issue...
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