Rita, most sane adults would prefer not to give birth to a disabled and or retarded child. What is the point of it given that most defects can't be reversed?

We now have the capacity to identify fetuses with abnormalities and there is no real need for any parent to have such a child or to force such a child to live a life that is a mockery of what life should be.

The frustration and hurt suffered by a disabled or retarded child is profound. No matter how much love surrounds them, they can never achieve what they see their healthy peers achieving. For them, to live is to suffer!

Do you like to see suffering, Rita? What possible reason could you have? Why force a child with problems and its parents to live a life of mutual suffering? No one comes out a winner. But then you said that life is suffering.

Therein lies your problem, Rita! I don't like to see anyone suffer least of all helpless kids.

Such wild and sweeping over-generalisations David G! Suggest you click on the link provided by Dr Dunjey in an earlier post and take the trouble to read the article it points to (and the accompanying comments), since it's clear from your contribution that you actually know very little about the many, many, vexed questions posed and issues raised by genetic testing. Nor, from your comments, do you know much about children with disabilities and their parents. As for your noble aim to eradicate and eliminate all human suffering - good luck with that one, lol.

Lacey, given that I am the father of a child with physical and intellect disabilities, I don't need lectures from you.

I have had 40 years to reflect upon the calamity, to watch his suffering, to see how my son's disability has been used by his mother as a club to beat me with and to bolster her own standing in society.

Disabled children are in a lose-lose situation for any parent capable of caring. Only parents that reject their blame for the inadequate child can pretend that all is well.

Only religious folk see some merit in the suffering of the innocent child and its parents. I see none!

Then it is clear that such folk are completely out of touch with reality!

You are right DavidG, and I am sorry for the suffering you and your son have had .

I really dislike being compared with Nazi's in my views on disabilities RitaJ.
How dare you suggest that pathetic argument when I disagree with your views.

I have cared for many very disabled Down's Syndrome children and adults, and I see their sadness and suffering.
If I had a dollar for the number of their elderly parents who actually stated that they were bitter about the way they have had to live their lives, I would be rich.

There is a world of difference between those parents who had a disabled baby with no prior knowledge of this during the pregnancy , and those who are now given a choice if they want to live a life with a disabled child or not...

David, I too am sorry for the suffering you and your son (and his mother) have endured.
I’m sorry too for the bitterness that has resulted.
Perhaps bitterness is not the best counsellor on whether or not the medical profession should co-operate in a system where some human beings are ‘chosen’ to live and other human beings are routinely exterminated.
If our medical profession continues down this path of eugenic ‘choice’, then it is quite likely that some time next century medical associations will be issuing another apology.
Revulsion against Nazi eugenics once elicited a universal commitment “Never again!”. But this commitment is now crumbling. Once again we see the terrible fragility of medical ethics.
Both Dr Leo Alexander and Dr Andrew Ivy, who testified for the prosecution in the Nuremberg Trials, commented on the gradual seduction of the German medical profession by Nazi eugenics .
Dr Alexander, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1947, observed that the fall of the medical profession started with a “subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians…the acceptance of the attitude...that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived” and then moved gradually from “the severely and chronically sick” to encompass “the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted…”. Dr Alexander warned that prevention of doctors succumbing again to this “disease” requires “observation and recognition of early signs and symptoms… indoctrination, seduction and propaganda.”
Indeed, Nazi propaganda was highly effective in perverting the public conscience in a remarkably short time.
Dr Ivy, writing in 1949, also emphasizes this point:
“What happened to the medical profession of Germany is stern testimony to the fact that… acquiescence in or even silence before the violation of sacred professional ethics…can lead to dishonour and crime in which the entire medical profession of a country must in the last analysis be considered an accomplice. “
There are important contributions to this debate going on right now in Britain (Parliamentary Inquiry into Abortion on the Grounds of Disability):
http://www.abortionanddisability.org/resources/AbortionSessionTwo110213.pdf

and also in New Zealand:
http://www.savingdowns.com/we-reject-otago-universitys-discriminatory-paper-on-down-syndrome/

Rita, what exactly are you proposing? Are you suggesting the world would be a better place if we ensured that every pregnant women must have her child no matter how seriously disabled it is?

Are you suggesting that we shouldn't rid the world of genetic defects that cause such misery and massive suffering for the afflicted person and their carers alike?

Perhaps you'd like each family to have a seriously disabled child as some weird kind of status symbol?

There is no need for any family to have a seriously disabled child. If we stopped them being born we could have a world free from genetic defects in a matter of a couple of generations.

Wouldn't that be terrible?