1 in 6 Chance

I have a co-worker whose wife is currently about three months pregnant. He came to work the other day and asked me about getting some time off to go to the doctor with his wife this week for some tests. I didn't ask him what they were, but he volunteered that she needed an amniocentesis. Having been through four pregnancies as the "daddy" I have some knowledge about such things.

I ask my co-worker if everything is okay because he looks pretty concerned (and I know what amnio can tell you about the child). He says it is not all okay. He says his wife's pregnancy is causing her body to react to the baby as if she were a fifty-year-old woman having a preganancy, not a young woman in her late 20's. This is giving her a 1 in 6 chance of delivering a child with Down's Syndrome. My co-worker says, "When the amnio comes back if it says the kids' got Down's we're going to have to make some decisions about what we want to do."

I reply (from my own, personal world view), "Choices?" "Yeah," he says. "Those kids don't usually have much of a life. They die in their teens and don't really do much. I don't know if we want that."

I should preface the rest of this post by coming right out and saying that my view on abortion is this: only when the mother's life is threatened. I understand that my view is pretty far to the right, and I am not posting here to open a debate on the subject. I am posting here to say that my heart went out to my co-worker. I wouldn't want to be under that kind of pressure to make the decision to abort the baby. I know I am forutnate that all my kids are healthy and strong. They were all born with all the pieces and parts in good working order, and I thank God for that.

Still, if I were in his shoes, there would not be a choice. We would have the baby, 1 in 6 chance of Down's or not. As husbands and wives trying to get pregnant we have made the choice to have a baby...no one guarantees that we are going to get what we wanted in every aspect of the child.

Sometimes I wonder if our modern science hasn't really outpaced our ethical abilities as a race. Modern medicine gives us the opportunities to make choices about our health (and the health of those near to us) that we never had before. "Peaceful" euthanasia, DNA splicing, stem cell research, and a host of other medical "miracles" I could continue listing are all things that we have created...but were we ready for these things? Have we gone too far? I think we, as a people, make more choices in this area than we are truly qualified to make. Who lives and who dies is an awfully heavy burden. To assume that just because a child has Down's Syndrome (or a related condition) that they do not have as much right to life as you or me starts us down the slippery slope of making choices about who lives and who dies just based on their apparent ability to be a "productive" member of society.

Who is to say that a child with Down's is any unhappier than you or I? Who is to say that this person should be denied their inalienable human rights because they aren't able to develop socially and intellectually in a manner that you and I call "normal?" There have been many attempts throughout history to give people a better life by denying life to others...Hitler and Nazi Germany come to mind...

These are questions of conscience, not just science. God help us all if we ever turn wholly to science to make our most important choices for us instead of making the choices based on morals and ethics. Lives cannot be replaced, and I know no one who is wise enough to decide if someone else lives or dies based solely on a developmental challenge.

Better to err on the side of caution. Choose life.