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Half the comments on Palin and her son Trig from etherpeoples seem to imply she is some kind of religious nutbar simply because she chose not to terminate her pregnancy. Or that she undertook her own misery in order to adhere to a misogynist value system.
Are we seriously not going to entertain the notion that she just plain wanted to complete her pregnancy and raise a child with Down Syndrome? Seems perfectly rational to me.
I doubt you will find anyone more pro-choice than I in a 500 mile radius of wherever you are. But the fact is that according to the New York Times, about 90% of pregnancies where Downs is detected are terminated.
And this says something about our culture. And it isn't good.
It says that parents do not feel that they can afford or access the resources they need in order to successfully and happily raise a child with Down Syndrome. It also says that we value the disabled differently than we value the abled. It also says that our culture sees disability as a burden and people who are labeled 'disabled' as too much work. It also points to the fact that many people still mythologize parenthood and go into it wanting only the clean, bright sanitized version.
It says a lot of things that reveal how we truly feel about disability and about our country's lack of commitment to giving individuals the support they need to be happy and successful.
The whole conversation reeks of ableism and condescension to me.
Comments
I've just heard that it isn't really hers, but rather her daughter's, and that bothers me.
Why? There is nothing wrong with grandparent adoption just like there is nothing wrong with any other choice a teen age girl may make about her pregnancy.
It really bothers me that the first two things I read many people using as "aha!" finger pointy issues are related to reproductive choice. REALLY bothers me.
How can you ask why?
Because it bothers me when a conservative candidate for the vice presidency, who advocates forcing victims or rape and incest to carry to term--and has gone on record as saying she would force her daughters to carry to term--forces her daughter to carry to term, and then lies and says it's her own child (forcing her daughter to pretend that her son is her brother in public--I can't even fathom not being able to hold my own child and call him mine, but rather lie and say he's my sibling to protect someone else's career), so that she can better position herself to restrict my access to birth control, contraception, abortion and sex education, to better position herself to force me and my daughters to carry to term.
This isn't about Govener Palin's reproductive choice. it's about her daughter's lack of choice, and the hypocrisy governor palin hides behind so that she can continue to strip people of reproductive choice.
I don't give two shits if she herself has or doesn't have a million babies, or whether her daughter does or doesn't have a million babies. I give a shit if she forced her sixteen year old daughter to have a baby and then lied about it to maintain her self righteous image so she can gain more power and influence over the lives of other women.
I don't understand where the fuck you got that I was judging anyone's reproductive choices.
Second of all, I would like to say, as medical practitioner who treats Down kids at least once a day, 5 days a week, that Down syndrome is one of the less complex syndromes I have EVER seen. There are challenges, of course, but they tend to be frequent ear infections, heart problems and delayed physical milestones. Some kids also have behavioral problems which I believe is due to a lack of parental support.
These kids talk, walk and go to school. Their parents tend to be delighted with the kids, especially as they grow. And I ONLY see low-income families, who have many barriers placed against them.
When I compare families of kids with Down Synd, to those where the kid needs a bone marrow transplant, where they are nonverbal, where they have extra fingers or a missing nose or no anus or a tiny head or will die before they are 5 years old, I think to myself that Down Syndrome is a blessing.
To me, America does not those who are disabled (especially VISIBLY disabled) at all. We do not appreciate what value and joy they add to the lives of their families even though it is hard fucking work and they families are stressed.
I once had a mother of a kid with a syndrome in which the kid was nonverbal, had white patches of hair, no teeth, in a wheelchair, no vision, malfunctioning kidneys and had a rectangle shaped head with profound cognitive delays that she "prays to God every night that I am a good enough mom and that he lets me keep her for as long as possible, because she is the light of my life".
I didn't even pretend to hold back the tears.
If I could be the full time mom of The Kid and pay the bills, I would see it as a worthwhile and fantastic career and a gift to the world. I don't care if he never lives independently (unless he wants to and feels he can't). I signed up for parenthood regardless of what it brings. No one knows what 'kind' of child they will have or how 'challenging' it will be to parent them.
I don't think it makes me less prochoice to feel sad that some people who would normally bring a pregnancy to term choose to terminate because the fetus will be born different than others. I think that ableism is as repellent as sexism, and we'd never support the selective termination of a child based on sex. We may not be willing to legislate against it, but we would find it morally repellent.
I don't know what it says about my pro-choice stance, but I feel the same way. I read this article about trying to isolate the exact genetic code that indicates autism (if there is, which I doubt; I tend to think there are too many factors involved, but that's another subject entirely), and of course it followed that, like, Trisomy 21, the problem could be eliminated if they knew what to look for in a amnio. And I'd be lying if that article didn't sadden me a lot.
I have had moms of kids with serious genetic anomalies tell me they don't want another kid to have the same problem and refuse to have more kids, or have chosen to abort. That is their choice. I have met moms who have aborted disabled fetuses because they them selves have mental illness, are in extreme poverty, have several kids already, are undocumented and know they'll be shipped back to a country where they won't have medical access to care for a disabled kid. I'll support them. Shit, I'll support a rich Palo Alto mom who is 40 and is a lawyer with a home, and who feels she cannot take on a kid with disabilities. That's not my choice, not my life or experience. So if that is why they truly want, then I am not going to feel bad about it.
I'm only going to feel sad about it if they truly WANT to raise the disabled fetus and feel that they wouldn't be supported or have the money to do so or that their partner would leave them or etc. etc. etc. That is a less cut and dried situation.
And while I would never try to pry into why someone chooses abortion, I do think that the same forces are at work in people who are seeking to adopt only the 'healthy white infant' as in some people's choice to abort because the fetus has Down Syndrome. And it says something about our culture that isn't about equality.
2. And I agree about the fact that it isn't equality, but when a super stressed out mom I know with a kid who doesn't "look" or "function" in a "normal" manner and who WILL die before she is 8, told me she'd abort any subsequent fetuses after she saw a genetic counselor, i couldn't judge that.
I only wish I could have been blessed with becoming a mother, but it didn't work out.
I have a friend whose son passed away at 11 from cancer. He was one of four children and absolutely a child everyone just fell in love with. His parents took what life gave to them and made tremendous efforts to care for him to the best of their ability.
So, I just can't understand all the fury about how she "should have aborted". I don't see her as a marter, but as a mom who made a choice she could live with.
As to the "daughter" issue, we don't really know what happened there. We don't know if it was even the mother's decision for it to work out the way it did or the daughter's. That sentence sounds almost insane, but we really don't know the whole story...
Plus, the whole eugenics thing makes me sick anyway. Why do they care if she has a child with down syndrome? The only reason it matters is to attack her as a woman and a mother - and attack her reproductive freedom to choose to have or not have a child.
Or her daughter's, if Trig is really her daughter's, but that's another attack buried in misogyny.
I was wary of having a second child period because I was worried I couldn't handle it again.
The feeling I'm getting from reading this and some of the comments is that if we would choose to abort a fetus with DS, that somehow makes us ableist, and I don't think that's a fair statement. One doesn't necessarily equal the other.
I would without a doubt abort a fetus with DS, and the choice I would make for myself, my life, my lifestyle, and the kid I've got isn't necessarily a blanket statement on what I feel the value of a person with DS is. But it IS a different circumstance to be raising a child in, and one that I think everyone should be educated about and have the ability to opt in or out of.
I'm prochoice because I support a woman's right to be able to structure her life how she sees fit. If that means having a baby at 15, fine, if that means having a baby at 45 with DS, fine. If that means aborting because you don't wanna get fat, fine, and if that means aborting because you don't think you're the right person to raise a child with a disability, fine.
I still don't think Trig is hers though. I think it's Bristol's baby, she got screwed out of parenting, and she got pregnant again very quickly afterwards because she's sad and was denied her own choice. I'd love to believe that all teenage girls are supported and loved and allowed to make their own choices free and clear of coercion, but I've known way too many teen mamas to operate from that perspective, and approaching it from that viewpoint every time, to me, feels like it doesn't leave enough room for a teenage girl to say, "No yall, I got FUCKED here."