Answer to the Woman Who Aborted the Down Syndrome Baby


To: Maria and The Washington Post,

Date: 11-19-2005

RE: One Woman's Choice Article appeared: Washington Post 11-15-2005.

Your article perpetuates prejudice and racism against people with disabilities. Your entire article about your experience displays selfishness and ignorance. Maria did not want to be inconvenienced by raising a child with disabilities. This is not about what is best for the unborn child (or fetus if you prefer, or mass of tissues, whatever you want to call "it", just so long as it is not baby, I suppose) with disabilities. This is about what is best for you. If you delivered a healthy child, who at 6 months old developed an illness that resulted in disabilities, would you want to end the child's life at 6 months old? Why or why not? Isn't it the same premise? Spare yourselves, and the world, and the pitiful child of a life lived with disabilities? Why not end it's life at 6 months, or 12 months, or 2 years of age? Your article is only a hop, skip, and jump away from promoting the same beliefs of Peter Singer. Life with a disability is worthless. You might as well be dead, or have never existed than be alive and on the planet as a disabled person. You made the right choice for yourself, out of selfishness, not out of love or compassion or caring.

The writer of this article and its' promoters need to read some material from Not Dead Yet, or Ragged Edge Magazine, or Mouth Magazine. You need to read information on the marginalized and euthanized group of people that live their lives with disabilities.

I am wondering your reason for writing the article. Is it to promote and further the cause of abortion? Is it to poke fun at those of us raising children that have severe disabilities? You see to find humor in it with your "get out of jail free card" comment. No, you do not get a free pass on this one, not from me.

I am the single mother of an eleven-year-old little beautiful boy that has profound mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy. Your article did nothing but make his life and the lives of his disabled peers worse. Did you want to provide some kind of profound insight into your decision, or get emails or letters praising your choice, and promotion of abortion?

Grieve? What for? How can you grieve for a mass of tissues? How can you grieve over a choice? It is a woman's right to choose, what can there possibly be to grieve for? I believe your grief is for having had to go through this, and not having had the perfect, non-disabled baby. Why would you be sad over not allowing some "severely disabled" fetal products of conception to be terminated?

I apologize if I sound unsympathetic and harsh, but as the mother of one of those, "severely disabled, mentally handicapped children", the only part of my journey that is difficult, is attitudes like yours that say, "better off dead, than disabled".

Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00.

Kathy Ware
3883 72nd Street East
Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076-2639

kitkat24@comcast.net.


Not Dead Yet Website (http://www.notdeadyet.org/).

Ragged Edge Magazine Website (http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/).

Mouth Magazine Website (http://www.mouthmag.com/).


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