Lily’s Pad

WHY DO WE MURDER DOWN SYNDROME BABIES?
American Genocide

February 2007By Charles & Donna James 

Charles James, with the help of his wife, Donna, authored this article. Charles James is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Pre-Theology Program at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California. Donna James, RN, worked at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, California, for five years and specializes in obstetric nursing.

My wife fell exhausted into a huge green chair in the lobby of the Red Lion Hotel. We had survived a Christmas dinner with former parishioners whose two boys, mixed with ours, created a chemical reaction that left us shell shocked. Friends of a former parish had invited us to Christmas dinner at their Modesto, Calif., home. Peter Broderick and his wife, Carla Bratcher, were hard workers in our former parish. They both ran busy practices as family physicians. We came from Oakland, driving through the thick tule fog for the better part of the trip. Just after crossing the Altamont Pass, the fog wrapped around our car like molasses around a spoon, making it impossible to see five feet in front of us. So we decided to spend the night in a hotel.After dinner we wished the Broderick family a “merry Christmas,” packed the kids into the car, and headed downtown to our hotel. After getting the boys into bed, my wife and I fell asleep immediately. The long drive from Oakland combined with the all-but-peaceful Christmas dinner had done us in. The temperature in the valley had dropped to freezing that Christmas night, which taxed us even more. Everything felt ten times worse for my wife, since she was eight months pregnant.

Knowing my family was secure, I said my prayers and fell asleep. But we enjoyed little rest that night. At two o’clock in the morning, Donna’s water broke — a month early. We would never have traveled to Modesto, we would never have separated ourselves so far from our doctors, and away from the hospital where Donna was pre-registered had we anticipated such an event. Of course, every expectant mother is told that premature delivery is possible at any time during a pregnancy. But we had never let that fear restrict us before.

I woke up our friend Carla with a phone call and told her that Donna’s water had broken and it looked like our baby was to be born in Modesto that night. Carla, who had delivered our third son, faithfully met us at Modesto’s Memorial Hospital. Donna’s labor was unusually brief compared to her other deliveries, and our new son came into the world on December 26. We named him Christian Augustus James.

When my oldest boy, Zachary, first saw Christian, he noticed that his new brother didn’t look like the rest of the family. Christian’s face looked too round and his almond-shaped eyes bore no family resemblance. His arms and legs were extremely floppy as the doctor lifted him away from his mother. And, most notably, he was too quiet, far too quiet. As I looked into his face, I noticed the strange design of his eyes. On his irises I noticed tiny colored dots tightly surrounding the pupil. Later I was to learn that all these peculiar traits indicate Down syndrome. Carla had observed the same traits, but her training and experience helped her make a rapid, but tentative, diagnosis. Wanting to be sure, she called the pediatrician on duty that night, and he agreed with her diagnosis. When I saw those two doctors leaning over Christian, their faces serious with concern, I knew something was wrong. In a few minutes, Carla walked into Donna’s room and, with tears in her eyes, told us that Christian had Down syndrome. Then she prayed with us.

Other parents of Down syndrome children contacted us almost immediately. There exists an invisible family, a national network, of thousands of parents, grandparents, and adoptive parents who raise Down syndrome kids. These parents refuse to abort their Down syndrome babies simply because they are warned of the inconvenience of a “disabled” child. They also refuse to send them away to a state institution. They believe that God has His plans and ways with men, and our job is to abide in His will. “A man’s heart plans the course of his own way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Prov. 16:9).

I quickly realized that this Down syndrome community shares all the traits of a family. These people told us that because of Christian’s presence in our family, a transformation would occur in all of us that we never imagined. They told us that Christian would create in his siblings a kind of love rarely seen in children — a mature, self-sacrificing love. They told us that he would become the central light of our family and that we would experience an indescribable love for him and especially from him. Each stage of his development would be a miracle: his first step, his first tooth, his first word.

Still reeling from the news of our son’s disability, all this positive news was difficult for me to accept. Yet all of it became wonderfully true as we watched Christian develop. The first steps in his development were delayed a bit, but when they finally arrived, our family rejoiced all the more. Christian is best described as aggressively interested in everything, especially other children and puppies. If his rambunctious older brothers forget to include him in their activities, he makes sure he is involved by inconveniently inserting himself into their plans. He attacks any situation with utter enthusiasm and wonder. When he meets a new friend his size, we often have to protect the unsuspecting prospect from unsolicited hugs and kisses. Christian simply expresses his unconditional love for everybody anywhere. At his birth, however, we were soon to learn that our son had other challenges to face.

Before we left the hospital in Modesto it became obvious that Christian was not digesting his mother’s milk. Something was blocking the milk’s flow through his intestine. X-rays revealed that Christian’s lower intestine had not fully formed. This condition is called duodenal atresia, a common occurrence in Down syndrome newborns. So, after learning that Christian had Down syndrome, we were told that he would have to undergo immediate surgery. A highly respected doctor known for his success in pediatric surgery practiced at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. The Modesto doctors contacted Children’s Hospital requesting an ambulance, specialized personnel, and life-sustaining transport equipment for Christian.

An ambulance was dispatched from Oakland with a crew of five: an emergency physician, a respiratory therapist, a nurse, and two emergency medical technicians. It took them an hour to arrive at Memorial Hospital in Modesto. I’m not ashamed to say that when I saw that group of medical professionals burst though the automatic doors of the labor and delivery department with all their equipment and concern, I broke down. It moved me deeply to see how this team of people responded with such dedication and skill to save the life of this little, day-old boy in a city far away. It astonishes me that our society has become so confused and calloused that it can fight to save an infant life tonight and carry out scheduled abortions in the morning. Is the tyranny of personal convenience such a slave master that we have become the unwitting arbiters of life and death? The nurses placed Christian in the portable incubator. I worried that he might not make the journey, even though he was in the best of care. We all stood frightened, yet hopeful, as they quickly wheeled Christian to the ambulance.

A six-foot-three Nigerian doctor met us at Children’s Hospital in the early morning hours and explained what he was going to do. We felt completely confident with him because he had successfully performed this procedure many times. He assured us that everything would be fine. Then he bowed his head and prayed for Christian. It struck us that at each step of the way God had provided us with Christian doctors to care for our son. It was one of those lessons of life that my children will never forget. They saw the Christian faith alive and well in real-life situations. Christian came through the surgery perfectly, just as Dr. Ido had predicted. Christian spent the next month in the intensive care nursery at Children’s Hospital. Donna went every day to tend to Christian, to hold him, and to watch his every move. The neonatal intensive care nursery is a place few people ever see. As we looked into the cribs and incubators at babies with catastrophic problems, we found ourselves praying for them. It was a place of great pain, but also a place of abiding hope.

As Christian awoke from surgery, I watched him as his eyes struggled to open. I counted eleven monitor wires and tubes attached to his body. Some of them were inserted into his body, others were taped to his delicate skin. I wanted to be the first person he saw when he opened his eyes. I was feeling bad about my first reaction on hearing the news that he had Down syndrome. When Carla first told us, I became angry. I wasn’t angry at God; I was just inexplicably angry. Christian’s disability had shattered my false image of the “perfect family.” That image was broken; no longer was my family “perfect.” It is disabled. Certainly this is a false image of the family (and a false standard), because no family is perfect. But I believe now that the image of “the perfect family” that I held in my imagination was completely self-centered. It was a perfect family because my family could be none other than perfect. If it is not perfect then I’m not perfect, and I can’t stand the world knowing that I am not perfect. So when I heard that one of my children was disabled, it made me angry because I felt that Christian’s disability reflected on me. In other words, I wasn’t thinking of Christian but of myself.

So I determined that the first thing Christian saw when he awoke from surgery would be the face of his proud Dad. When he finally opened his eyes, I said to him, “I’m sorry, son, that I got angry. I’m sorry that I was not there for you when you needed me most. I promise you that as long as I live, I’ll always be there for you.” As I said this, I was astonished as Christian moved his eyes to look directly into mine, as if to say, “I know, Dad. It’s O.K.”

In the U.S. today 85 to 90 percent of Down syndrome babies are selectively put to death. They are selectively aborted by their own mothers, usually on the advice of their physician. Eighty-five to ninety percent! Given the fact that Down syndrome people share all the characteristics of a community, such as social cohesion, a shared knowledge (of the disability), and an utter abhorrence of the destruction of their community, I wondered whether America was practicing its own form of genocide. Recently, attending a Down Syndrome League dinner, I asked the families at my table the following question: “If you could go back and correct the genetic abnormality in your baby, would you do it?” Everyone said “No.” They all said that they would not change their families at all. I then asked them if they would choose to have the same child, but without the genetic abnormality. They all said “No.” They explained that the Down syndrome child is a unique individual and that Down syndrome defines the child as uniquely as any other genome (genetic pattern). I was amazed. Here were middle- to upper-class Americans who are accustomed to having everything they want, and they were telling me that what the world may call abnormal they call normal. But more than this, they told me that their child was an untold blessing to their families, bringing to it what their “normal” children could not provide. Moreover, the overwhelming number of people with Down syndrome will tell you that their life is good and that they experience happiness.

The technology of prenatal screening has advanced significantly in the past twenty years. There are several tests, each providing different degrees of accuracy. For instance, pregnant women may choose non-invasive prenatal test to determine the possible defects in their babies. The Triple Screen test measures various proteins and pregnancy hormones. The test is done during the window of the 15th to 20th week of pregnancy. It can detect 60 percent of Down syndrome pregnancies. However, this test has a 6.5 percent Initial Positive Rate, meaning that in 6.5 percent of the cases this test will give a positive result indicating Down syndrome. But the overall statistical chance of having a Down syndrome baby is only 0.1 percent. Therefore, this test will give a very high percentage of false positive results. In other words, many pregnant women will be told their babies probably have Down syndrome when in fact their babies are completely normal. And many misinformed women will choose to abort these perfectly normal babies. Even with more accurate non-invasive tests, such as the AFP/Free Beta Screen, which can be performed between the 13th and 22nd week of pregnancy, providing a detection rate of 80 percent, the percentage of false positives is 3 percent. False positives can be caused by undetected twins, an incorrect date of pregnancy, or normal variations in the proteins.

The most familiar prenatal test is amniocentesis. This is a very accurate test, detecting over 99.8 percent of all genetic problems in preborn babies, and has a very low false positive rate. However, it is an invasive procedure that requires taking amniotic fluid from the mother to identify fetal cells. The risk of spontaneous abortion due to amniocentesis is 1 in 200 to 1 in 300 women.

The sobering fact is that the advancing technology that increases our ability to detect genetic abnormalities in preborn babies has also led to their destruction through abortion. Because the selective abortion rate is so high for Down syndrome babies in the U.S., Canada, and Britain, the Down syndrome population has dramatically decreased. Whereas 1,500 children with Down syndrome should statistically be born per year, only 63 per annum were listed in the 1995 birth register.

The question is, what justifies our decision to kill? What quiets our conscience as we kill these disabled babies? It certainly isn’t the result of moral reflection on the ethical implications of abortion. Most people have no time to think through this momentous, complicated ethical question. Physicians routinely fail to inform the pregnant patient of her options other than abortion, such as adoption, support groups for parents with Down syndrome children, and agencies that help parents with disabled children. Moreover, doctors and government officials habitually give expectant mothers outdated information about the life expectancy of, the availability of vitamin supplemental treatment for, and the remarkable potential of achievement among Down syndrome children. Down syndrome people have graduated from high school and gone to college. They have written books about their lives, become actors, writers, and artists. Yet the authoritative figure of the physician “warns” the pregnant mother that a Down syndrome baby will be extremely expensive, that she doesn’t have the skills to take care of such a baby, and that the quality of life of the child will be unacceptable. The expectant mother is usually intimidated by the doctor’s warning. The father’s ego can’t handle the dreaded public embarrassment of having a retarded son or daughter. The decision is made.

This is called eugenics — the selective elimination of defective offspring for the purpose of strengthening the genetic stock. It is as old as the Bible and it is still practiced today in animal and plant cultivation. But it was also practiced by the Nazis to eliminate disvalued human beings. Thousands of persons deemed genetically inferior, including Down syndrome men, women, and children, were murdered by the Nazis so that they would not pass on their genetic kind to future generations. Whether Jew or Gentile, it didn’t matter. In Hitler’s Germany, Down syndrome adults and children were the offspring of a “mongrelized” race from which society needed “cleansing.” In the Nazi quest for purity of race, children and adults who did not mirror the picture of perfection were phased out of the genetic pool. And what was the Nazi picture of perfection? It was what that culture called normal, strong, and beautiful. This was considered the “common good” of German society at that time.

Today, America practices genetic cleansing of its own people. We are cleansing our society of Down syndrome babies — all in the name of perfection and personal choice. Of course, this personal freedom, so dear to Americans, would not be so destructive if we remembered the Catholic teaching on the dignity of the human being. Pope John Paul II was right when he said that the most important question of the 21st century would be, “What is a person?” Today, we stand at the edge of an abyss in which we see a nightmarish technocracy that has taken on a life of its own. This Dr. Frankenstein cares little about the Culture of Life, and blusters on with little regard for moral reasoning. Ours is a society whose technology has become self-generating and self-justifying. In the meantime, we “cleanse” our society of a family of people by means of a silent genocide that no one questions.

Now, someone may say that preborn Down syndrome babies are not to be compared to preborn babies with horrific heart defects, severe brain abnormalities, or who have organs developing on the outside of their bodies. These conditions are considered “lethal abnormalities.” If born alive, these babies will likely survive a very short time. However, in Canada, at Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital, Down syndrome is considered a “lethal abnormality.” Spokesman Donna Angus says that although only a “handful” of late-term abortions are done, they are reserved for “lethal abnormalities.” What is chilling is that during an interview, Ms. Angus admitted that Down syndrome is considered a lethal abnormality and thus qualifies for a late-term abortion. However, because Canadian law does not permit abortions of Down syndrome babies beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy, the hospital sends mothers of preborn Down syndrome babies here to the U.S. to have their abortions. Hundreds of pregnant Canadian women choose to travel to the U.S. where genetic cleansing is common practice. Prolife groups denounce Alberta’s practice of sending expectant mothers over the border for what advocates call “genetic terminations.”

Why this rush to destroy our disabled children? Isn’t it morally worse to kill a disabled preborn baby as compared to a normal one? Isn’t this the worse violation of social justice? Too many American Catholics demonstrate for the rights of illegal immigrants but keep silent about this genocide. Too many Catholics are stridently vocal against the death penalty but say nothing about the genetic cleansing of Down syndrome babies. Are these Catholics unaware that eugenics has a history in America advocated by the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a eugenics enthusiast and social Darwinist (”three generations of imbeciles are enough”)? Don’t they know that at one time eugenics was offered as a solution to the illegal immigration problem in the U.S.? Are they ignorant of the fact that the Nazi Third Reich awarded the American eugenicist Charles Davenport an honorary degree for his American work in “racial hygiene”? Read about it in Harry Bruinius’s book Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity (Knopf, 2005). How have we developed this moral blind spot that allows us to place people into a caste system of “fit” and “unfit”? We are systematically eliminating a community of human beings from American society. Why do our priests and bishops remain silent about this in their homilies? Why don’t our bishops take the moral leadership and speak against such a heinous practice? Where is their courage?

Christian is now seven years old, and I watch as he swims in our backyard pool. He throws a yellow ball to me and I throw it back. When I miss his throw or drop the ball, he laughs uncontrollably. To think that his Dad could drop the ball! He misses a step and his head sinks under the water. I jump out of my chair, but he comes sputtering up, laughing. When he sees my panic, he says, “Oh, please!” He wants me to know he’s all right and quite capable of swimming on his own. I continue playing catch with him in the hot summer sun.

In my office at the seminary, I have a picture of Christian all dressed up in his baseball uniform, his right hand punching the pocket of the glove on his left hand. Last summer he played on a team in a league run by the city’s recreation department. He loved every minute of it. After one of his games, we celebrated (he always celebrates, whether his team wins or loses) at a favorite Chinese restaurant and, of course, opened fortune cookies when we finished. His fortune happened to read, You don’t know what you can accomplish until you try. I placed that statement as a caption under his baseball picture because it perfectly describes Christian’s attitude toward life.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of world this would be if Christian weren’t in it, if he had not survived his surgery or if we had lost him in those dangerous first two years. Or worse, if this child would have been killed because he was prenatally “diagnosed” with Down syndrome. For our family, of course, the world would be a different place, an infinitely lesser place.

Christian comes to the edge of the pool and I lift him up and dry him off. He tries to push me into the pool and, laughing, says in his halting speech, “Dad, you almost went swimming!” After dressing he asks me if we can go to McDonald’s for a cheeseburger — his favorite thing to do. Sitting across from him at McDonald’s, I look into those same eyes I first saw on the day of his birth. Then they were tentative and wondering. Now they are happy and filled with longings for swimming pools and cheeseburgers. I silently thank the Lord for giving this little boy to our family. I thank Him for protecting Christian from the dangerous society in which he was conceived.

DOSSIER: Culture of Death Issues

 

Back to February 2007 Issue

France
The French Supreme Court has ruled that the first marriage by a homosexual couple in the country was unlawful, thereby annulling the union. 

Spain
A bedridden Spanish woman has died at her own request after she was transferred from a Catholic to a state hospital where her respirator was switched off.

Mexico
Mexico City is preparing to legalize abortion, a move the influential Catholic Church has vowed to challenge.

Russia
The Russian Orthodox Church has summarily dismissed statements from State Duma members that Patriarch Alexy II and Pope Benedict XVI may meet after following President Putin’s visit to the Vatican.

Portugal
Portuguese bishops meeting at an episcopal conference condemned the country’s new liberalized abortion law as “unfair.”

Canada
A Canadian man arrested by Spanish police is suspected of helping finance Islamist terrorist activities.

Washington DC
The Pentagon’s top general expressed regret for voicing his personal view that homosexuality is immoral, but he did not apologize for the comment.

Vatican City
The Vatican has announced plans to launch its first television network by the end of the year.

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