Protecting the Innocent
September 9th, 2008 at 12:11pm Mark Noonan
Brought front and center into the public square by Governor Palin, this is an issue I’ve long cared about:
Concerned Women of America (CWA) of New York has launched a new international project that aims to reduce the abortion rate for babies diagnosed with Down syndrome, which reportedly stands at 90 percent. The project was developed in consultation with major Down syndrome groups in the United States.
According to a CWA of New York press release, the project makes available a free informational brochure titled “When you’ve learned that your baby may have Down syndrome … There is help and hope!”
The brochure offers reassurance to families facing a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis and informs them of resources and support groups to help them and their baby. It features the photographs of children and young adults with Down syndrome along with their family members.
“The brochure features the faces of a number of children and adults with Down syndrome,” Anne F. Downey, Esq., State Director for CWA of New York, said in a press release. “Each of the persons featured in the brochure came to me in a special way and has his or her own wonderful story to tell. In the photos you can see the joy that these young people and their family members have. Just looking at them, you can see that there truly is help and hope.”
The organization says the brochure helps OB/GYN doctors and others to provide expectant mothers with clear information, as recommended by a December 2007 bulletin from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
This issue means a lot to me because I have a close family member who is autistic - the sort of person once upon a time shoved into a lunatic asylum, and these days aborted. But a person, indeed - and someone who loves, and strives and who had hopes and dreams. The Culture of Death has tens of millions of victims, but none strike the heart as much as the “defective” children killed simply because they don’t meet an idealized conception of what a human being should be. We are tasked to rejoice in all things - and while someone may look at a Down’s Syndrome baby and wonder what there is to rejoice about, I have learned recently that there really is a joy to be found in all things, including the hardest trials of life.
The worst aspect of the Culture of Death is the way it kills joy and hope - the Culture of Death takes a baby and calls it a problem, something - according to Barack Obama - we don’t want to “punish” young girls with. A baby, however, is a joyful thing, and all life comes with great hope. Governor Palin and her husband (and, apparantly, her whole family) understand this and thus have welcomed their Down’s Syndrome child…and he’ll grow up and have the life he’ll have and when his mortal span is done, he’ll go home and live eternally in happiness. Happy child, rendered nearly incapable of the ability to sin while he lives! But not at all incapable of love! Rejoice - his inheritance will be cured at the cross, his future is assured; or so the Palin’s (and I, as it turns out) believe. Where, then, is there to turn for sadness in the child? At the fact that he’ll take some extra care and devotion from his family? Rejoice - there is a chance for all to serve, and to live out the gospel.
The point here is that negativity doesn’t really get one anywhere. To sign on to despair and death as the supposedly easier alternative is to actually take the harder road, and the road with no happiness at the end of it, and no recompense for the trials one suffers - and even in killing the unborn child, all one has done is exchanged one burden for another, without the benefit of doing the right thing and at least feeling secure in the knowledge of having done right, when it was seemingly easier to do wrong. The people of Concerned Women aren’t hoping for more Down’s Syndrome babies - but they understand that to kill the problem doesn’t solve the problem, and doesn’t help those who are doing the killing. We need a rebirth of a spirit of love, joy and sacrifice in this world - and a fine place to start will be with the most helpless among us.
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Democrats, Life Issues, Republicans
19 Comments
1. majoriot | September 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I understand your position more clearly now.
the only innocent are the unborn. Wow…how easy is that!
How else could you at the same time advocate the killing of children around the world through imperialistic and capatalistic policies?
Remember. If you support the policy, you support the outcome.
2. Jeremiah | September 9th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Majoriot,
Was it wrong for the Islamists to kill innocent men, women and babies?
Was it wrong for Hitler to starve innocent men, women, and babies?
Was it wrong for the Islamists to kill 3,000 innocent men, women, and children in an act of terror?
Would it be wrong to allow murder to go by without some recompense for the victims families?
If you are one who has a clear understading of what is right and wrong you will say ‘Yes’ to all of the above. If “no”, then you are most likely one who has been deceived by the evil one, and believe that murder is fine and dandy, and that people should live in horror all their lives, not knowing when they may be the next victim of one of these violent crimes. You do not recognize an enemy, because you are with the enemy, and show likeness for the enemy.
If you have a clear understanding of right and wrong, you recognize that life has worth and that murderers should be put to death for their crimes.
Any sane thinking person will recognize that abortion is murder, and there is no way that you can justify the taking of their little lives…Children Physically, Psychologically, Biologically in any situation they have ultimate worth as they are created in the Image of our Creator God and He loves them all.
If God said ‘no’ to Juda for their crime, He says no likewise to America for their crime, and that those who murder His people should pay for their crime.
I thank the Lord for His sending Sarah Palin.
I was almost ready to not vote until Sen. McCain picked Sarah Palin for VP. Now I am confident and will most definitely vote on Nov. 4th.
The Lord is faithful!
:)
3. The Arctic Fox | September 9th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Once again, I think if you’re a man you have no real right to make decisions for a woman. Every woman who undergoes tests when she’s pregnant has to make the call on what sort of quality of life her baby stands to have if there are abnormalities. Each situation is going to be different. Black and white rules about what a woman can and can’t do will NEVER WORK. All you will end up doing is causing those who become desperate over the potential situation to seek methods of abortion elsewhere - perhaps even by reading how to abort a child over the internet - which could very easily be as dangerous to the survival of the mother as to the unborn fetus.
I’m fortunate. All the checks on my baby (who is due to be born next month) came back clear. But if they hadn’t, I would have had to assess whether or not the quality of life a baby with an abnormality such as downs syndrome would have had, and whether or not that made it viable or cruel to continue to carry it to term. I regard that decision as my right and my responsibility AND MINE ALONE. You who advocate the viewpoint that government should have less of a “nanny” say in day to day lives just prove yourselves hypocrites trying to enforce your quasi-religious beliefs across the board on people who have no interest on what you believe in. I doubt Jesus would agree with that viewpoint.
4. CanadianObserver | September 9th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
If Palin/McCain win in November, let’s hope groups like the CWA will be supported by the ‘humane’ policies of the Republican party.
Less money given to special interest groups and more money given to care for special needs children. It would be refreshing to see the change.
They need to follow through on the promise Sarah Palin made at the convention. She has to show that she will not cut funds in this area, as she did in Alaska.
Republicans now have the opportunity to show the voters that they are the party who will care for you and your loved ones, the party with heart.
Here’s hoping they can deliver.
5. kimberly4victory | September 9th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
CO: Did you not read the previous “smear” thread:
Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn’t cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years.
Anywho, I agree with you about less money for special interest groups and more money for special needs children. I don’t think, as noted in the second paragraph, Palin will go against her promise when she becomes the first VP of the US.
Congratulations, Arctic Fox!! You’re first?
POW/WOW ‘08
6. kimberly4victory | September 9th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
oops first female VP …
7. The Arctic Fox | September 9th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
@Kimberly: Not sure where the “you’re first female VP” comment came from… I’m a soon-to-be mother, that’s all. But a pregnant woman who deserves the right to choose whether or not to carry a baby to term or to abort it if I don’t think its quality of life would be sufficient to give it personal dignity.
Whether you’re an ordinary mother-to-be or a VP nominee, you still should have the same rights to decide what to do with an unborn child. The attempt to call anti-abortionism “culture of death” simply doesn’t work, and neither does the idea that anyone should be able to impose their quasi-religious ideas on everyone else.
8. Retired Spook | September 9th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
If you support the policy, you support the outcome.
Major, let’s see if I understand you correctly. What if we don’t per se support a policy that results in 100’s of thousands or millions of deaths but we also don’t oppose it? Are we off the hook morally? Is it a morally superior position to allow, say a million people to be slaughtered because it’s none of our business as opposed to challenging that position; a challenge that still results in innocent people being killed, albeit a substantially lower number?
AF, I think Kimberly was merely asking if this was your first child.
9. The Arctic Fox | September 9th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Ah, ok, yes it’s my first.
10. phnx | September 9th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
“Less money given to special interest groups and more money given to care for special needs children. It would be refreshing to see the change.
They need to follow through on the promise Sarah Palin made at the convention. She has to show that she will not cut funds in this area, as she did in Alaska.” CO
CO can’t do your own research so you have to just regurgitate donkey talking points?? Its no wonder that no one really cares what you think.
11. js | September 9th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
there is not a medical doctor in the world that would even try to dispute the fact that life begins at conception
you have to be a liberal to do that….
12. js | September 9th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
“Less money given to special interest groups and more money given to care for special needs children. It would be refreshing to see the change.
They need to follow through on the promise Sarah Palin made at the convention. She has to show that she will not cut funds in this area, as she did in Alaska.”
maybe you should find a blog in canada CO
because you ignorance here really proves where you dont belong….
13. js | September 9th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
No Cut for “Special Needs” Kids
It’s not true, as widely reported in mass e-mails, Web postings and at least one mainstream news source, that Palin slashed the special education budget in Alaska by 62 percent. CNN’s Soledad O’Brien made the claim on Sept. 4 in an interview with Nicolle Wallace, a senior adviser to the McCain campaign:
O’Brien, Sept. 4: One are that has gotten certainly people sending to me a lot of e-mails is the question about as governor what she did with the special needs budget, which I’m sure you’re aware, she cut significantly, 62 percent I think is the number from when she came into office. As a woman who is now a mother to a special needs child, and I think she actually has a nephew which is autistic as well. How much of a problem is this going to be as she tries to navigate both sides of that issue?
Such a move might have made Palin look heartless or hypocritical in view of her convention-speech pledge to be an advocate for special needs children and their families. But in fact, she increased special needs funding so dramatically that a representative of local school boards described the jump as “historic.”
According to an April 2008 article in Education Week, Palin signed legislation in March 2008 that would increase public school funding considerably, including special needs funding. It would increase spending on what Alaska calls “intensive needs” students (students with high-cost special requirements) from $26,900 per student in 2008 to $73,840 per student in 2011. That almost triples the per-student spending in three fiscal years. Palin’s original proposal, according to the Anchorage Daily News, would have increased funds slightly more, giving intensive needs students a $77,740 allotment by 2011.
Education Week: A second part of the measure raises spending for students with special needs to $73,840 in fiscal 2011, from the current $26,900 per student in fiscal 2008, according to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development.
Unlike many other states, Alaska has relatively flush budget coffers, thanks to a rise in oil and gas revenues. Funding for schools will remain fairly level next year, however. Overall per-pupil funding across the state will rise by $100, to $5,480, in fiscal 2009. …
Carl Rose, the executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards, praised the changes in funding for rural schools and students with special needs as a “historic event,” and said the finance overhaul would bring more stability to district budgets.
According to Eddy Jeans at the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, funding for special needs and intensive needs students has increased every year since Palin entered office, from a total of $203 million in 2006 to a projected $276 million in 2009.
Those who claim that Palin cut special needs funding by 62 percent are looking in the wrong place and misinterpreting what they find there. They point to an apparent drop in the Department of Education and Early Development budget for special schools. But the special schools budget, despite the similar name, isn’t the special needs budget. “I don’t even consider the special schools component [part of] our special needs funding,” Jeans told FactCheck.org. “The special needs funding is provided through our public school funding formula. The special schools is simply a budget component where we have funding set aside for special projects,” such as the Alaska School for the Deaf and the Alaska Military Youth Academy. A different budget component, the Foundation Program, governs special needs programs in the public school system.
And in any case, the decrease in funding for special schools is illusory. Palin moved the Alaska Military Youth Academy’s ChalleNGe program, a residential military school program that teaches job and life skills to students under 20, out of the budget line for “special schools” and into its own line. This resulted in an apparent drop of more than $5 million in the special schools budget with no actual decrease in funding for the programs.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html
14. js | September 9th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
ignorance is becoming synomymous with liberals and rogue canadian misfits…
15. kimberly4victory | September 10th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Watched a bit of Larry King tonight and some spinner on there mentioned that lie (about cutting funding for special needs children) and neither the Republican Rep nor Karen Hughes called her on it. I was screaming at the tv … She’s a liar! Call her on it! Arrrgggh.
16. Mark Noonan | September 10th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Arctic Fox,
You don’t want a man making a decision for you? Fine and dandy - but who are you, then, to make a decision for an unborn child who might have Downs? Remember, the tests are not 100% accurate, and women who have decided to carry a Downs baby to term have found a perfectly normal baby at the end of the road. Your willingness to kill a difficulty should give you pause…you should, for the first time in your life, really think the matter all the way through.
Yes, I know you’ll tell me that you have - but you haven’t. Trust me on this. Think about it for a while.
17. Robert | September 10th, 2008 at 4:34 am
Mark (and others)
Let me ask you this. This is neither here nor there with the Palin issue, but it does make a point about Conservative and Republican policies in general.
No Child Left Behind ( I mean EVERY child left behind) - do or do not Conservatives and Republicans support this Bush administration bill?
Guess what Mark, NCLB is something that REALLY hurts special needs children. The schools that need better funding for special needs children are not getting that funding because they have students not passing the State required tests with sufficent scores. You want to know why? Because those schools are maybe more poor with more at-risk kids and teachers and programs who are understaffed and underpaid. When kids with Learning Disabilities and other severe special needs do not score well on the State tests - the school is punished and they lose funding for important programs - like Special Education programs. (Oh - by the way - did I mention needed creative outlets like art and music programs?)
Art, writing and music ARE essential to kids. To take away those programs stifles creativity and builds a society of drones without thought (What the Repubs probably want - that way people won’t have the intelligence to see through their lies and BS)
Anyway, I digress. The point here is that in many schools across the country, students are punished by NCLB more than they are helped. It is a money game - it is not about the kids AT ALL.
Also, how many social programs for special needs kids are being cut each year. Conservatives want government out of everything, even programs set up to help parents with special needs kids who are too poor to afford the INCREDIBLE costs of raising a child with special needs.
You may say I have no idea what I am talking about - but I am a Special Education teacher. I know. I am not currently teaching, but I work for a Psychological agency that helps kids with special needs as a Behavioral consultant. I also have a Master’s in Special Ed. and my teaching certification. I have seen all of this first hand.
Mark, ask yourself this question - where would your brother be if all the programs that may have helped him through life were cut. Republicans are doing this, Mark. Bush has done this. How can you not see this.
You are seriously hurting your brother and many others like him by supporting policies that take away programs from kids who need them.
Please look at yourself in the mirror and recognize this fact. Please, for your brother’s sake.
18. phnx | September 10th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Robert, mind telling us what state you teavh in? Beause we know its not Alaska, otherwise you’d be praising Palin. You do know that this thread is about the baseless rumors that leftists have spread about PALIN’S RECORD IN ALASKA don’t you?
But now that you have brought up the rest of the country…please enlighten us what your Democrat congress has done to support special needs kids in the lower 48 states. You do know that the Democrat controlled congress controls the purse strings don’t you???
19. Danish Artist | September 10th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Robert, NCLB bill was written with Kennedy. Uh, would Kennedy allow what you have cited? Kennedy and other liberals were singing the praises of NCLB. Gov’t programs are never cut - just the annual budgetary increase - for example, if their increase is 10% the next year and instead the increase is 5% - it is still an increase. The only appropriation that has been a true cut in the past is the military.
So Kennedy ruined education with NCLB and health care with his HMO legislation, when are you going to look in the mirror and recognize the fact that liberal politicians have ruined everything they touch - “for the children”.
Just thought you should know.