Down for love

Doctors routinely advise moms expecting a baby with Downs syndrome to abort the child: often they insist that the child will never grow up, never be able to care for himself, or read or write. Faced with such a dire prediction, most mothers agree to abortion, even though most of these abortions are late term abortions (which is one reason for the hysteria about laws limiting abortion to very early pregnancy).

in reality, the IQ is usually 40 points lower than the parents, so these predictions are not always true.

So I am seeing Netflix had a series about adults with Down's syndrome facing dating, adulthood, etc.

This mother of a Down's syndrome baby is a bit sceptical of the series for ignoring that alas they are overestimating the challenges for these people, and the challenges that their parents face.

alas also true.

Most modern doctors are ignorant of the medical problems that these children face: immune system problems, that in the past was the reason few of these children lived to adulthood... But they also have an increased chance of developing leukemia, hypothyroidism, and develop Alzheimers at an early age.

when I was in medical school they were not sure what caused the problem: Until a doctor Jerome LeJeune discovered it was due to an extra chromosome.

his realization that his discovery might not benefit these children, but be a way to destroy their lives, horrified him. Indeed, as this film review notes:

The meteoric rise of this young French scientist will be be stopped in a flash in 1969. While receiving the William Allen Award in San Francisco, the highest award in genetics, he delivered a speech defending the human dignity of the embryo, causing an earthquake in the scientific sphere.

A few months before, he realized that his discovery would be used against his convictions, by opening the door to abortion of embryos with genetic abnormalities

since then, of course, not only is screening and aborting imperfect children become the norm, but now there are experiments with fetal parts, using fetal tissue to make stem cells for vaccines, and manipulating embryos: all of which do not see an unborn child as a person recognized and love by God, but just a bunch of cells to be manipulated for the good of mankind ( or actually out of scientific curiosity by amoral scientists). 

It says a lot about stem cells that it was a non Christian Japanese scientist who started worrying about destroying life in these experiments and so devised a way to manipulate adult cells to become stem cells.

Dr. Yamanaka was an assistant professor of pharmacology doing research involving embryonic stem cells when he made the social call to the clinic about eight years ago. At the friend’s invitation, he looked down the microscope at one of the human embryos stored at the clinic. The glimpse changed his scientific career. “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said Dr. Yamanaka, 45, a father of two and now a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University. “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

(Full article on wayback machine)

well, anyway, Vaticanista reporter Magister notes that LeJeune warned John Paul II and the Vatican about the implications of his discovery: and put the Vatican on the record that human life, even before it was fully formed, was human and loved by God....(Jerimiah 1:5)

but Magister notes that in more recent years, although Pope Francis does mention the problems, it is no longer a priority and he avoids fighting for this because it is unpopular. Indeed, Francis filled the pro life academy in the Vatican with those who support abortion and oppose the traditional pro life defense that has been the rule in Catholicism since the ancient church. 

Magister includes Lejeune's talk warning of this:

(From “Jérôme Lejeune. The freedom of the scientist,” pp. 386-393)

“You who are for the family will be laughed at. The specter of science, apparently gagged by an outdated morality, will wave against you the tyrannical flag of relentless experimentation. Bishops, have no fear. You have the words of life.”

the cutting edge back then was IVF, where embryos are made outside the womb and replanted into a woman who is infertile and wants a baby. 

Babies are good, aren't they? 

But no one wants to see the problem: It makes the embryo a commodity to be discarded (hundreds of thousands of these unwanted embryos exist). It also has led to the practice of farming out pregnancy  to be grown in a surrogate (often to a very poor woman in the third world), and it destroys the idea that a child is a product of love making: and this is at a time when the pill already made having children an enemy of sexual freedom.

Will the Netflix series remind people that people with Down's syndrome are actually people, to be loved and cherished, and not aborted routinely, and allow society to discuss the moral and social issues behind the commodification of life? Or will it just quietly be ignored?

But there is another film out there, about Dr Lejeune, and his fight for the humanity of the imperfect.

will it be picked up by a streaming service, or will Churches (and mosques) encourage the believers who attend them to view it and discuss this issue?

Developing...