New Earlier Genetic Testing

Hi there.  It has been quite a long time since I have written.  Eight months to be exact!

Did you know that a new test is going to become available for expecting parents soon?  The test will be a blood test that determines your baby's sex even earlier than the now available abdominal ultrasound around 16-18 weeks of gestation.
How do you feel about that?  What is the purpose?  Is it so that parents can celebrate even earlier; find out if it's going to be all blue or if it's going to be all pink?
Perhaps.  There are many parents who would like to find out even sooner.  Maybe get an even sooner start on that new color in the nursery.  But is that what your first thought was?  Or was it something a bit more **dark?

My gut reaction was what many countries around the world are already doing....aborting unwanted girls (and at rarer times, boys).  It has been a long time preference in world cultures for women to bear boys and not girls.  Will this test now afford people the luxury of 'choosing' what child they will have?  Will it spur the thought in folks that hey, we already have a girl.  We only want two children....let's opt out on another girl...and try again for a boy next time. 
You think it sounds vulgar.  You think it sounds extreme.  I don't think it's any step farther away from aborting for genetic disorders, selective reduction, or the ever so popular 'inconvenient' pregnancy.

When will you take a stand?  When is enough, enough?  Must a line be drawn.  Are you ok with aborting for one reason and not another?  Is one reason for aborting really better or 'more ok' than another? 

When we were pregnant with our daughter, we found it appalling and grotesque that so many physicians and techinicians asked us if we were 'continuing' our pregnancy.  Do you think they will soon begin to ask if you are ok with the sex your fetus is?  We live in an 'extreme' culture.  I don't find it so far fetched or extreme to see it in the near future.

January 2011

Sometimes things can seem so big and impossible, one doesn't know where to begin.  So if you read that when a person is 'genetically counseled' that their child, in utero, has Down syndrome, 93% of these people choose to kill their child, how do you fight that?
Well, I have finally realized that everyone starts somewhere.  I was at the gym the other day and saw an article about a girl who simply read a statistic about the violence against women in the Congo.  Beside the article was a picture of her in the Congo, running.  She started a fund by running races, and there she was doing something about it.
I have asked God to help me do something about bringing the positive to light about people with Down syndrome so that the genocide against them would lessen....maybe one day...cease?
So I talked to my darling husband and I have decided to learn more about becoming a Parent Liaison for the Down Syndrome Association of Atlanta.  It's a starting place, right?
Listen, you have to understand....it all started back when we were pregnant, and we were asked several times if we wanted to 'keep' our daughter or 'terminate' her.  Can you imagine someone asking you that about your child?  It's time to do something.  Perhaps sometime in the future, run a program that counsels the genetic counselers, perinatologists, and Ob/Gyn groups on how to discuss this diagnosis in a positive way and talk about all of the beautiful and wonderful things people with Down syndrome achieve in and contribute to our society. 
God is big.  Bigger than me.  Thank goodness!

Just call it a Calling

Patience.  This is the beginning of a 'Calling' that began with a feeling over a year ago.  The fact that I was supposed to 'despair' over the news that our baby girl would be born with Down syndrome and didn't...at all.  There is the fact that my husband also felt and believed from the beginning that 'a baby is a baby is a baby.
The Calling grew.  And then God would call me again.  He would continue to tell me that this is what He wants from me right now. 
So I ask for patience as I stumble, as I may choose the wrong road from time to time.  I'm ready though, Lord.  Whatever you're going to do with our family, we're ready and willing. 
And I'm so excited!!!