So I was driving home the other night from work and there was a car in front of me with a few bumper stickers. The first thing that struck me was this person has a sense of balance….. well visually anyway. There were matching bumper stickers placed in identical location on both sides of the bumper. The second thing that struck me was that one set of bumper stickers promoted animal rescue shelters and the second set of stickers promoted Pro-Choice. I love irony. My mind processed the message as “be nice to animals, support abortion of human life”. It reminded me of a vegan couple I knew back in the late 70’s who were against the killing of animals for food but had an abortion because they were’nt ready to be parents.

I don’t relate to that way of thinking. Seems selfish to me.

We didn’t adopt our son 17 years ago to make a statement or send a message. We wanted to be parents and were led to adopt a child with special needs. It has only been in the years since that I have come to learn that 90% of parents receiving a pre-natal diagnosis of Down syndrome elect to abort their child.

Right now I’m sitting with my son watching the Eagles play lose the NFC Championship game. He cheers, he boos, he storms out of the room. It’s a guy thing. Earlier today he was at the arcade for about 90 minutes, went to the movies and saw, Bedtime Stories, and then went to out to lunch. Yesterday was an equally full day. He lives a full life, doesn’t suffer and neither do we. Our lives have been transformed by being his parents.

I am convinced that more people would choose to continue their pregnancies if they better appreciated what it meant to raise a child with Down syndrome. There are postive perspectives that you won’t always find from the medical community. Talk to other parents, contact local support groups, email me! We have another web site that’s full of resources for people searching for information at http://www.DownSyndromePages.com