My grandson and his fiance found out their fetus/child will be born with it.
They are in their mid-twenties. He wants to abort, she doesn’t.
What are your thoughts? I say abort.
What do you do?
hope his fiancee is prepared to raise the kid herself, because I see that relationship/marriage going south before much longer.
I say the opinion of everyone in the world who is not one of the two parents is completely irrelevant, unnecessary, and unhelpful.
One of my relatives has Downs Syndrome. He is such a great guy and we all adore him, but he and his family have faced and continue to face a lot of challenges. Just some of the ones that I’m aware of, as a fairly distant relative-- at one point his family couldn’t get health insurance for him because coverage cost far too much; all the time spent wrangling with schools over special ed; it’s not clear if he’ll ever be able to live independently or support himself; etc. Is the world a better place with him in it? Absolutely. But this family definitely belongs to the 1%, and it’s still not easy for them.
But, ultimately, it comes down to what the husband and wife, and especially the wife, want to do. Everyone else needs to butt out.
Totally up to the couple. Hopefully they will work it out. If not, things will be difficult for both of them (or all 3).
I can’t speak for them and I wouldn’t want to make that choice. The life expectancy of people with Down Syndrome has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Many of them are able to lead happy lives, hold down some jobs and even go to college in rare cases. All of the people that I have known with Down Syndrome seemed to be unusually happy and had full support of their communities but it must really hard on the parents.
One of my high school teachers just lost her sister with Down Syndrome just this past week. Jane remained childlike all her life and required constant care from her older sister and her husband because no one else was around to take care of her and she was functional enough to not need to be institutionalized until the very end. However, things didn’t go well when complications made her sick with lots of things including pneumonia. She wouldn’t cooperate with even the most basic care when she had to be removed from the home and it became more about keeping her from injuring herself even further. She wore out everyone trying to take care of her in a few short weeks and passed away right after that.
I think it was a very sad ending to a mostly happy life for everyone involved. If your grandson and his wife have the baby, they will have to go through many stages of hope, happiness, heartache and despair that most parents don’t have to experience at least not so consistently and intensely.
well lock the thread, then.
Abortion is ultimately the mother’s decision. But the marriage is a partnership. If she decides to keep the baby, she should be prepared for single motherhood and having a special needs child not just for 18 or 21 years, but until one of them dies. Of course she might like that. I know women that have done it, their husbands didn’t leave them over it, but sometimes the dad dies. Finding a new man is not easy, you don’t have much time for dating, and if you do find a guy, he probably doesn’t want to marry into that family. What happens if the mom dies and now he’s stuck with a special needs kid as a step-child? Most say no thanks.
On the other hand, if she’s just happy having a perpetual child, she can get all sorts of food stamps, disability checks, heating and housing assistance, and so forth. Medicaid and babysitters can be free, too. Her bringing this life into the world probably will contribute nothing to society, may ruin her marriage, may condemn her to being single, and will likely cost the taxpayers a bundle while adding additional strain to the local schools. But hey, it’s the mother’s decision.
I think anyone that decides not to abort when they know full well the child will be a lifelong burden on the taxpayers should have to sign a waiver saying they will make their own way and not ask for disability for the kid, food stamps, etc. It’s the mother’s decision to have a kid, it’s our obligation to pay for it.
It’s up to the parents, of course.
But I would caution about how certain the diagnosis is. Anything short of an analysis of fetal cells collected via amniocentisis and/or Chorionic villus sampling (CVS), should not be considered highly certain.
Often the initial indication of elevated risk for Down Syndrome is based off of a maternal blood test showing elevated levels of alpha fetoprotein. While elevated levels of alpha fetoprotein are correlated with elevated risk of Downs, still the large majority of fetuses in such pregnancies do not have Down Syndrome.
My 2 cents ss the parent of a special needs child (autism spectrum), had I known at the fetus stage what I know now, I would have wanted to abort. And **NOW **I wouldn’t trade my daughter for anything in the world.
Something like 80% of parents (random web searches) of special needs children divorce. It’s a tough row to hoe. It impacts you 24/7. And, I think it’s fair to say, it’s hard to imagine what life will be like until you live it under such circumstance.
My daughter will likely never be independent. And it’s probably going to fall, fairly or not, on her siblings to help take care of her after my wife and I pass on. I worry about her and her future every day.
What I would do isn’t really important. Some things we really need to decide just for ourselves as we face them.
I’ve worked with people with a lot of various handicaps or birth defects (and yes - I hate both phrases/terms) and Downs is the one I would fear least. The people I’ve known with that condition have been great people to teach or work with. It will have its challenges and there will be some really bad days and weeks but that sort of comes with any birth certificate no matter how average or healthy we are.
That’s got to be a tough situation. I can easily say not being emotionally-invested in the situation that they should abort, but the mother is carrying the child, even if he convinced her to get an abortion, she may blame him for it. Or if they have the child then their marriage may dissolve anyway if the father is unhappy, and the mother will probably remind him constantly that he wanted to abort.
How far along is the mother, and was this one of the more definitive tests as other posters alluded to?
The problem with that stance is that it punishes the child for a decision someone else made.
Once the kid is here the kid is as deserving of help as any other human being. Punish the parents if you must, but denying help to the kid does nothing positive.
Wow, what a coincidence. My daughter and son-in-law just found out today that their unborn child probably has Down Syndrome and a rather serious heart defect. She’s in her 7th month; baby is due the first week in December.
The diagnosis was based on ultrasound, not amniocentesis. They found a too-flat face, and too-short limbs, and the heart defect. The weird thing is that after last week’s ultrasound the doctors said everything looked fine, and now this.
I was going to start a thread asking about this topic, and saw this one already here.
I let her cry on my shoulder for a while and reassured her that we would love her and the new baby regardless of anything, and would be here to give any support that we can, including the care of her other two children (a 5 yo and a 1 yo).
Someone told her that it’s possible the child might not even survive delivery because of the heart defect – a hole between the two atria of the heart.
If anyone has information about any of these things, I’d be glad to have it.
I know that heart defects are common in people with Down’s; I know that holes between parts of the heart are much more common than people think, and how serious they are depends on relative size; I also know that some of them need to be monitored but usually close up by themselves whereas others are “surgery, now” (my nephew’s pediatric surgeon does heart work, in his own case the problem was elsewhere). A quick search found this page I think you’ll find useful: it talks both about different types of heart problems and their treatment, and about Down’s and what kind of health issues are associated with it.
This is the specific defect you’re talking about: atrial septal defect (sounds even scarier in Latin!)
I think it’s unlikely the baby would die during delivery due to the heart defect, partly because I know a couple of people (who don’t have Down’s) with exactly the same defect. It needs to be operated on quickly but then the prognosis is good. Not 100% survival, but not that far from it, and it depends on other factors too. Knowing about it in advance is one of the major factors in survival.
The future for people with Down’s is a lot brighter than it used to be, but it does mean choosing to be the parent of a child who will always be dependant on you. That is not a small thing. If they have more kids, those kids will grow up knowing that their late middle-age will probably include looking after their older sibling. That is also not a small thing. Neither are impossible to deal with, however, and aborting against your will, after being persuaded by other people, even the father, could be equally as damaging. Try as you might not to blame them/him, it would be very likely to come up at least occasionally.
If anyone says "well, your healthy child in the womb can have complications at birth or an accident later that renders them disabled - true, but that counts for Down’s Syndrome kids as well - they can get hit by cars, etc, as much as anyone else, and then they have a physical disability on top of the ones they already have.
It’s ultimately up to the parents but I will say with kids, you never know what you will get or how they will turn out.
Well actually yes you will know sometimes. Like when the doctor tells you based on tests as in the OP’s situation.
No, even then you don’t.
Down Syndrome is no more cut and dried as a diagnosis than most others - there are variations in how it presents.
There are people with DS who are quite high functioning, like the son in the 80’s(?) sitcom. Corky, I think his name was in the show? (Sorry, never watched it much). And it can also mean a severe mental and physical handicap, with care and help needed 24/7. Or it could be any one of the zillion variations in between.
Life is always a crapshoot, even when you think you have all the answers.
ETA This is the actor I was thinking of: Chris Burke (actor) - Wikipedia
Well you may not know the severity of it, but you certainly can know beforehand if a baby will have Down’s syndrome.