“Based on the facts presented in this article one can conclude that if the doctor had properly targeted the unborn child with Down syndrome and successfully terminated this twin then he would have kept his medical license,”
That’s what I don’t understand. How can someone say that one is more worthy to be born than the other. I’m so very glad that my parents chose life for my little brother with Down Syndrome. He’s been beyond a special blessing to my family as well as our friends! Thanks Danielle!

My heart breaks because this mother chose one child over another. She decided that she wanted a baby, wanted to be a mother, but “of THIS child, not THAT child.” Could she choose one over another after they were born? She will mourn more than the loss of a child for the rest of her life.

On of my nephews is a Down syndrome baby.  My brother tells me he’s not a source of pain at all, but of a lot of love!  As someone with a much smaller genetic disease, I can sympathize to a degree personally, but to experience a Down child is to experience life, not problems.

I’m hoping the parents decided to keep the little survivor of this atrocity. I’m hoping that they will learn the biggest lesson of their lives through their beautiful child.

Well, I just checked the original article and the one comment posted said that these people chose otherwise. The sadness of this runs so deep.So many would have loved this child. A dear friend carried her Downs baby to term only to have him stillborn. Some things I just don’t get and must leave in the hands of God. We, for our part, have to pray and fight the good fight. Just so sad.

Such a pity that this doctor, and so many others, are still uneducated about Down’s Syndrome. A research group of educators have shown that they can teach these children using an established program - and they will be able to learn at or above the rate of the “average” child. Which means that the “average” child isn’t being educated correctly.
http://www.iahp.org/

This angers me so much. There’s no such thing as a disabled child! The child can love and be loved what’s the disability there? Life may be a little more difficult but my Mom always told me the good things in life were trouble. Nothing good ever came easy in this life. God always seems to balance the difficulties with great blessings.

Judging by all the people with Down syndrom whom I personally know or have met, I would hazard a guess that, in the eternal perspective, I’m more handicapped than they are.  They all seem to be very sweet and have such good hearts, and they will probably spend less time in Purgatory than I will.  Father, forgive our twisted culture that calls such an evil as aborting a Down syndrom baby a “good” (or any baby, for that matter).  We have blinded ourselves to the Truth!

If these parents do not want the imperfect child..They can give it to us….

Oh the lies and falsehoods we are led to believe….how do these medical doctors who swear an OATH to first do no harm….are the ones responsible for coercing parents into believeing “you don’t want this child.”

Lord have Mercy on us all.

This is a fictional book.You Catholics have a lot of nerve putting this book down,you forgive these things at confession,abortion for instance. You call yourselves"fathers”, excuse me but there is only one father”, he is God!How dare you blasphemous people Of the catholic religion, how many children have been molested by your so called fathers.Like I said, “The Killing Gift” is fictional!When in doubt monitor what your child reads as much as you would when they’re watching t.v.I would tell my child it’s just fiction!

Darlene, what are you talking about?  We are not discussing “The Killing Gift,” a novel about a woman who can kill people just by wishing them dead.  Rather, we are discussing Matthew Kachinas, the abortion doctor in Sarasota, Florida, who lost his medical license because he killed the “wrong” twin—the “normal” one rather than the one with Down syndrom who was the intended target of the abortion.  You can read about it here: http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/sarasota-doctor-loses-medical-license-for-aborting-wrong-fetus/1086967

As to your trying to say that all Catholics are bad because a small percentage of our priests committed an attrocious, horrendous crime, well, all I can say is that Jesus (who we Catholics truly believe to be the Divine Second Person of the Holy Trinity—in other words, God) chose 12 men to be his closest followers, and one of the 12 was a devil.  Didn’t He know that Judas would betray him?  Of course, but I believe he wanted to give us hope when we face people within the church who allow Satan to work within them.  Jesus didn’t abondon his plan to save mankind because of that one Apostle (8% of his first intended bishops!), and we shouldn’t abandon the Church that He founded—his Bride—because of the 1.8% of the men who have betrayed their calling and have betrayed us all by commiting a horrendous crime.

Sorry, I miss understood,I am not calling every Catholic bad either, I just don’t believe in calling anyone your dad but God himself or your own father.In the very 1st bible God has a name, it is Jehovah!Your religion changed that.No I’m not a witness,do some research & get back to me.As for that doctor an eye for an eye,He will see to that!

Darlene,  if you take the Matthew 23:9 literally [“Jesus Christ said, ‘And call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father, which is in heaven.”] and if you think it’s wrong to call to call “[any] man on earth your father,” why do you make an exception for your own biological father?  The words of the verse don’t support making ANY exceptions.  I submit that Jesus did not intend these words to be taken literally, but that he was rather making the larger point that God is the ULTIMATE Father of us all.  After all, the Apostles themselves, as recorded in infallible Sacred Scripture, called other men fathers; and one would think that they not only heard Christ’s exact words (after all, they were the ones who passed those words down to us in Sacred Scripture), but they also understood his meaning and tried to obey (after all, they gave their very lives – usually in horrific ways – to defend Christ’s bride, the Church, and the teachings of Christ they were handing down through her).  Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit and about to become the first martyr, called the very men that Jesus was denouncing in Matthew 23 “brethren and fathers” (Acts 7:2).  The Apostle Paul echoed Stephen in Acts 22:1 by calling the Jewish leaders “brethren and fathers,” and he called Abraham “the father of many nations.”  (In fact, Jesus himself called Abraham “Father Abraham” in his teaching about Lazarus and the rich man.)  Paul compares his relationship with the Thessalonian Christians to a “father with his children.” (I Thess 2:11), and the Apostle John, too, uses the term in his first epistle (1 John 2:13-14). 

    But probably the best evidence that the apostles understood Jesus’ words differently from how you understand them is that Paul, in 1 Cor 4:14-16, says, “For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.  I urge you then, to be imitators of me.”  Notice that Paul not only calls himself “father” in a religious sense, but he urges us to imitate him! 

    There are plenty of examples of the use of the word “father” by the very first Christians, also, but I think the biblical evidence is sufficient to make the case that Jesus could not have meant for us never to use the word “father” except to refer to God the Father (which is what his words actually say and for which you are not justified in making an exception for biological fathers if you are to take his words literally) because, as the Bible itself says, “God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”  (1 Cor 14:33)  I believe that He would not allow Sacred Scripture to contradict its own meaning.

    By the way, God’s name in the Old Testament is not really “Jehovah” but “Yahweh” (“I AM”).  The Jews believed the sacred name of God was so holy that they never uttered it.  Even when they wrote it in their scriptures, they left out the vowels so that God’s holy name could not possibly be profaned.  In other words, they wrote “YHWH” which is also written “JHVH” (remember, they were writing in Hebrew, not English).  When later translators of the Scriptures filled in the vowels, they sometimes filled in the vowels that belonged in their word for “Lord” instead of the vowels that belonged in “Yahweh.”  That’s where the word “Jehovah” comes from.  So if you insist on using only the name for God that He himself provided to Moses, you might do better to call Him “Yahweh” rather than Jehovah,” although I would believe that he would judge your heart (which obviously loves Him tremendously!) more so than your words.

Peace and grace to you, Darlene.  God loves you!

Amy, What a beautiful job you have done in explaining this topic. Thank you for taking the time. We have all been educated.
Your patience and tenderness is a good witness to Darlene and others who have heard so many falsehoods about our beloved church.
Darlene,May I suggest that you ask Our Lord to reveal to you His heart for the Catholic Church.His heart aches over all the abuses, but it also burns with love for her.May He hold you both close.

Last year I went to the funeral of a 10yr old severely handicapped boy.  I saw more love in his family, mom, dad and 2 sisters plus aunts,uncles and friends than I have ever seen in my life and I’m over 70.  I saw this boy grow from an infant and his family involved him in all that they did. 
I remember hearing this years ago that “you shouldn’t have any more children than you can love,” and for some people that could mean 10-15 kids and others, lots of others in today’s society, it means 0 kids.

THANK YOU Danielle for reading my article and taking the time to spread the TRUTH about this silent eugenic movement.  Please let me know if I can ever be of assistance, and I wish you and your family all of God’s Blessings and Goodness.
In Christ,
Kurt Kondrich
http://chloesmessage.blogspot.com/

Okay, here’s my view on this. If a child has SEVERE LIFE THREATENING problems, then all options need to be considered. But if there’s a sliver of chance that a child can live any given time humanly, then let it be born. Marfan Syndrome runs in my family, should have my baby brother been killed for having it since before birth? I don’t condone of abortion unless the baby is already gone, is a threat to the life of the mother, or would suffer greatly if born. I have known people that have lived with severe congenital facial deformities that have full productive lives.

Amen Amy!  I have a 3 yr old son with Down Syndrome.  My husband and I (both Catholics) believe in Pro Life and therefore chose to keep our unborn child at 16 weeks.  We are blessed with the most loving, adorable, little boy ever!

should have kept other twin also. no reason to kill one and leave the twin without its twin. I dont like the whole killing part. If i had twins ine with and one without. i would keep them since most likely the other twin would understand the one with down syndrome better than the parents would. no matter what love your children for they are yours.

I know I’m going to get a lot of hate for pointing this out.  Biologically, persons with disabilities are not suppose to survive. In any other species, those that are not “genetically perfect” will not be chosen to mate, and hence will not pass on their genes.  It is survival of the fittest. Before advance medicine that has made it possible for people to live with all sorts of disabilities, they died, or were considered to be witches or possessed or a whole slew of other things.  What the doctor did was not right, and its cruel for people to choose to terminate a fetus because it is malformed, but it is because of the medical progress that these people can survive in the first place.

This makes me sick to my stomach!  As the Mother of a child with a genetic disorder, this is just wrong!  My Husband and I cherish all three of our children for what they can teach this world of ours!  Without our special needs daughter, our whole family and circle of friends and community, would have missed out on wealth of knowledge that only she can teach!  She has truly blessed so many lives, especially ours!

More proof that our culture is morally and spiritually bankrupt.  We live in a spiritual desert at this time.  I pray that our culture will come to realize its moral and spiritual bankruptcy and will grow to understand that all life in sacred.

Melissa:

Peace be yours in Christ.

If we were living as animals, outside in caves, in trees, with no knowledge of how our bodies worked, with no undersanding of how to heal our own, you might have a point.  But you know something?  We aren’t actually ‘just animals’.  We don’t just ‘survive’. We don’t have to be concerned about survival of the fittest, because we are fully capable of thinking and acting above that.  There are some signs even among the remains of our earliest ancestors that many groups of them also cared for those who were elderly or very young or deformed or injured.  That is one of the traits we humans seem to possess as a normal part of our instincts. Why they thought deformity happened, or how they would have been viewed is irrelevant to the point that they were fed and cared for in some capacity.  And in various times in our human history, some groups did much better than others. 

If we were just animals, and if it were just about just survival, you would also have to say, then, that the man who becomes diabetic should not be treated, because he is not fit for survival. And, of course, he should not mate, either.  You would have to say that the woman who has cancer should die because she is no longer fit for survival.  That the child or grandmother with pneumonia or asthma, or emphysema should just die because “it is because of the medical progress that these people can survive in the first place.” 

In other words, the only reason we all don’t die at the same rate as those even a hundred years ago is because of medical progress. I will guess that this includes you.  I’m sure you’ve needed antibiotics for something serious in the course of your life that would have killed or rendered crippled someone else just a hundred years ago. And the crippled are not ‘supposed to survive’ in that animal world, either.

Because we are human, endowed by our Creator with a brain and a soul that has the capacity to live above mere survival-of-the-fittest, we also have the capacity to do something other animals can’t do: develop ways to heal our bodies and prolong our own lives, live better lives, and take care of those of our own who are not able to do so on their own naturally.

In ‘nature’ the elderly do not survive but we should know better than to say that because they are dependent on others for basics of life, they would just die anyway, so ....  If you were concussed and comatose, should your doctor just let you die because you are not able to just ‘survive’ and feed yourself for the duration of your illness? No, we provide for you until you can, or until your body naturally expires from its injury (at least, we ought to) because we are not animals.

Now, I hope you don’t construe this for hate.  It isn’t.  It is an act of love, of charity for you, called ‘instructing the ignorant’, and it is another sign that we aren’t just animals.