Mail Call: Home At Long Last

Boyne City, Mich.

Early screening may lead some parents to abort, but it probably leads just as many to research their child's disability and prepare themselves, their medical team and their home environment to lovingly raise a child with special needs. Special is exactly the right word--special rewards, but also special challenges that are better met with education, preparation and acceptance. What is gained by forcing ill-prepared parents to badly raise a child who needs even more love and support than a typical child? How can one rationally oppose "Forewarned is forearmed"?

Leah Guggenheimer

New Rochelle, N.Y.

George Will eloquently expresses what I have thought for years--that the hidden reason for prenatal screening of Down syndrome is the desire to eliminate this condition completely. In 1995, I was a 25-year-old, first-time parent, and it was devastating to learn that my newborn son had Down syndrome. I would have been better prepared for this challenge had I known while pregnant, and I would have fallen in the 15 percent of parents who choose not to abort. That being said, given the high percentage of abortions, the push to screen all pregnancies reeks of a desire--on the part of parents or the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists--to have only perfect babies. To be a parent you must have love, patience and tolerance, and above all, you must accept that there is no perfect child, just as there is no perfect parent.

Jill Desmond Robb