"No-choice", "pro-choice", etc.
Farrell Till jftill@midwest.net
Sat, 21 Mar 1998 11:39:04 -0800 (00890530744, 2.2.32.19980321193904.0070ae0c@midwest.net)
At 08:02 AM 3/21/98 -0500, Greg, Nancy, and James Todd wrote:
>NANCY
>I was once at a Tupperware party during which the topic of severely retarded
>children came up. One of the ladies had a friend who has a child who was
>severely and profoundly retarded. She made one of the most ludicrous
>statements I have ever heard, one that often spews from the mouths of
>xtians, fundy and non-fundy alike. She said that God doesn't give burdens to
>people who can't handle them.
>
TILL
Your statement reminds me of a young woman who lived directly across the
road from me when I was growing up. She was probably seven or eight years
older than I, but she was a very pretty girl, and I had a childhood crush on
her. She later married (by which time I had gotten over the crush) and had
a severely retarded son. This was a case of a child who could only lie in
bed and had to be cared for like a baby even when he was grown (the last
time I saw him). To make a long story short, the mother refused to
institutionalize the child, probably out of feelings of guilt--she was a
member of the Church of Christ--and eventually the pressure of the situation
broke up her marriage and resulted in her own institutionalization. The
last time I saw the child, he was being cared for by his grandmother, but
after her death, the "child" now in his twenties was finally
institutionalized. I would say that in this case, God gave this family more
than it could bear. What angers me is that asininities like this are
always vocalized by people who really have no particular burdens to bear.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net