"No-choice", "pro-choice", etc.
Ian & Pam Dorion dorioni@ipa.net
Sat, 21 Mar 1998 12:00:36 -0600 (00890524836, 199803211802.MAA26890@thunder.ipa.net)
> >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
IAN
What I especially like about these situations is the woman who knows she is
going to have a child reverly retarded or deformed and still insists on
having the child rather than aborting it. "Oh. I'll take care of it," she
will say -- until she ends up in the sanatorium or she kicks the bucket and
then it's society's burden.