September 29, 2008 8:19 PM
DC Metro/ VA Down syndrome - pumpkin patch invitation!
Each year, the Blakeley Family gathers sponsors to treat families of children with Down syndrome to a wonderful day of food and fun: riding ponies and tractors, food and fun, oh yeah - and picking a pumpkin to take home.
Click here for more information.
Let's send this to the Palin family too!
Posted in Down syndrome, Loudoun County | Permalink
Comments
Wow! That'd be a great event for Palin to attend!
Things have come a long way since the Kennedy family put Rosemary away and had her lobotomized.
To be entirely fair, what the Kenned family did wasn't considered cruel or unusual back then. It was a time of institutionalization, of telling parents of disabled children to put them away, forget they ever had them, and try to have a "normal" baby next time.
It was comparable to the way families today are told to abort disabled children, throw them away, forget they'd ever conceived them, and try to have a "normal baby next time.
I spent years working in one of those institutions where disabled children were hidden away. And as cruel as we now know in retrospect it was to do that, at least those children had a chance to grow up. I got to know and love many of them as adults. They turned out in many cases to be totally remarkable people, building lives for themselves in a place that would drive most "normal" people to madness or suicide.
As much as I loathe much of what Senator Kennedy does and stands for, I have to admire that he took to heart what had happened to his sister, to other children like her, and to families facing a diagnosis of Down syndrome for one of their children. The result, the Brownback/Kennedy Bill requiring doctors to stop trying to terrify parents into aborting special-needs kids, will likely be fast-tracked in January if the McCain/Palin team gets into the White House.
Posted by: Christina | September 7, 2008 5:58 PM
