One of the Lucky Ones

I can't recall where I ran into this last night, so I apologize if I'm failing to hat tip someone... This Telegraph story from the UK tells the story of Harrison Green, a two-year-old with Down's Syndrom who survived against the odds.

Britain's National Health System now provides screening for Down's Syndrom for free to all 'at risk' women, and many doctors put a great deal of pressure on women with prositive diagnoses to abort. 62% of Down's Syndrom cases in the UK are now diagnosed pre-natally, and 92% of those diagnosed abort. Thus, the UK has now reached the point where the majority of infants conceived with Down's Syndrom are aborted.

Lisa Green believes that if she'd been diagnosed earlier, the extreme pressure from her doctor might have landed her in the 92%. But Harrison wasn't diagnosed with Down's Syndrom until he was 35 weeks along. The doctor pressured her to abort anyway, but given that she'd already named him, and knew that he would be fully viable (he was estimated at 7lbs at 35 weeks) she refused.

"We don't know what we'd do without him - he's so adored," says Mrs Green. "The frightening thing is that, had we been told by the same doctor about the Down's syndrome earlier in the pregnancy, there is a chance we might have decided to abort. That decision would have been based on incomplete and biased information."

But by the time of diagnosis, the Greens already knew that their feelings about their son were unconditional. In the end, the couple decided to act on biased information of their own: love.