This article from a Scottish Sunday paper was also prompted by the media response to the UK statistics released last week.
The upside of Down's
Dani Garavelli, Scotland on Sunday, 01 November 2009
Almost every day, I pass a little boy with Down's syndrome coming home from school.
As he bounces along the road, his face beaming, he is so cute I want to pick him up and take him home. At my local church, too, there are special masses in which adults with DS play a leading role. They are among the most moving services I've been to, perhaps because those involved throw themselves so unreservedly and so unselfconsciously into proceedings.
Of course, I realise these brief encounters give me no real insight into what it would be like to raise a child born with this condition. Moreover, harping on about how "loving" and "unaffected" people with DS are, is borderline offensive, suggesting as it does that they are a homogeneous mass rather than individuals with distinctive personalities like everyone else. Click here to read the whole article.
(Ed - I had to read the third last paragraph a couple of times to be sure what it said. A quick Google search showed that Claire Rayner's patronage of the Down's Syndrome Association (in London) was immediately terminated when she made the remarks referred to.)
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