Asperger's/PDD

he went totally bald, from a condition called alopecia areata, an auto-immune disorder that causes hair loss. At that same time, I became pregnant again. My mother asked me if I was sure I'd want to have another baby. What if the second child also went bald?

I was a bit offended, because I could tell that going bald was not the worst possible thing that could possibly happen to my child. Fast forward about ten years, and the second kid also went totally bald from alopecia.

Go forward a couple more years, and my very quirky oldest son was finally diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome. Asperger's, at least as my son has it, isn't all that hard to live with. I cannot begin to imagine having a severely disabled child myself. In fact, I often am very grateful that I don't have a severely disabled child.

I think anyone who wants to take advantage of prenatal testing should be able to do so, and the final decision about what to do needs to be up to the woman. Period. Several states are no introducing bills to forbid late term abortions, or ones to abort a Down Syndrome fetus. That's beyond despicable. If they included funding to fully support handicapped and disabled children, it would be one thing, but they're just piously saying: You must have the baby and after that, you're on your own.

I happen to know a couple of people with a Down Syndrome child. One is an only child, now a young adult, the other is the oldest of three children. Both situations have turned out quite well, at least in part because both children are rather high functioning. I know at least one person who told me that when their unborn child was diagnosed with Down's, they had an abortion. Their choice. Pure and simple.