Down's syndrome, parents that need their children's forgiveness, and memory loss

I'm going to start with the memory loss portion first.....before I forget. This morning I had wanted to rant about three different things. I went to church and came up with a fourth. But now I'm back down to two, because I forgot the other two. Either that or they weren't of any significance and should be relegated to the ravings of an overweigkt lunatic. Me.

Wait! I just remembered! In an earlier blog I mentioned that extreme political positions are to ignored. I'm still waiting for Obama to stick it to the far left. I wanted to sing the praises of our own Governor Huntsman who has come out in favor of civil unions. The far right took out a full page advertisement in the paper today. I started reading it. I got about a third the way through and went looking for some promethazine. Which helped me remember the other thing that I wanted to mention before I get to the actual topics mentioned in the title.

I am opposed to abortion, except in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother is in jeopardy. This is the mantra of the far right. They pretty much got it right on this issue. I am also in favor of abortion when the child will not enjoy a quality of life befitting a human. I'll get back to this later.

Naturally I support measures that reduce the numbers of abortions performed in this country. Whether it be better and more readily available prenatal care, age appropriate sex eduation in the schools, Planned Parenthood, and all the other things that the right wishes to do away with. Anybody care to venture a guess about whether there were more or less abortion during the Clinton years? Anybody want to guess what happened under W? The one thing that is most often ignored in the abortion debate is POVERTY. When people don't have jobs they are more likely to have abortions. Especially all the 'healthy white ones' that some adoptive parents clamor over. Poverty and jobs are a moral issue just like abortion. Anybody care to guess about the correlation between level of education and abortion rates? Education is a moral issue. So instead of passing more laws, placing more restrictions, let's deal with the reasons women have abortions to begin with.

I mentioned earlier that certain defects should be considered in deciding when to have an abortion. There was an op-ed piece in the Deseret News railing against the evils of a more reliable (and safer than amniocentesis) test for determining whether a fetus has Down's. Again the far right has things partially right when they say that Down's patients should not be aborted. Most should not be. Most in this country are. The test is not evil. What we as a nation are doing can be argued. Hopefully this test will lead to more reliable tests that can determine the severity of the what the child will have. Then better choices can be made, more Down's children will live and not be aborted.

Earlier I alluded to a quality of life befitting a human. Perhaps I should quickly clarify. One should be aware of one's environment. One should be able to continue to learn. One should be able to experience joy and sadness, pain and pleasure, loss and gain, and have some measure of perspective about what is right and wrong. One should have eventually have some measure of independence.

One of the tenets of my religious beliefs is not only a hereafter but familes persisting. My father died a few years back. I hope to be reunited with him someday. Yet I fear that my father will likely be angry at me for letting his life extend past the point where the previous paragraph would not define his existence. I should have liked to have done what he often told to do when I was younger, "John, if I ever get so bad that I'm not living any more you have to promise that you'll just shoot me". Sorry Dad. I am genuinely sorry I had to prolong things, but I would have gone to jail had I done what you wanted. Were it not Alzheimers, but some type of genetic conversion whereby people became progressively Down's, or spina bifida, or anencephalic there would be an outpouring of understanding for those who might want to prevent it from progressing past a certain point.

Finally, I wish to rail against a common attitude of supposedly adult children when a parent dies and the other remarries. It happened today in church. One of the speakers went on and on about her divine nature in 'forgiving' her father for remarrying after her mother passed. I take special exception to this being someone who has lost a spouse and remarried.

We don't need anyone's fortgiveness because we have done nothing wrong. I don't know the specifics of this particular couple, but I can't imagine a scenario whereby he shouldn't remarry. People have notions I suppose that one should 'grieve' for a certain period of time. And should stay single, alone, and unhappy after that. I encountered some of this when I started to piece together the lives of me and my boys. After Teresa's funeral, the boys and I drove her best friend to the burial. Her friend was living in the Bay area, for about a year previous, and had barely flown in. Imagine the sight of me getting out of the van with a blond with a spiky-haired blond, who had a loooooooong hug for me and a kiss for both boys. Some must have thought I brought a date!

Why did I remarry so soon? Not that it's anybody's business, but because my first wife had told me to. She must have had some premonition I suppose. Starting a few months before she died, she would tell me that if she died that she wanted me to remarry right away. Less than five months after it happened, I had remarried. Many were aghast. The one group that it could have been the most expected from was Teresa's family. In fact, they were the most supportive and understanding. They were all happy that the boys had a new mom (and two new brothers!). They went out of their way to make my new family their family. This act of true divine nature is one that I shall not forgive nor be able to repay.