Welcome to Illinois

In have decided to delete the page called Living in Illinois (or what it is like to raise a child with Down’s syndrome) as I have also been posting updates to that to the main blog (under the personal category) and it seems silly to duplicate since only a handful of people have read it.

I will continue to post updates on G’s development under the personal category, and am also planning a more structured follow-up to Waking up in Illinois that will collect together our experiences.

Every child has the right to be born healthy but do unhealthy children have a right to be born?

That is the question raised by this news story on NDTV.com that covers the claim by B Subhashan Reddy, Human Rights Commission chairperson in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, that it is time for a legislation to prosecute parents for knowingly giving birth to an unhealthy child:

“If either or both parents are HIV positive, or have communicable diseases like TB or leprosy or genes related to Down’s Syndrome, dyslexia, they should not produce a child. Even muscular dystrophy, why should they produce an unhealthy child?”

You can watch a video of the news report here.

While Reddy does not state directly that parents of potentially unhealthy children be required to terminate the pregnancy the inference is clear – as is the suggestion that when it comes to human rights, unhealthy babies do not necessarily qualify.

The report includes responses from those that believe that “neither the government nor any law can decide if a child should be born or not”.