WE Blog

As a parent of two disabled kids, I think I have a right to speak about this.

First, the legislation is good, but it needs to focus more on getting these parents actual HELP.

I know that I’d not want to bring another child into this world to face the issues my kids have. And if I gave it up for adoption, I’d worry heavily on how well those parents were able to raise them. If they had ulterior motives (such as wanting more social security).

It’s expensive to raise a disabled child, and stressful for parents. If this is going to be a national thing, let them insist on putting some funding into immediate help. There was a program that my son had NO access to, because Autism wasn’t considered a ‘physical’ disability. BS.
The brain is certainly physical.

Respite needs to be allowed right off the bat. The DD waiver Kansas has is SO grossly inadequate I can’t even tell you. And in some cases the wait list is forever, and doesn’t kick in till age 5 at the earliest. I’ve also run into families where the agency controlling the funding refuses to give evaluations to help the problem, or worse, DENIES the program even exists.

Downs would be so much easier to deal with than autism. By the way, has Sam volunteered for this database? I’d really like to see how many volunteers get signed up.

“They are aborting because they don’t want to bring a child into the world with those kinds of problems”

I don’t think “dwarfism” or “Down’s Syndrome” is as terrible a problem as you’re thinking. I have osteogenesis imperfecta. Because of it I’ve had 200 fractures and people like me have an icreased risk of dying before age 10. Yet I’m working on a Master’s Degree and I’m generally a happy person.

If parents think merely being born short, like with dwarfism, is a life “not worth living” than they need to get educated.

Political-mama seems to be talking about conditions more severe than what was listed here so this is just directed at Komrade.

Agree with the Senators and also p-mama and Thomas above. I have long maintained that if we could get together and get past the name-calling we could actually do something to at least reduce demand.

I have made the comment that “abortion sucks but I remain reluctantly pro-choice.” I contribute money to alternatives to abortion - I do NOT contribute to those on the ‘pro-abortion’ side.

Locally I would like to see some of the attorneys involved in ‘pro-life’ offer pro bono adoption legal help. We need to protect both the adoptive parents and the child from some ’sperm donor’ suddenly appearing.

Brownback himself is an adoptive father, something he doesn’t advertise.
However (correct me if I’m wrong), his children do not have special needs. Special needs children are extremely difficult to place. There’s no reason to think that adoptive parents will be more willing and capable of raising these children than the birthparents who choose to place them for adoption. If this program is implemented, I fear it will lead to false hopes for the birthparents and institutionalization for the child. If it was easier to find adoptive parents for special needs children, then it could be wonderful, but that’s simply not reality.

The state really desperately needs good foster homes for special needs kids as it is.

“set up a registry of families willing to adopt babies with conditions such as spina bifida, Down syndrome and dwarfism.”

Now in all honesty, just how long is that list going to be?

JR
First of all, nobody in my family needs government hand outs.
However, I do think I understand the problems that others face, in taking care of special needs children.

Next, mentally retarded children who grow into adulthood might NOT be worth minimum wage, but it would be good therapy for them to be productive, and do SOMETHING with themselves.

Why must you always be so hateful?

I am no great Ted Kennedy fan, but Kennedy and I do belong to the same organization, the Knights of Columbus, which spends millions of dollars supporting the mentally disabled.

But, you do not WANT cooperation.

You do not WANT anything that makes any policy sense to advance on a bi-partisan basis.

Even if the public suffers, you never want Kennedy, or any Democrat, to even talk to a Republican.

Paul - my son is also a Knight and my family contributes to their causes. We again find ourselves in rare agreement here today.

The problem with that idea is that most adoptive parents want pink healthy newborns. We already have hundreds of thousands of healthy older children in our foster care system that will never be adopted; they will age out of the system and get dumped on the street! Finding adequate adoptive homes for children with severe disabilities is even more difficult. For a few, it can be done; I met a lesbian couple a few years back who adopted 6 special-needs kids and were a testament to how it can be wonderfully successful; but they were exceptional people with exceptional resources. Trying to find enough homes with the financial and emotional resources to deal with a child who may well run up millions of dollars in medical bills and then die will be difficult in the extreme. For most of those kids, the only choices available will be to be care for by their birth parents or be institutionalized.
A disabled child presents very real difficulties for a family. Where one child requires 80+% of the available attention and resources, other family members are necessarily neglected. Insurance companies will do whatever it takes to rid themselves of of expensive cases, leaving families unable to pay for medical care. Employers are often unsympathetic to employees who must take time off to care for a disabled child. The intense frustration such a child necessarily brings with it may lead to abuse of the child or other family members. In order to cope with such problems, a parent has to be expert in putting out brush fires and living without sleep. If the family is financially well off and very strong, raising such children can be very rewarding. With anything less, it may well destroy the family as well as the child.
In such cases, the state has no business dictating what the family must do. One set of rules never covers such circumstances, and in the end, the people that are faced with such difficulties are the only ones who have the right to decide what must be done.