The Brilliant, Doomed Down Syndrome Adoption Registry

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Just what the abortion doctor ordered.

We’re finally edging toward the middle on abortion—an agreement that most people, pro- or anti-, want to see unwanted pregnancies decreased and abortions lessened. Weird political bedmates Sens. Ted Kennedy and Sam Brownback (yes, the creepy one) have co-sponsored a bill to create a national registry of those willing to adopt children identified as having severe genetics defects like Down syndrome.

Brilliant. Doomed, but brilliant.

Whenever I hear of zealots terrorizing women at abortion clinics, as they cynically implore these besieged women to let their children be adopted, my lip curls. I was equally offended watching women on TV, (and it was always women), vent their rage on Susan Smith for the murder of her children. Of course Smith shouldn’t have killed her kids (duh), but I was so enraged by the spectacle of a nation claiming they’d have loved and raised them for her instead that I checked: Unsurprisingly, there’s been no spike in adoptions, not even in Smith’s home town. Nor has the general stigma against adoption abated, though many Planned Parenthood Clinics are newly under siege. Hell, this ‘Christian’ nation doesn’t care enough to educate, feed, and offer medical care to our existing children, and we’re supposed to be believe people are ‘pro life’?

My prediction: This national registry will flop. Protesting outside of clinics is quite different from agreeing to raise a fundamentally disabled child, as birth parents are oh-so-blithely instructed to do on pain of hellfire.

This personal anger I feel towards our society’s low regard for children, women, and families goes back to my own childhood. Raised as a fire and brimstone Southern Baptist, I lived daily with the requirement to go out of one’s way to do God’s work: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and suffer the children. I bought all that, at least until I was old enough to realize that the clutch of buildings in our neighborhood, set way back from the street and surrounded by high walls, was an orphanage. I was flabbergasted to learn that there were children in the world without homes and families. So, logically, I asked the minister after church one Sunday why every family in the congregation didn’t adopt one of those kids so they wouldn’t be alone in the world. Nothing but embarrassed silence. That was the beginning of my disillusionment with public displays of one’s own morality and fitness to judge others. Fighting to have children born, without fighting to ensure that each has a decent start in life, is immoral. People may be pro-birth, but I’m still waiting to be shown that they’re actually pro-life.

But, go ahead: Make a liar out of me. I’ll admit I was wrong if anti-abortion crusaders gin up their ferocious lobby to get this bill passed and then fill up those registry slots in a hurry. I’ve always believed the anti-abortion crusade was more about controlling women and parading one’s own sense of self-righteousness than about ‘protecting’ women or ‘innocent life’. Now, we’ll see.

Nonetheless, kudos to Kennedy and (can’t believe I’m typing this) Brownback, for showing true leadership on this thorniest of issues.

This, my friends, is progress.

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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