Kill the Retards!

NYT and WaPo appear to be excited about this (excerpt from NYT piece, though both newspapers' articles are very similar):

New tests in the first trimester of pregnancy are better at identifying fetuses with Down syndrome than standard tests done later in pregnancy, according to a government-financed study.

The first-trimester tests detected as many as 87 percent of fetuses with the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome, compared with 81 percent found by tests in the second trimester, the authors write in today's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Down syndrome affects more than two million people worldwide, causing physical and mental disabilities. It occurs about once in 700 to 900 live births.

The study, conducted at 15 hospitals and involving more than 38,000 women, is the government's most comprehensive effort to help expectant couples best determine their risk of having a baby with Down syndrome, the world's leading cause of developmental disability.

The study's findings suggest that parents will have a better opportunity to seek an abortion earlier in gestation, Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson, a Baylor College obstetrics and gynecology professor, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study.

"Pregnancy terminations are earlier, more private and far safer than in the second trimester," Dr. Simpson said. The maternal death rate for first-trimester abortions is 1.1 per 100,000 abortions, compared with 7 to 10 per 100,000 in the second trimester, Dr. Simpson wrote.

I don't know how I would handle the cross of a Downs Syndrome baby, but I pray that I'd have enough virtue not to kill it. I also pray that I'm not tested with this cross, but if I am, give me strength, like the strength given to those great families who embrace their Downs Syndrome babies and, after a few years, say with 100% honesty, "He is a great blessing."