For the past month, in honor of Down Syndrome Awareness Month, I've invited a host of people–doctors, professors, mothers, fathers, and individuals with Down syndrome–to address a question that has come up across various news outlets in recent months: Should we try to cure Down ...

I am grateful to Amy Julia Becker for the invitation to make a small, but I hope nonetheless useful contribution to this ongoing discussion. The question "Should Down syndrome be cured"? is certainly interesting and controversial. But I do wonder if it is actually the right ...

This week is the final week of Down syndrome Awareness Month, and therefore the final week of posts addressing the question of whether we should try to "cure" Down syndrome. Today we hear from Alison Piepmeier, Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the College of Charleston ...

Yesterday was Sunday. I think of it as the Sabbath, even though I know that the Sabbath is a Jewish observance that typically happened on the last day of the week, Saturday. But still, from what I understand, Christians co-opted the Sabbath and moved it to the first day of the ...

I hope to offer a reflection on Andy Crouch's Playing God on Monday. For now, I will simply say that if you are interested in culture, sociology, and the Christian story, this book is for you. And in case I haven't been clear about it already, Kate Braestrup's Here if You Need ...

There's a video making the Internet rounds. It introduces us to Heath White, a father who didn't always love his daughter Paisley. Heath reads a letter in which he confesses that before Paisley was born, he urged his wife to have an abortion. Paisley was prenatally diagnosed ...

I first met Tryn Miller online a year ago when I ran a series about Down syndrome and friendship. Tryn, who has Down syndrome, and her friend Anna, wrote about their relationship (For Tryn's, click here and for Anna's click here). When I started thinking about the question of ...

This morning my middle son Caleb said he missed his brother Adam who has been at respite all week. Adam goes to respite periodically because Adam is classed as disabled. He has Down syndrome and Autism, and has recently finished two and a half years of hospital-based treatment ...

I am honored to share with you a guest post from author and ethicist Hans Reinders. As his bio attests below, Dr. Reinders has thought and written about ethics and disability for many years, and his thinking had a profound effect on my own understanding of the place of people ...

One of my biggest fears for Penny when she was diagnosed with Down syndrome was that she wouldn't have friends.

The other fears I had in the hospital all those years ago have dissipated. Some–like my fear that I wouldn't love her as she continued to grow up–seem laughable now. ...

I have a new post on Christianity Today's website this week, a review of Rachel Adam's new memoir, Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery. To read it, go to A Mother's Love for a Modern-Day Miracle: Meet the pro-choice secular Manhattanite whose study ...

My son, Samuel, died five hours after his birth; he had trisomy 18. The five hours my wife and I spent with him were some of the most significant of our life together. They were a gift to us at the end of difficult pregnancy and a peaceful entry into the long paths of grief.

This post is one in a series addressing the question of whether we should try to "cure" Down syndrome. Margaret (Gary) Bender reflects upon Flowers for Algernon and her daughter Alex, who has Down syndrome. 

I have a vivid memory as a fourteen-year old sitting on my parent's ...

As a part of a series of posts in honor of Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and in response to recent media reports about a potential "cure" for Down syndrome, blogger and minister David Zahl contributes an essay today about bioethics, science fiction, and what it might mean for ...

I didn't think much, if at all, about Down syndrome before our daughter Penny was born. But in the seven years since her arrival, I have come to believe that disability, including Down syndrome, offers a window into the human condition that bears close attention. As I have written ...