Shane Gillis’s jokes do not dehumanize or even mock – they highlight truths our culture badly needs to hear because people with Down syndrome are so often the targets of dehumanization and cruelty.
The numbers of babies born with Down syndrome in Denmark has been dropping since 2004, when the nation began offering early pregnancy screening to all pregnant women rather than just mothers with higher-risk pregnancies.
Poland was ordered to pay €16,004 ($17,549) in 'damages' to the mother, who procured an abortion for her Down syndrome baby in the Netherlands, after the European Court of Human rights ruled that Poland's law against aborting on eugenics grounds violated 'privacy' rights.
When Kristin Smith was twenty, her mother arranged for her to be sterilized via tubal ligation. When Kristin asked her mother about having children, she was told that it 'would be too difficult.'
'My goal is to give hope to parents expecting a baby with Down syndrome and solidarity with families of people with special needs, as well as to combat and eliminate the stigma often associated with children who have special needs,' singer-songwriter John Paul Von Arx said.