Veiled in flesh the Godhead see

Fetal test sheds light but stirs ethical debate.

It's a headline on the front page of the Houston Chronicle today. Let's see if I can choose a favorite quote: (emphases mine)

"Advocates say the test uncovers tragic conditions, allowing couples to terminate the pregnancy and spare themselves the emotionally and financially exhausting ordeal of caring for a severely disabled child."

or,
"As long as the information is reliable, a pregnant woman has a right to know as much as possible about the kind of parenting she'd face."

or,
"They (ethicists) debate whether it's a 'good or bad eugenics,' noting that before Adolf Hitler gave it a bad name, eugenics was science's hope for a better future, the answer to economic inequities and social ills."

and, then, this:
"Eighty to 95 percent of women who receive a Down Syndrome diagnosis after such screening abort, according to studies cited by the National Down Syndrome Society."

I acknowledge that I am an emotional pregnant woman. That I spent a chunk of the morning thinking about Mary in a dirty stable. That I wept through a short video at church showing me a cesspool in Sierra Leone where mothers had no choice but to get water for their children. Then rejoiced over the simple miracle of what can happen when a few people here chose to forgo expensive Christmas presents to instead build wells spouting clean water. Then heard on the radio a story Amy Grant told about singing "Breath of Heaven"while looking at the face of Cindy Parseghian, who sat in the front row and whose three kids were living with and, then, dying of a rare genetic disorder called Niemann-Pick disease. Then while I'm reading this article I have the t.v. on and there on Extreme Makeover Home Edition was this amazing family with two sweet daughters with the genetic disorder spinal muscular atrophy, which has also stricken Hannah, the beautiful daughter of my friends Lee and Eric. Can you get your head around it? Because I can't. But I know the difference between a cesspool and living water.