By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, a time, according to The Jerome Lejeune Foundation, when “we applaud caregivers, families, and medical professionals — but most of all, we applaud all the wonderful people with Down syndrome.” We are continuing to post new and old stories celebrating families with children with Down syndrome. This first appeared in October 2019.
This does fall under the category of “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.” Snopes is arguably the most self-important “fact checker” around, yet layered with biases so thick that, if they were paint, you could cover an entire house, they actually got one right—and it involved a favorite Snopes target: President Trump.
This question was actually asked and answered in October of last year, but it is particularly relevant because October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. The query David Emery answered was, “Did Trump Say People with Down Syndrome Too Often Face ‘Terminations of Their Lives Before Birth’?”
Now, granted, it would be hard to miss that this is what the President said…but still. Here’s how Emery laid out the question:
In October 2019, during a month celebrated annually since the 1980s as Down Syndrome Awareness Month, Snopes received inquiries about the authenticity of a quote attributed to U.S. President Donald Trump. It was shared in meme form on social media as follows:
Emery tells us, “The quote is correctly attributed. It consists of two sentences drawn from Trump’s Oct. 1 [2019] presidential message on Down Syndrome Awareness Month.”
He then went on to repost the entire Presidential message and talk about abortion and Down syndrome. Emery’s analysis ends, “According to the most recent data available, the rate at which parents choose to terminate a pregnancy after a Down syndrome diagnosis is about 68 percent in the United States. A 2015 study estimated that between 2006 and 2010, approximately 3,100 Down syndrome-related elective pregnancy terminations were performed in the U.S. annually.”
Well done. We reposted the President’s 2020 message for Down Syndrome Awareness Month here.