{"id":494,"date":"2011-01-14T13:50:30","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T13:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/what-im-reading-articles-on-autism-and-church-surrogacy-and-adoption-and-down-syndrome.html"},"modified":"2011-01-14T13:50:30","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T13:50:30","slug":"what-im-reading-articles-on-autism-and-church-surrogacy-and-adoption-and-down-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/what-im-reading-articles-on-autism-and-church-surrogacy-and-adoption-and-down-syndrome.html","title":{"rendered":"What I’m Reading: Articles on Autism and Church, Surrogacy, and Adoption and Down syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"

I reviewed and recommended<\/a> Emily Colson’s book, Dancing with Max<\/a>, a few months back. It is a memoir about Colson’s son Max, who has autism. Last week, Colson wrote a guest post for her.meneutics about including individuals with autism in church communities. For stories about the gift these individuals bring, and a few strategies for inclusion, read “Is Your Church Open to Autism?<\/a>” <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
“Meet the Twiblings<\/a>,” a cover story for a recent New York Times<\/i>‘ magazine, is the story of one woman’s quest to have children. Short version: she and her husband use his sperm and an egg donor to create two embryos. Both embryos are implanted on the same day in two different women who carry them to term. They are born five days apart. Melanie Thernstrom does a better job addressing the ethical issues and questions surrounding her decisions than most pieces I’ve read about surrogacy, although at the end of the day, I’m not convinced. As Ellen Painter Dollar writes<\/a> on her blog, Choices that Matter, somehow the fact of happy, healthy babies negates the possibility of criticism, or even question, of the choices involved. These are complicated issues, At the end of the day, my concerns for the collective cultural ethos of being able to manufacture the life we desire–including the children we desire–overwhelms my empathy for women who struggle with infertility and want to use egg donation and surrogacy to produce those children. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Finally, an article<\/a> about an Iowa family who recently adopted a boy with Down syndrome from the Ukraine. It’s a simple story, and a good reminder that at the same time that many women are choosing to terminate their pregnancies with babies with Trisomy 21, other are choosing to welcome these children into their homes and lives. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
More to come next week–thoughts on a new screening test for Down syndrome, Chinese mothers, neuroscience replacing theology, and the new global elite…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I reviewed and recommended Emily Colson’s book, Dancing with Max, a few months back. It is a memoir about Colson’s son Max, who has autism. Last week, Colson wrote a guest post for her.meneutics about including individuals with autism in church communities. For stories about the gift these individuals bring, and a few strategies for inclusion,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1,2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-down-syndrome","category-faith","category-what-im-reading"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat I'm Reading: Articles on Autism and Church, Surrogacy, and Adoption and Down syndrome - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/what-im-reading-articles-on-autism-and-church-surrogacy-and-adoption-and-down-syndrome.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What I'm Reading: Articles on Autism and Church, Surrogacy, and Adoption and Down syndrome - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I reviewed and recommended Emily Colson’s book, Dancing with Max, a few months back. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}