Which of you should be sacrificed for the child? Would it be ok to sacrifice a different child? Perhaps you could draw straws to see who gets sacrificed - that

Which of you should be sacrificed for the child? Would it be ok to sacrifice a different child? Perhaps you could draw straws to see who gets sacrificed - that seems more fair than assuming which parent it is. Could dad hire someone else to be sacrificed? The answer to all of the above should be "Well no!". Which should lead us back to the problem at hand: "Why is it ok to sacrifice _anyone_?" It's not. That you had a child with a severe medical condition does not mean you become subhuman. It means the task of integrating the child into the family has a different success criteria (your child with Down's is probably not going to be a functional adult at 18). The child still has to be integrated into the family - as a whole. You don't get to elect a scapegoat and skip out on that task. No child should dominate a family, regardless the medical condition of that child. The family works as an entire unit, not with some unlucky soul having the life sucked out of them for convenience of everyone else.