Sarah Palin and Disability Advocacy

Jill has an interesting post up at Feministe regarding Sarah Palin's support for special needs children. I agree with her that it'll be interesting to see if Palin ever says anything substantive on this issue. In particular I'd like to know how she can square advocacy for the needs of the disabled with her general attitude towards government intervention. Specifically, public programs to support such children and their parents are... well... public support, which sounds an awful lot like Socialism to me.

While I'm at it I'd also like to respond to the following:

I do find it troubling, in the aggregate, that so many people believe that having a child with Down syndrome is so impossible, or so undesireable, that 90% of those pregnancies are terminated.

I'm not convinced that the social hardship of raising a child with Down's syndrome is the primary motivating factor behind the trend of aborting fetuses with the condition. Without commenting on the propriety (or lack thereof) of such a belief it's plausible to me that people see giving birth to Down's Syndrome children as something which should be avoided for its own sake.