Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I sometimes click on links I know I shouldn’t and watch things I shouldn’t, for the sake of my blood pressure. But, contrary to popular belief, I like to know what others are thinking. I like to hear opposing views. And so sometimes I even click on out-there sites like Andrew Sullivan’s and watch (waay too often) shows like Keith Olbermann’s. Wonkette is officially not on that list. There is zero temptation after this weekend.

If you caught any of Greta van Susteren’s Fox show on Friday night, you saw the young family on a campaign bus. Mom — a.k.a. the Republican vice-presidential nominee — and dad were there with three of their children on camera. Youngest Trig — the much-discussed infant — was dressed, for Halloween, as an elephant. His older sister, just next on the birth-order list, was a snow princess.

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Over the weekend, the never-classy “D.C. Gossip” website Wonkette posted a picture of Trig with his teen sister Willow, with the words, “Little baby Trig must be so glad he wasn’t aborted for this, his first Halloween, because his parents dressed him up like a political party symbol to be carried around at snarling political events. Aww. Isn’t life just grand?”

It was a disgraceful post. But Trig’s so-public life brings onto the national scene all kinds of emotions that aren’t very often brought out into the open. Issues of post-abortion pain, often repressed, for instance. And so it’s not surprising that this weekend’s blog post was far from the only public hostility expressed to Trig Palin’s existence.

Calling Trig a “political prop,” one columnist for the Toronto Star wrote, “Palin’s isn’t a real-life story. This is a prop for a campaign to boast that she’s done something good for the world.”

A libertarian blogger not only insisted that in light of the spotlight on the Palins “it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus) — a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny,” but, citing another blogger, accused the Palins of “the worship of retardation.” Nicholas Provenzo wrote: “Given that Palin had complete foreknowledge of her child’s severe disability yet nevertheless chose to have it, it is hard not to see her choice as anything less.”

One Canadian doctor even voiced his worries that Trig Palin’s life may cause other children with Down Syndrome to be born.

Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC), told the Globe and Mail in September, “Palin’s decision to keep her baby, knowing he would be born with the condition, may inadvertently influence other women who may lack the necessary emotional and financial support to do the same.”

He said, “The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in Canada.”

I should certainly hope so.

Whatever you think, frankly, of Sarah Palin’s suitability for the office of vice president, to see Trig is a good thing for America. Before this election, most Americans did not know that upwards of 90 percent of children diagnosed with Down Syndrome are never born. Now we know. Now we can offer more support to our friends and neighbors living with this challenge. Now we can do something to make sure we let people know they have our support before they eliminate a child who can bring them great joy, amidst the challenge.

Mind you, if we elect a president tomorrow who went out of his way in Illinois to oppose protecting newborns from infanticide — what an outrage it would be to give newborns the same right as older infants, then-State Senator Obama said — we will be taking a bit of a step backward, too, in the fight for a culture of life, though I do believe it will have been more out of ignorance than out of acceptance of that radical and barbaric position.

Or so I hope. And Palin, whatever happens tomorrow, has brought with her to the campaign trail a pleasant change — a witness and an awareness and a blessing. God bless her as she raises Trig, in or out of the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.