Al Mohler has been a consistent voice of support for unborn children with disabilities. Yesterday in his blog he also noted how parents of unborn children with Down syndrome are aborting at astonishing rates – over 90%.
Dr. Mohler quotes Dr. Brian Skotko, a clinical genetics fellow at Children’s Hospital Boston who has a sister with Down syndrome:
As new tests become available, will babies with Down syndrome slowly disappear?
The problem is NOT the test; I think everyone would agree that knowing and understanding what a child will need upon being born is important and helpful. The problem lies in two parts:
- Unrealistic expectations about what life will be like both with and for the child with the disability; and
- Too little regard for what God says he is doing and will do with and for the child with the disability, the child’s parents, extended family, church, community and world.
On the first, doctors are particularly and murderously unhelpful in describing what life will be like for the parents and children experiencing Down syndrome, as Al Mohler observed in his blog:
In an article published in 2005, Skotko argued that doctors are often ill-prepared to discuss the diagnosis of Down syndrome with their pregnant patients. Chillingly, he also revealed that a significant percentage of the doctors “reported that they ’emphasize’ the negative aspects of DS so that patients would favor a termination.”
What chance does a baby have if that child’s parents are told how awful his or her life will be, and by extension the parents’ lives as well?
A much better chance if people understand and embrace the sovereignty of God in all things, particularly these three elements:
- God creates babies: For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13
- God intentionally creates some to live with disability: Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Exodus 4:11
- God provides for all our needs: And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19
Parents who embrace those three realities are very slow to consider destroying what God is creating, are mindful of God’s intentionality, and can hope in his omnipotent ability to do exactly what he says he will do. It is very helpful when the people around them do the same.
This is where the church can do some of its most effective work in ending abortion: preparing parents to do hard things in the strength that God will provide on a daily basis – like parenting a child with a disability.
And we know it will not be easy – no parent of a child with a disability says it will be easy. Yet in the end, as hard as it is, we can also say with the Apostle Paul that we are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” 2 Corinthians 6:10
The Works of God 
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