The Works of God

The horrors of abortion were in the news again last week, this time with a doctor performing an abortion on the ‘wrong’ baby.  As you can probably guess, the ‘wrong’ baby was diagnosed with Down syndrome.  Al Mohler, in his blog posting, Aborting the Wrong Baby, provides some helpful commentary on the subject.

Every time he does so, I end up looking at other information on the subject, and discovered this.

Dov Fox and Christopher L. Griffin, Jr., in their article for the Utah Law Review, Disability-Selective Abortion and the Americans with Disabilities Act, quote Dorothy Wertz from a 1992 article she wrote,  How Parents of Affected Children View Selective Abortion.  I’m going to look for that article.

According to Fox and Griffin, Dr. Wertz “identified eight factors that determine parents’ ‘revealed preferences’ for childbirth rather than disability-selective abortion:

(1) guilt over rejecting a child with a disability;

(2) the quality of life from infancy through adulthood for a child with a disability;

(3) whether the pregnancy is “wanted,” independent of fetal disability;

(4) optimism that children with disabilities will be cured or treated of the disabilities with which they are born;

(5) spousal compromises;

(6) financial constraints;

(7) risk; and

(8) the effect of a child with disabilities on existing children.”

I suggest we give parents one more factor: hope in God!

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19

Actually, I want to make it the SOLE factor, because all of the above from Dr. Wertz are based on personal feelings, predictions about the future, or information which may or may not be true.  God’s word, however, is always true.  And with his sovereign help, all of the above can be faced with hope.

Best of all, we can remind parents who God is in relation to all the people giving them information or advice about the future of their baby with a disability:

From Psalm 146:

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The Lord will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the Lord!