The recent decision to award an Oregon couple $2.9 million from a ‘wrongful birth’ lawsuit has left me feeling like there’s actually some good news embedded in this story.
Four years ago a little girl was born with Down syndrome. Her mother had received testing and would have aborted her little girl if the results had shown evidence of Down syndrome. But somebody made a mistake with the test, the mother was told her baby was fine, and the little girl was allowed to live.
So the couple sued, stating they now needed significant financial resources to care for a girl who they otherwise would not have wanted before she was born. A jury agreed.
Here’s the good news from that article: “These are parents who love this little girl very, very much,” Miller said (their attorney). “Their mission since the beginning was to provide for her and that’s what this is all about.”
I don’t know if ‘that’s what this is all about’ or not. Comments and blogs have vilified these parents for their openness about wanting to abort. Yes, I find their initial thinking about abortion to be horrifying as well.
But somewhere along the way they learned to love this child. She went from being unknown to being known. She entered a family and was given a name. And today she is loved.
Abortion is an act of violence against a small human being who cannot defend herself; that is reason enough to be against it. But it is also a final act – that small human being will never be known.
Those of us who have already decided against abortion are frequently dismissed as deluded or guided strictly by manufactured sentiment – of course we’ll see value in and love a child with disabilities.
But this couple was willing and preparing to abort if disability was found – yet love their child today. They cannot be dismissed by abortion proponents so easily.
So I’m praying that the one line – “these are parents who love this little girl very, very much” – will burst like a spotlight through the darkness of another mom and dad considering aborting their child with Down syndrome. May they see that she isn’t a thing to be discarded but a little girl to be loved.
Yes, disability is expensive and complicated and difficult. Most people will struggle with seeing only a disability and a not a real human being.
But this couple have said it – they love their daughter! Not a clump of cells with a genetic anomaly, a little girl!
“Wrongful birth” lawsuits are ridiculous. A decision has been made in Oregon and I hope the medical system fights it.
But let us rather focus on what God has done for this couple and is prepared to do for others in making evident that even the child with disabilities can be loved for who she is.
And let us get rid of evil laws and systems that actively seek to destroy such children before they are given the chance to be known and loved.
The Works of God 
John,
Thank you for this thoughtful piece and that it wasn’t a rant but an attempt to love, understand while shining light on truth. If we are continued to allow the destruction of human beings under the guise of saving our economy, we’ve ultimately declared that money usurps life. We have begun to elevate our ability or inability to finance a life over the loving of life. And, despite the ridiculousness and tragedy of a culture that would choose to kill a child because it didn’t measure up to a “survival of the fittest” society and justify it by looking at the cost of bringing a “marred” child into this world, you pointed out that love won out.
The truth is we are all “marred”. We are told, and rightly so, that we are at our core, carriers of some malady. The Bible calls it sin. Maybe some day we’ll even go so far as to try to evaluate what a person might do if he/she is brought to birth because we can evaluate their DNA against others in a database and determine that they are likely to be murders, drug dealers, abusers, etc. The only real difference between those born with something like down syndrome or other birth defects is that we can see those. The truth is that the evil within each of us should be a much greater concern to our society. Thanks be to God who loves us and provided a way to Him despite that fact. Yet, God created us despite the darkness of our hearts, the physical challenges we face today or may in the future. Killing children before they are born doesn’t change the fact that they are God’s creation and is still murder, no matter when or where it occurs. And, it certainly doesn’t make it less than murder despite what the opposition wants to believe. May God have mercy on a nation that would pay more attention to a financial commitment than to a commitment to protect the only real resource our world has…humans created in the image of God—“marred” and all.
October Baby (www.octoberbabymovie.net) comes out next week and will be a great reminder that Every Life is Beautiful. I respect and am humbled by parents like you who love those that our culture wants to call “unlovable” and discard. Thank you for being a light in this cultural darkness.