The Works of God

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.

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The young man in the ad below lives with a developmental disability.

The advertisement reads: You’re one of a kind. Learn more about SNBC disability coverage at medica.com/oneofakind.

There’s more information about the young man at Medica’s website.

The Robbinsdale Clinic P.A. is an abortion clinic.  They point out that “Our location in Robbinsdale, MN, a northwest suburb of Minneapolis, is convenient and easily accessible by either the MTC bus services or automobile.”

The newest Planned Parenthood clinic in Saint Paul is ‘conveniently’ located on major MTC bus lines and the new light rail system.

The Meadowbrook Women’s Clinic, another abortion clinic in Minneapolis, states “Our location offers convenient access to and from major freeways such as 35W, 94, 394 and highway 55. Bus stops and the light rail are within walking distance.”

I know Medica and their ad agency, LEVEL, didn’t intend that bus ad to be used in the fight to protect children with disabilities.

But wouldn’t it be great if God used it to wake up mothers and fathers to the inherent dignity and humanity of their unborn children, even those diagnosed with disabilities?

Lord, please, use even this bus ad to break through the darkness and the lie that children are expendable and a burden.  Use Peter to save more babies, for your glory and for our good.

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Normally I warn against making an argument for the protection of life from ‘mere’ sentiment.  God provided a wonderful reminder that heart-felt joy has tremendous power!

A young woman brought her new baby to Desiring God last week and immediately attracted a crowd!  There is a preciousness to new life that is beyond explanation.  Just looking at a weeks-old baby is entertaining!

There is no denying the gift this boy is.

Another consequence of entertaining horrific ideas like infanticide, euthanasia or ‘after-birth abortion‘ is the wall it builds against the language of giftedness and the pleasure we experience in those gifts.  The more we talk of children – disabled or not – as existing at the whim of bigger, stronger human beings, we walk a little farther away from the wonder and delight that new life is.

And the farther we walk away, the harder our hearts become.  Another terrifying thing about the recent article on after-birth abortion was how it demands mothers make decisions about the value of their babies, replacing the natural desire to nurture and care for that child from the first seconds he breathes the air to one of analysis and risk/reward ratios.  It replaces a father’s desire to provide and protect with calculations about the value of this little life.

This is a real danger for babies.  Our natural inclination is toward our own small, selfish desires.  Little human beings intrude into our small-minded plans significantly.

Yet, they are gifts!

We must stand against the evil of abortion – before and after birth – for all kinds of reasons. One weapon I believe I have neglected is wonder and pleasure and delight in the good gifts that children are to God’s world.  And I am saying that with full understanding of the painful reality of disability and disease in this life.

Yet that tiny boy I saw this week – not yet a ‘person’ according to some – was exactly that: a weapon against evil and a testimony to God’s extraordinary goodness to a fallen world through the simple delight we experience in new life.

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Jan Lacher forwarded me the Journal of Medical Ethics editorial response to the negative comments they are receiving on the article they published, After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?

(Yes, I know, I just wrote yesterday not to give this more attention than it deserves.)

I’m not even sure where to begin!

Even considering the writing errors and dropped words (obviously it was written in a hurry; these errors are not typically acceptable for a prestigious journal), the straw-man arguments, and the cherry-picking of comments to make the opposition look dumb and/or racist, the most striking thing to me was how shocked the editor was.

Could anyone really be shocked that this article would receive such an emotional response?

Actually, I believe he was shocked; I don’t believe the editor was being disingenuous.

We all tend to hang out with people like us.  In an interesting article from some years back, Why everyone you know thinks just like you, Shankar Vedantam pointed to research that suggested we can discover a person’s political views by knowing the views of their friends.

So, if the editor, Julian Savulescu, behaves like most of us, he spends most of his time with people who believe what he believes, which creates a self-justifying cycle about what is and is not acceptable to think and talk about.

In this case he tells us what he believes:

However, the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises. . .

The Journal does not specifically support substantive moral views, ideologies, theories, dogmas or moral outlooks, over others. It supports sound rational argument.

See the problem?  Quite a few of us don’t believe the killing of vulnerable people – be they unborn or born – is worthy of intellectual engagement because it is inherently wrong. Therefore, there can be no well reasoned argument in defense of this inherently wrong thing.

Moreover, they do believe in Truth, moral views, ideologies, theories, dogmas and moral outlooks – they simply call it rational argument.

In this case, their rational argument begins with the premise that bigger, stronger people get to make decisions about the worth of smaller, weaker people.

I’m going to guess that Dr. Savulescu hangs out with people much like himself, so he doesn’t run into folks like us too often.  It is easy to caricature and dismiss people you don’t know and don’t respect – I’m tempted to do so all the time until God reminds me he saved me while I was still a sinner.

Thus, we should not be surprised at their confusion at people being genuinely angry, nor should we be surprised at their dismissing our arguments as being irrational.

So, here’s the real challenge for people living the life of disability – we have to constantly repeat ourselves about the value of all human life, including those who live with disabilities.  This is so self-evident to us that we can forget that not everyone agrees.

Clearly, not everyone agrees.

That’s ok. Someday our persistence in telling and retelling an old, old truth will be rewarded:

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
(Galatians 6:9-10 ESV)

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The headline was intended to provoke a response:  After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?

It worked.

And it is a trap for those who stand against such evil.

Obviously, real evil like this must be called out for what it is.  But when we do so, we actually grant the writers greater standing and credibility in the world than they deserve.  And they will be heros, to some, for their “courageous” academic work given the hundreds of angry blog postings and commentaries that already exist.

If we ignore it, the culture continues down a heart-hardening slope where the language concerning the destruction of the most vulnerable becomes normalized.  Evil behavior can then follow behind this language.

So, if it isn’t wise to ignore it, and it isn’t helpful to call it out, what should we do?

Here’s my suggestion: Call it what it is, and then dismiss it.  Be persistent in helping people see how evil this thinking is, and also how old it is. Strip it of its power to incite rage and let them run into a wall of determined, eternal, protective regard for the weakest among us.

The idea they propose isn’t really even clever or edgy.  For example, their promoting a new term for infanticide – ‘after-birth abortion’ – might be perceived as clever, but it certainly isn’t ground-breaking.  And including typically-developing babies as candidates for murder appears shocking, but healthy babies are being birthed and then killed, if they happen to be girls, in some parts of the world today.

No, this isn’t new.

I don’t fault Dr. Giubilini and Dr. Minerva for being ambitious.  Both are young scholars with very little published to this point in their careers and it is hard to get noticed.

But this is a horrible way for them to begin their academic careers.  Let us pray for them – really pray – that God would call them away from such thinking and that they would use their talents for much more positive, life-giving and God-centered purposes.

Someday God’s wrath against the evil behind this article will be set aside because they cling to Jesus and his righteousness, or they will be held personally responsible for it and face God’s wrath themselves.  That choice is easy, but only if they are granted eyes to see it.

And wouldn’t the world be shocked if that were to happen!

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