Photo: Washington Times
One of the great fights we are leading here at the Susan B. Anthony List is to advocate for our belief that every human life has inherent dignity and value. This includes the disabled, who are routinely targeted in the womb by medical professionals seeking to ease parents' lives by advocating abortion for "less-than-perfect" unborn boys and girls..
This week, the Washington Times ran a story about the mothers and fathers who are fighting back against the sentiment that disabled children are better off being killed in the womb than having their chance at life:
Filling in the gap is a corps of women trying to whittle down the current high rates — estimated at 80 percent — of women who abort at-risk children.
They range from Monica Rafie, a Chicago-area mom of five who in
2001 was told her second child, Celine, would likely die of an
underdeveloped right heart ventricle, to Anna Lise "Cubby" LaHood, a
Silver Spring woman who learned in the spring of 1988 that her unborn
son, Francis, would only live briefly outside the womb.
Both women were encouraged to terminate their pregnancies but refused.
Cubby and husband Dan LaHood decided that while their son may die, it would not be at their hands. Reaction was swift; her family disinherited Mrs. LaHood and refused to see the child. The couple transferred their care to Georgetown University Hospital, a Catholic institution that encouraged her to continue her pregnancy.
"The pressure from the medical community to abort was severe," she said.
On Oct. 6, 1988, Francis was born with polycystic kidney disease. He was held by his parents, quickly photographed and baptized before he died a few minutes later.
Today, the LaHoods are lay Missionaries of Charity, the group founded by Mother Teresa, whose photos decorate the walls of their Silver Spring home. On a small $100,000 annual budget, they operate St. Joseph's House, which provides respite and day care for children with severe disabilities.
"People think your life is over when you have a handicapped child," Mr. LaHood says. "It's a cultural view to eliminate them as undesirable. They don't know what the demands are and what the rewards are."
Celine, now 7, survived a condition known as Hypoplastic Right Heart Syndrome, which means only half of her heart is functioning. She is a lively brunette who enjoys Irish dancing.
Her mother is a Catholic who oversees www.benotafraid.net, a
Web site that encourages mothers with dire in-utero diagnoses to keep
their children. It gets about 3,500 visitors a month.
*snip*
Now the mother of five, Mrs. Rafie lists common birth defects on her site — ranging from anencephaly, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, Down syndrome, spina bifida, skeletal dysplasia to Trisomy 13 and Trisomy 18 — and stories of families who allowed these handicapped children to be born. She also has four stories under a "misdiagnosed" category of women who resisted the advice of their doctors to abort, only to deliver a healthy child.
She says most women with problem pregnancies quickly become
discouraged and overwhelmed.
"People hear these callous, insensitive remarks, things like 'Why do
you want to carry a baby like this?' or 'Are you religious or
something?'" she says. "The genetics counselors uniformly will hand out
support information that assumes you'll terminate."
Read the entire article today. Then give it to your friends and neighbors. Post it to your Facebook Profile or on your blog. Thank you to the Washington Times' Jennifer Duin for shining a light on this issue and showing these brave parents who advocate for the least among us!
