There is a little girl named Annie Golden who died today. She was a beautiful soul with a smile that could light up a room. She died because she didn’t get a heart transplant. She died because she was not thought “worthy” enough to even be put on the list. Annie had Down syndrome. This cognitive disability would prevent her from even being put on the transplant list. My heart absolutely breaks for the family of this girl.
You see, I have a little girl with Down syndrome. She turned 6 months old yesterday. My little girl’s name is Joy. She is the youngest of my four children. The last 6 months have changed my life in so many ways.
My journey started as most parents who have any child with special needs. It started out with ignorance. Like most people, I had been around people with special needs, but I’d never been a parent of a child with special needs, nor did I have a close family member with special needs to know and love.
So, in the beginning when my precious girl was born, I was ignorant. I only knew what I had been told by the culture at large. I only knew fear. Fear for the future. Fear of what others would think. I had fear of my life being over or completely re-directed. Fear that my child would be nothing more than a despised member of society by the culture at large.
LIES!! These were all lies!
After 6 months, I CANNOT adequately express how much joy, love, and hope my little Joy has brought into my life and the lives of the people around her. She is every bit as valuable as any of my other children. In fact, I often feel sorry for my other three children because anyone who meets Joy is such a fool about her. She is full of life! She is full of love! SHE IS A GIFT! She is just how God wanted her to be. I wouldn’t change anything about my little girl. As a dad I would do whatever is in my power to help her if she was sick. I would try to move mountains to get her a heart if she needed it.
I was ignorant about how wonderful my daughter would be. I was also ignorant to a heinous evil that is going on towards people with Down syndrome.
They are being MURDERED! They are being systematically eliminated by those who are called to protect life. It seems one of the main enemies of little children like mine are the very doctors who take an oath to protect and to save lives.
The reality is that the blood tests performed in a woman’s pregnancy are solely done so that the mother can choose to terminate her baby, and 90% of the time they do in the case of Down syndrome. So many times my wife and I have heard stories from parents of children with Down syndrome that their doctors actually advised an abortion or presented it as an option when they did not present it as an option before the test. It is obvious that these children are not deemed “worthy” by the medical community as a whole.
Back to little Annie…she died this morning. It seems that the deciding factor to her being able to get a heart transplant was her cognitive ability. Did she have other factors? I am sure she did. Anyone who needs a heart transplant will have some other factors, but once again, it seems the deciding factor was her IQ.
So now it seems an IQ test is needed for who lives and who dies. If you can score high enough on a standardized test then you are valuable enough to be given a chance at life. This is sick and it is wrong.
This is an actual CIVIL RIGHTS issue. People with Down syndrome did not choose Down syndrome. It is part of their DNA. Where are the parades of people crying out that the murder of innocent children with disabilities be stopped? Where is the outrage over little ANNIE?
What is valuable?
American Culture values net worth, IQ, and sex appeal. The God I serve values something different. Here is what He says.
“1 Corinthians 13:1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
My daughter may never have the highest score on the ACT. Little Annie may have never won the Spelling Bee, but I can promise you that my daughter and thousands of other children and adults like her with DS have been given an extra dose of what God says is most important: LOVE!! I propose to you that just maybe those whom the culture is murdering are the ones we NEED THE MOST
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