Now, I've sat on this article for a while, partly because I wanted to stew and partly because just like you shouldn't spank your kids in the heat of the moment, writing a response in the heat of the moment isn't the wisest thing to do either. So now that I'm... sorta cooled off, here goes.
And I want to give this disclaimer first: I understand it must be extremely difficult physically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially to raise a child with a disability. I also understand that I am writing this not only as a woman who does not have a disabled child, but as a woman who doesn't have a child period. But I think I have a valid point.
Also, if you are the parent - especially the mother - of a child with a disability, you may want to read this at your own risk. Consider yourself warned.
I saw this... somewhere on Facebook earlier this week: "'I wish I'd aborted the son I've spent 47 years caring for': It's a shocking admission - but read on before you judge". I thought, "Okay, it must be one of those things that sounds awful until you've read the whole thing and then it gets really sweet". Um no. That did not happen. (I suggest you read the entirety of the article before continuing on. It's easier if we're all on the same page.)
I actually will say this in her defense, because I believe in telling the truth: she is concerned about what will happen to her son when she and her husband die. I commend her for that shred of parental and maternal concern. But other than that and wishing he'd been born healthy so he could have a fulfilling, normal life himself, the rest of it is... heartbreaking.
After detailing how she knew something was different about Stephen from the get go, she drops this: "Perhaps you'd expect me to say that, over time, I grew to accept my son's disability. That now, looking back on that day 47 years later, none of us could imagine life without him, and that I'm grateful I was never given the option to abort.
However, you'd be wrong. Because, while I do love my son, and am fiercely protective of him, I know our lives would have been happier and far less complicated if he had never been born. I do wish I'd had an abortion. I wish it every day."
Now, forgive me for edging into the satirical and the facetious, but think about what she's saying. She is saying that our lives are supposed to be happy and uncomplicated. That the default setting is happy and simple. I know everyone's life is different. I know everyone walks a different path in different shoes. I. Know. That. But since when were all sources of trouble and all sources of complication supposed to just be stripped away? Oh, no, aborted. Excuse me.
How can you love someone... protect someone... and wish that you had killed him while he was in - presumably - the safest place ever? And I swear, if someone brings up the example of a dog that needs to be put down, so help me, I will rant about the value of all human life.
(And for all those liberals who are them going to point the finger at me for capital punishment: when a human murders a human, there has been value lost. The only way to repay that debt is the forfeit of the murderer's life. End. Of. Story.)
She also recounts a particularly trying time for her as a mother when "exhausted and racked with guilt, I was close to the end of my tether when, shortly after Stephen's third birthday, he became unwell and cried incessantly for three days and nights.
Worse still, he could give me no indication of what was wrong with him.
My husband was working late shifts as a driver at the time, and by the third night I couldn't stand the noise any longer.
In a rage, I picked Stephen up with every intention of throwing him down our flight of stairs. Thankfully, by the time I reached the top step, I thought, 'What on earth am I doing?' and put him back into his cot."
What on earth were you doing? Um, exactly what you keep telling us you wish you could go back and do! The only difference is that he's outside of you now and for some reason, now that he's born, it's illegal. She then closes the interview by saying this: "And so I appeal to every mother-to-be out there, facing the knowledge that they may bring a child like Stephen into this world. Read my story and do what is right for you and your family." In other words, if your child will make your life "complicated" because you'd have to do something over the top like care for them, abort it, because your life won't be complicated at all with a 'normal' child.
I'm not known as a particularly sensitive or emotional person, and on some level I'm not. But reading this article broke my heart. And I read an excellent rebuttal on Chicks on the Right, but even there the thing that broke me most wasn't mentioned.
I remember a few months ago when one of our pastors taught on this passage from 2 Timothy 3:
"But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."
(Emphasis mine.)
That specific word for "unloving" -- it means "without natural affection". What kind of affection is more natural than the bond between a mother and her baby? I've always wondered what could drive a woman to have an abortion in the first place. But what on earth drives a woman to retrospectively wish she'd had one? When she's already held her baby, when she's already bonded with her baby?
I am not saying that loving your kids is always easy. If it were easy, why would young women have to be taught to (Titus 2:4-5)? But the fact that we've allowed ourselves to degrade human life to the point where a woman can wish she'd aborted one child and not the other and people who speak out against it are narrow-minded religious fanatics terrifies me. I have a friend with Down's Syndrome, and she is the sweetest thing. I don't think I've ever seen her without a smile. I know there are people with disabilities that aren't easy to work or live with. I get that. There are people with no disabilities that are hard to work and live with, too. So do we abort them because of that? No. I don't know, all of this really smacks of pre-Nazi Germany to me.
All I can say is that I hope her son has no idea what his mother thinks of him. I hope and pray he never finds out. Look at those pictures. He's with his mum. His protector. And his protector wishes she had aborted him. He probably can't understand that. I hope he can't. I sincerely hope he cannot. I hope his ignorance is bliss.
My point is that when we're okay with destroying even the most basic bonds of the family, we shouldn't be shocked or surprised when evil abounds.
Where there is no love, there is hate. I saw no love for her son in this woman. And I hope Stephen is loved by someone. Anyone. Because while she may not have aborted him physically, she's emotionally aborted him. And honestly, I don't know which is worse.
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