Life Lessons

By now, most of you who keep up on the latest "Down syndrome news" have heard the story of the Italian woman who found out that one of the twins she was carrying had Down syndrome. Desperate to terminate the "defective" baby and keep the one that was right, she begged her doctor to kill the unborn child with T21, and to keep the unborn "perfect" child in tact.

Had this procedure gone off without a hitch, we would have never heard the story. She would have gone on to give birth to her perfect child - remembering the child with T21 only as an unfortunately incident that happened to her.

But...the rest of the story unfolded.

After the abortion, the doctors notified her that, tragically, they had aborted the child without Down syndrome.

Tragically, a chromosomally normal child had been killed.

Tragically, a wanted child was dead.

Tragically, the mother must now undergo the procedure again in order to abort the unwanted child.

And now we read that she is considering lawsuits against the doctors who performed this procedure - having robbed her of her perfect baby.

How absurd that the tragedy is not that two unborn babies have now been killed. Two babies were ripped from their mother's uterus, at her own hands...by her own desire to give birth only to a child she deemed perfect.

Dave Hingsburger writes about the perfect tomato on his blog.

I try very hard in my life to learn lessons from stories such as this. I try to see how God has worked in these matters.

Obviously, it is difficult to see God's hand in the workings of the separate abortions of two equally important, and equally perfect unborn children.

But...He has given us free will. And this woman, by her own hand, by her own free will, chose to initiate these abortions - both of them.

Our Lord does not make mistakes, and perhaps He called the first child to Him as a wake up call to that mother to listen - to trust in Him - to find humility and compassion and hope in the birth of a child with Down syndrome.

Perhaps His intention was for her to stop fearing and start believing - to just put it in His hands and trust Him.

They say that He whispers to us, and if we are busy screaming, we cannot possibly hear Him. Maybe He gave her many, many opportunities to listen - before the first abortion, before the second abortion...yet, she continued to scream and drown Him out.

And now...before another child is conceived, she needs to listen.

And the world needs to listen - to hear this story, and realize that the tragedy lies in anyone's ability to perceive perfection from a karyotype. The tragedy is that we are so full of ourselves that we believe we can control our perfect world by eliminating people who are not deemed worthy to even live.

Hitler did it, and we were appalled. We should be no less appalled every time it is done as the result of a chromosomal analysis.

Ironically, two babies died. And the one who brought the biggest message to the world was the "wrong" one.