Fr. Roger J. Landry
The Anchor
Putting Into the Deep
September 5, 2008
Each morning, as I scan the news on the internet, I copy certain articles into digital folders on my computer, to serve as the raw material for future editorials or, if they involve people who live the faith heroically, for this “Putting Into The Deep” series. For every article that gets written, there are about ten folders of information that never make it: there are simply far more news stories and courageous individuals that can be written about from a Catholic angle on any given Friday.
For almost three years, I have been adding to a folder entitled “Down Syndrome.” I began the file in November 2005, when I read a disturbing Washington Post story describing medical “advances” that allowed pregnant women to screen their developing babies at eleven weeks to determine with 95-percent accuracy whether their children have Down Syndrome. As the article detailed, the reason for the screening was not to allow an in utero therapeutic intervention to help the child— as can be done, for example, for those with spina bifida. It was to give mothers the opportunity to eliminate the Down Syndrome by eliminating their son or daughter through a “safer and less traumatic” first-trimester abortion, much earlier than what previous tests permitted.
Over the past 34 months, I’ve pasted more than 100 articles into the folder. Many of them detail the rapid disappearance of children with DS, not because of a medical miracle but because of selective abortion: one large scientific study showed that 92 percent of parents who receive the news that their child has DS choose to abort their child. This trend has obviously alarmed those families with DS members, as services for those with a third 21st chromosome are being winnowed due to smaller numbers and decreased demand. One 2007 article detailed the tremendously tragic story of 38-year-old woman in Milan, Italy, pregnant with fraternal twins. When she received the diagnosis that one of her two sons had DS, she decided selectively to abort that child. The abortionist, however, killed his brother instead. Rather than repenting of the decision that led to the death of the first son, the mother went through with terminating the second son’s life and then sued the doctor.
The last entries in the folder were from a series of articles in April about the birth of a DS child to the sitting Governor of Alaska and about the beautiful statements she made a few days after his birth. Because she was a public figure, we printed a newsbrief in April with rudimentary details, but I was hoping, eventually, to have a chance to bring her heroic witness to love and life to the eyes of Catholic readers in the Diocese of Fall River. Senator John McCain beat me to the punch.
By choosing Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate, Sen. McCain has brought the story of her authentically feminine maternal love to the attention of every citizen in the country. It obviously remains to be seen what Americans at large will think about her capacity to be U.S. vice-president as they compare her and McCain’s strengths and weaknesses against those of Senators Obama and Biden. But just as almost everyone admires McCain for his heroism as a prisoner of war; Biden for his valor after the death of his wife and daughter in 1972 and in commuting home to Delaware each night to care for his two surviving sons ever since; and Obama for his dauntlessly overcoming so many obstacles to become, in meteoric fashion, the presidential candidate of the Democratic party; so everyone should be able to look at Gov. Sarah Palin and conclude that this is a woman with values we should all profoundly esteem.
Pro-lifers are obviously thrilled that Gov. Palin is a true Feminist for Life, someone whose position on abortion comes not through focus groups or political calculus but a conviction that motivates her to “walk the walk” even in trying circumstances. Even those who say that they are pro-choice, however, will hopefully grow to admire her as a woman who chose the better path, who opted to embrace and welcome a handicapped son rather than let a doctor destroy him.
As many are now learning, during a routine checkup last December, when Gov. Palin was four months pregnant, her doctor informed her that the child she was carrying would likely have DS. Since she was 43 when she conceived, she knew there was a slightly elevated chance of DS since the older the ova are, the greater the odds that there can be a genetic abnormality. Still, the diagnosis floored her. “I’ve never had problems with my other pregnancies,” she said, “so I was shocked.”
She added that it took some time to adjust to the news and that initially she was “confused” and sad. “It took a while to open up the book that the doctor gave me about children with Down syndrome, and a while to log on to the Web site and start reading facts about the situation,” she added. But she and her husband, Todd, never considered aborting their baby, as 92% of couples in similar circumstances do. “Every innocent life has wonderful potential,” the Governor said. Todd added, “We shouldn’t be asking, ‘Why us?’ We should be saying, ‘Well, why not us?’”
They were able to keep the pregnancy quiet until March, probably out of a legitimate concern that a pregnant governor would become the story and divert attention from many of her policy initiatives. When they announced that she was pregnant, they prudently continued to keep the diagnosis to themselves. The noteworthy element was that she was pregnant and looking forward to the birth, not that she was pregnant with a child who likely had DS, as if such a child were different in kind. When Trig Paxon Van Palin was born a month premature on April 18, they still did not mention that he was born with Down Syndrome, keeping again the focus that he was just as loved — and implicitly had the same full human dignity — as the first family’s other four children.
It was only three days after his birth that they announced that Trig had Down Syndrome. In a public statement, Gov. Palin said, “Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”
In an interview with the Associated Press, she said about Trig, “I’m looking at him right now and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?” In the midst of a culture so prone to abort children for any and every genetic “abnormality” and “imperfection,” Palin looked at her son with the eyes of God, with the eyes of love.
She sent an email to friends and relatives written from the perspective of God the Father and signed, “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.” In it, ‘God’ wrote, “Many people will express sympathy, but you don’t want or need that, because Trig will be a joy. You will have to trust me on this. Children are the most precious and promising ingredient in this mixed-up world you live in down there on Earth. Trig is no different, except he has one extra chromosome.”
Our world, in many ways, is “mixed-up,” so lost that we are aborting away our future in a eugenic “search and destroy” mission in pursuit of a false “perfection.” Our country urgently needs those who acknowledge and prioritize the “most precious and promising ingredient” of our future.
Our country needs people like Sarah and Todd Palin.