Children with Down syndrome -- like my son -- have the right to be born and are a blessing

(Courtesy of the author)

As a person in the news commentary business, my television is tuned to the news almost all the time. My children are aware of what is going on in the world as well.

We have five children, including a sweet and wonderful son we were blessed with through adoption. His name is Samuel, he’s 12 years old and he happens to have Down syndrome. We spend our lives preparing Samuel and our other children for a world that condemns them for their faith, their political opinions and their love of freedom.

But nothing could have prepared me for sitting next to Samuel as we watched Laura Ingraham‘s show on the Fox News Channel Wednesday night.

I finished my regular appearance on Charles Payne’s show, “Making Money,” on Fox Business at around 7 p.m. I came home to make dinner and Samuel was helping me in the kitchen, laughing and glancing at Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show (my kids call him “Uncle Sean” because he’s been a good friend to our family) on the little TV in the corner of our kitchen.

(Courtesy of the author)

Laura Ingraham’s show began, and she told the story of Washington Post Deputy Editorial Page Editor Ruth Marcus’s recent column headlined: “I would’ve aborted a fetus with Down syndrome. Women need that right.”

In other words, Marcus would have aborted Samuel if she had been his mother.

Now think about that for a minute – really think about it. How would you like to hear about someone saying you should never have been born? Saying you should not exist. How would you feel?

I saw an awful look on Samuel’s face that can only be described as horrified disbelief. He looked at me with his big dark eyes piercing me, questioning if he really heard what he thought he just heard on the TV. Unfortunately, there is no hiding the evil of this world from his innocent heart.

The story of our adoption has been published many times. For some reason, people find it difficult to believe that we set out, and searched for 10 years, for a child with Down syndrome who we could adopt.

We searched Planned Parenthood over and over, only to learn that Planned Parenthood is definitely not in the business of adoption.

Samuel was born to a Latino man and a Polish woman in a large public hospital in Florida. Today Samuel’s birth mom is one of my very best friends. She had attempted several times to abort him, and she says God intervened in miraculous ways ... once when her car ran out of gas and another time when a train stalled across the highway.

Today she would tell you that giving birth to Samuel is the best choice she ever made. I adore her for choosing life for our Samuel in a society that says she should have killed him for a lot of reasons.

Samuel is very smart. He knows that Laura Ingraham also chose to adopt her children and we have discussed this many times. While I have five children, Samuel knows that he’s the only one that I got to choose. He thinks that is pretty cool, and he thinks it’s cool that Laura is in his “club.”

I wish Laura and all of her producers at the “Ingraham Angle” (I know many of them, and they are some of the best in the business) could have seen Samuel’s face when Laura defended him on her show against Ruth Marcus’ statement saying she would have aborted him.

I wish Marcus could have seen Samuel’s face. I wish that she and others from the Washington Post could have been there to answer his questions, and to dry the little tears that welled up in the corners of his eyes. My other children, who all love Samuel, would have some choice words for Marcus and the Post for even publishing her column.

I wish Planned Parenthood could see how my family is complete, not because we aborted an “inconvenience,” but because one woman was stopped from aborting our son. I wish more women could be stopped from aborting their joy.

Today most women who learn they are pregnant with a baby with Down syndrome get abortions. What a loss to our society!

My husband wrote the landmark pro-life bill that saved thousands of babies from the horrors of abortion in our home state of Missouri, when he served in the Senate there. I’m proud and grateful that many people are alive today because of his work.

The irony is that if my Samuel met Marcus today, he would only have love for her ... a love that she would have chosen to never even know had she been his mom, or the mom of a child like him. I thank God every day that my Samuel is alive and a part of our family.

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