Terry Eastland: Children with 'special needs' are as
loved as any others
01/28/2003 Dallas Morning News
By TERRY EASTLAND
Last month, Dateline NBC told the story of a young
couple's decision to have a baby who had been
diagnosed with Down syndrome. The story, which took
place in 1998, is worth recalling as the nation
continues to grapple with the morality of abortion.
In Dateline's account, Greg and Tierney Fairchild (of
Hartford, Conn.) receive the good news that Tierney is
pregnant with their first child. But later tests
reveal that their baby will have Down syndrome, a
genetic disorder that can produce a wide range of
physical and mental disabilities. For the Fairchilds,
who both happen to support abortion rights, that
prospect raises the question of whether they (or, to
be precise, Tierney) will choose abortion.
The Fairchilds worry about the severity of their
child's retardation and the unfair burden it might
place on other children they hope to have. They learn
their baby would have to undergo heart surgery. They
go back and forth on abortion but appear close to
choosing it.
As the legal deadline for making that decision draws
near, Greg wonders about the adoptability of a baby
like theirs and calls a local service. He is told it
is "no problem" finding parents for babies with Down
syndrome. The couple is taken aback.
"One of the things we hadn't considered," Tierney
says, "was that ... someone else would love to have
[this child] and was prepared to handle it." Her
husband adds, "[I]t even makes you question yourself.
What is it exactly that I'm so worried about, if there
are people lined up to adopt this baby?"
As you probably have guessed, the Fairchilds choose
life, and Naia Grace Fairchild is born. She has Down
syndrome and endures difficult surgery, and today she
is a spunky 4-year-old, her parents' evident joy.
The question is why the Fairchilds made the choice
they did, and the answer obviously involved their
discovery that "people" were "lined up to adopt this
baby." Quickly, it appears, they realized that the
baby they came close to regarding as "unwanted" � to
use the terminology of Roe vs. Wade, which legalized
abortion � would be wanted by "someone else."
The Fairchilds' story is all the more remarkable when
you consider that infants like theirs � those with
"special needs" � would seem to be among the least
adoptable. Yet interviews with Thomas Atwood,
president of the National Council for Adoption, and
others knowledgeable about adoption suggest that the
interest in adopting special-needs infants is as
strong nationwide as it was in Hartford in 1998 when
Greg Fairchild made his inquiry.
Glenn DeMots, president of Bethany Christian Services
(which has offices in 31 states, including Texas),
cites many special-needs placements carried out by his
organization, including one of an infant who died, as
expected, before reaching her first birthday.
Notwithstanding the acute difficulties of her brief
life, she was unquestionably a wanted child.
While the number of people waiting to adopt an infant
of any description is unknown, Mr. Atwood thinks there
may be as many as 2 million couples who would be
willing to take a newborn into their home � if one
were available. Keep that number in mind as you ponder
the many abortions in America � 1.31 million in 2000,
the most recent year for which the Alan Guttmacher
Institute has collected statistics. The lives
prematurely ended by abortion (the great bulk would
have been "normal" babies) experienced that fate
because they were deemed � for one reason or none at
all, after much agony or upon casual reaction �
unwanted.
To the extent pregnant women considering abortion were
to choose adoption instead, the number of abortions
would decline. Unfortunately, women in that
circumstance aren't thinking much about adoption.
Indeed, unmarried pregnant women -- who get most of
the reported abortions -- now choose adoption much
less often than they did in the early 1970s. That
change would appear to be a result at least in part of
the pro-abortion rights regime established by Roe,
which has shifted the question an unmarried pregnant
woman might ask herself from "Who will care for my
child?" to "Shall I carry this baby or not?"
Kenneth Connor, president of the Family Research
Council and himself an adoptive parent, makes a
persuasive case to anyone who will listen that
increasing adoption should be a key goal of public
policy. "The forgotten option," he calls adoption. No
doubt it would be less forgotten if Americans were to
understand that to say a baby is unwanted is to fail
to consult a wider universe.
As the Fairchilds discovered, there are people out
there ready, indeed eager, to open their arms.
Terry Eastland is publisher of The Weekly Standard and
a regular contributor to Viewpoints.
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"First... to clarify what we stand for: the United States must defend liberty and
justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. No
nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them."
-US National Security Strategy 2002
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