July 11, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – How frustrating: Yet another unwanted child will be given a loving family instead of being thrown into the the local abortion clinic's garbage bin! At least, that's the message of an article that appeared in the website Jezebel yesterday.
Katie Baker wrote in the ultra-feminist publication in response to the story of how Virginia priest Fr. Thomas Vander Woude recently found out about a couple that intended to abort their child, who has Down syndrome, and offered to find them an adoptive family instead. The couple took him up on the offer, and the priest sent out an emergency appeal to his parish network.
The appeal rocketed around social media, and in response, hundreds of people contacted Fr. Vander Woude's parish in the space of several hours, offering to adopt the child.
For most people the story was a rare bright spot in an otherwise depressing news cycle, a beautiful story of the willingness of people to make significant sacrifices on the spur of the moment to give an unwanted child a home.
But not for Katie Baker. While admitting that “it's great so many families” were interested, Baker laments that the mother of the child “is still being coerced into carrying [her baby] to term.”
Then she recycles the usual line about how pro-lifers only care about fetuses. “So many mistreated babies and kids with Downs live terrible lives,” she writes. “Instead of throwing resources at a nonviable fetus, why can't the church help children with Down syndrome that are already alive? Because anti-abortion folks care more about fetuses with fairytale narratives than actual babies.”
In the midst of her feminist lather, Baker appears to have overlooked several important facts:
First, families who offered to adopt the child were signing up not to adopt a “fetus,” but a born child that would require significant care for the rest of his or her life. In other words, they were signing up to spend decades of their lives caring for a person that even Baker would admit is very much “alive.” So much for only caring about fetuses.
Second, her suggestion that the baby, who is reportedly only days away from 24 weeks gestation, is not “alive” is simply laughable. While we don't know the exact age of the baby, babies have born as early as 22 weeks gestation and survived, which undercuts even her slur that the baby is “nonviable.”
Third, her lament that the mom was “coerced” is equally ridiculous. Fr. Vander Woude made them an offer. They accepted. I fail to see how that amounts to “coercion.” If Baker spent half the energy chastizing dead-beat dads who send their girlfriends off to abortion clinics with a couple bills tucked in their pockets to pay the fee and a tacit understanding that if they don't “take care of the problem” there won't be any “home” to come home to, as she spends wringing her hands over the fact that pro-lifers actually are willing to adopt the babies they save, then maybe I'd be more willing to try to understand her point of view.
And fourth, there aren't all that many “living” children with Down syndrome to adopt in the first place, because 90+% of them are aborted thanks to a culture created by Baker and her kind that says that if a baby isn't perfect, just kill him or her and get a new one.
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But where Baker and I can agree is that it would be a good thing for more people to adopt more babies, including those with Down syndrome. Interestingly, I strongly suspect that this amazing story will put the possibility of adoption on the radar screens of a lot more couples who may never otherwise have considered themselves candidates for adoption. Some nine hundred people reportedly inquired about the baby, offering to adopt a child they had only heard about minutes before. It's reasonable to expect that some of those will realize that if they could adopt a child in an emergency, they could also adopt one even without the emergency. Please God they will carry through on the inspiration.
In other words: this story was a win in every possible way. The baby gets a loving home; the parents don't have to make the terrible choice to end their child's life; adoption has been given wide publicity in the press; and hundreds of couples were given the opportunity to take a leap of faith and open their hearts on the spur of the moment. That Baker doesn't see how good this all was is quite simply a sad testament to the power of the pro-abortion ideology to blind a person to actual goodness.