Down Syndrome

11-year-old with Down syndrome helps create new law to help parents choose life

Chloe Kondrick at the Outer Banks (from ChloesMessage.blogspot.com)

By Nancy Flanders

Kurt Kondrich isn’t shy about standing up for the rights of his daughter, Chloe, or anyone else, who, like Chloe, has Down syndrome. Together with Chloe, he has become an advocate for those with the condition, even heading back to school to earn his Master’s degree in Early Intervention. But Kondrich says his mission is still the same today as it was when he was a police officer – to protect and serve. That is what he does for the Down syndrome community.
When Chloe was born, Kondrich knew that something wasn’t quite right based on the tone in the doctor’s voice. The doctor said that Chloe showed signs of having Down syndrome and was a bit surprised when Kondrich asked to hold his daughter. But the moment he held her, he knew he wouldn’t let anything stand in his little girl’s way. After bringing her home, he was inspired by her even more. In an article for Belief Net, he writes:

I was amazed by the ABILITIES of this little girl who not long ago would have been labeled uneducable and shipped off to an institution for a life of EXCLUSION.

Today, in addition to his column at Renew America and his blog Chloe’s Message, Kondrich has now helped to create a new law in Pennsylvania: Chloe’s Law also known as the Down Syndrome Prenatal Education Act.

Chloe’s Law is a huge leap forward in the fight to end the abortions of children with Down syndrome. At this moment in time, 90% of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. Many of those lives could have been saved if parents had just been given accurate and up-to-date information about Down syndrome and what life is like living with the condition.
Chloe’s Law will help to finally make that happen by requiring health care experts to provide women who receive the prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome with supportive, factual, and up-to-date information from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. This includes physical, developmental, education, and psychosocial information and resources, as well as support services including the state-funded early intervention program.

Chloe, who is now 11-years-old, began reading at age 3 and is now reading at the same level as her peers. Her success in life is due to the fact that Kondrich, his wife Margie, and their son Nolan, stopped at nothing to ensure Chloe received the support she needed to reach her full potential. All parents deserve the opportunity to do that for their children. And now Chloe and her dad are making that possible. Mrs. Kondrich told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“I don’t want any expectant mother to feel that pain or confusion when they get a prenatal diagnosis. I want this law to give women hope. Chloe was a blessing.”

All children are, no matter their diagnosis.
Editor’s note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

Source NRLC News

War on Women??????

Are Democrats really throwing the “War on Women” cliché overboard?

By Dave Andrusko

“[Saying] ‘Republicans are waging a war on women’ actually doesn’t test very well,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “Women find it divisive, political—they don’t like it.” — From an article in Thursday’s National Journal, “Why Democrats are Ditching the ‘War on Women,’” by Emily Schultheis.

Pro-abortion President Barack Obama

Really? Let’s see.
The subhead to Schultheis’ article is “The party that deployed ‘war’ rhetoric to help defeat Mitt Romney is looking for less divisive ways to reach female voters this cycle.” Oh, please. This would be almost amusing if it weren’t just as deceiving (and misleading) as the empty-headed “war on women” cliché.

As I read the article, I thought of the memorable quote attributed to pro-abortion former Vice President Al Gore: “When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.”
Pro-abortion Democrats are desperately looking are images and issues that they can twist so as to holler that Republicans are actively hostile to women.
As we noted in “ObamaCare’s unfavorable numbers in July worse yet,” pro-abortion Democrats do not want to talk about ObamaCare which includes (among other objectionable provisions) massive federal tax subsidies to assist many millions of Americans to purchase private health plans that will cover abortion on demand.
Nor do they want to talk about laws to protect unborn children capable of feeling pain from the horrors of abortion. Pro-abortion Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.) simply won’t bring up the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (S. 1670).
As the National Journal article makes clear, instead of these issues or the economy or foreign affairs, Democrats want to talk about contraception, code for the “Burwell v. Hobby Lobby” Supreme Court decision.
Of course what was actually at issue in that case was whether the government can force employers to provide health coverage for drugs and procedures to which they have moral or religious objections—freedom of conscience.
However what many people don’t understood is that there is another very dangerous problem that has always lurked in the background which the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision did not address.
The decision did not truly correct any of the major abortion-expanding problems created by Obamacare, including the overly expansive authority that the Obamacare law itself provides to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to define “preventive services.”
What if in the future, HHS chooses to add the abortion pill RU-486, or even elective abortion, including late abortions, to the list of mandated “preventive services”? Nor is there anything to prevent HHS from requiring coverage for, say, doctor-prescribed suicide, or anything else it chooses to classify as “preventive services.”
To return to Schultheis’ article, when pro-abortion Democrats do choose to avoid the inane “war on women” conceit, they are merely exchanging one set of misleading, divisive stereotypes for another.
“The playbook’s the same,” GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway told Schultheis.

Obama

 

Are Democrats really throwing the “War on Women” cliché overboard?

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By Dave Andrusko

“[Saying] ‘Republicans are waging a war on women’ actually doesn’t test very well,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “Women find it divisive, political—they don’t like it.” — From an article in Thursday’s National Journal, “Why Democrats are Ditching the ‘War on Women,’” by Emily Schultheis.

Pro-abortion President Barack Obama

Really? Let’s see.
The subhead to Schultheis’ article is “The party that deployed ‘war’ rhetoric to help defeat Mitt Romney is looking for less divisive ways to reach female voters this cycle.” Oh, please. This would be almost amusing if it weren’t just as deceiving (and misleading) as the empty-headed “war on women” cliché.

As I read the article, I thought of the memorable quote attributed to pro-abortion former Vice President Al Gore: “When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.”

Pro-abortion Democrats are desperately looking are images and issues that they can twist so as to holler that Republicans are actively hostile to women.
As we noted in “ObamaCare’s unfavorable numbers in July worse yet,” pro-abortion Democrats do not want to talk about ObamaCare which includes (among other objectionable provisions) massive federal tax subsidies to assist many millions of Americans to purchase private health plans that will cover abortion on demand.

Nor do they want to talk about laws to protect unborn children capable of feeling pain from the horrors of abortion. Pro-abortion Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.) simply won’t bring up the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (S. 1670).
As the National Journal article makes clear, instead of these issues or the economy or foreign affairs, Democrats want to talk about contraception, code for the “Burwell v. Hobby Lobby” Supreme Court decision.

Of course what was actually at issue in that case was whether the government can force employers to provide health coverage for drugs and procedures to which they have moral or religious objections—freedom of conscience.
However what many people don’t understood is that there is another very dangerous problem that has always lurked in the background which the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision did not address.
The decision did not truly correct any of the major abortion-expanding problems created by Obamacare, including the overly expansive authority that the Obamacare law itself provides to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to define “preventive services.”
What if in the future, HHS chooses to add the abortion pill RU-486, or even elective abortion, including late abortions, to the list of mandated “preventive services”? Nor is there anything to prevent HHS from requiring coverage for, say, doctor-prescribed suicide, or anything else it chooses to classify as “preventive services.”
To return to Schultheis’ article, when pro-abortion Democrats do choose to avoid the inane “war on women” conceit, they are merely exchanging one set of misleading, divisive stereotypes for another.
“The playbook’s the same,” GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway told Schultheis.

Source: NRLC News

ObamaCare

 

ObamaCare’s unfavorable numbers in July worse yet

By Dave Andrusko
As one observer put it gently, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s series “has been one of the friendliest polls to ObamaCare since 2010.” So it is both illuminating and amusing to see how Kaiser spun the latest public opinion polling on ObamaCare.
It did concede “After remaining steady for several months, the share of Americans expressing an unfavorable view of the Affordable Care Act rose to 53 percent in July, up eight percentage points from June, according to the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll.” To be clear t hat is the worse number ever.
We’re also told, “This increase was offset by a decrease in the share who declined to offer an opinion on the law (11 percent, down from 16 percent in June), while the share who view the law favorably held fairly steady at 37 percent, similar to where it’s been since March.”

“Offset”? When the number of those unwilling to express an opinion largely moves to the unfavorable category, that’s not an offset, that’s a sign that the public’s opinion on Obama’s “signature domestic program” continues to head south. Remember: we’ve been told for four years that the public would gradually come to love ObamaCare once it “understood” it.
What else? Can these numbers be attributed only to Republicans? “Republicans continue to be the group with the strongest opposition to the law,” Kaiser’s Liz Hamel, Jamie Firth, and Mollyann Brodie tell us, “but the increase in the share with an unfavorable view between June and July was similar across the political spectrum and different demographic groups.”

As NRL News Today has discussed over the past few months, we also keep being told that ObamaCare simply won’t be THAT big an issue come November. That was, is, and will prove to be in three months.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey hit the nail squarely on the head this morning:

“Democrats would rather talk about anything in the midterms than ObamaCare. Unfortunately for them, the upcoming enforcement of the employer mandate will spread the misery far wider for Americans than the 2013 rollout of ObamaCare did, as millions of consumers get dumped out of employer-based coverage and are forced into the exchanges for coverage. That will likely begin to happen in October of this year, as businesses have to prepare for their 2015 budgets, just a few weeks before those midterm elections. They may not want to discuss ObamaCare, but it may be the final straw for voters tiring of incompetence in the White House and in his political allies on Capitol Hill.”

Source: NRLC News

Abortionist

 

Willie Parker’s “Abortion Ministry”

By Dave Andrusko
It is no coincidence that John Richardson’s story in Esquire magazine is titled, “The Abortion Ministry of Dr. Willie Parker.” Richardson’s profile is a futile attempt to make a kind of saint out of a man who flies into Mississippi twice a month and performs as many as 45 abortions a day. (And, yes, that quantity does bring to mind the charges brought last year by two nurses who once worked at the Wilmington, Delaware Planned Parenthood clinic–that the clinic performed ‘meat-market style assembly-line abortions.”)
The story is built around the interactions Parker has with the women intended to reassure them abortion is safe, safe, safe; that the only opinion that matters is hers; that anyone who disagrees is a hypocritical Christian; and that aborting women is just an extension of the ethos that undergirded the Civil Rights Movement. (And, yes, the latter does remind you of Kermit Gosnell’s similar delusionary argument.)
Indeed we are told over and over that Parker is a Christian (“I do abortions because I am a Christian.”) Both Parker and Richardson use that as a defense/justification/explanation for why he aborts and aborts and aborts some more.
Richardson extends the allusion. Referring to the information abortionists are required to pass onto women (which Parker then mocks and distorts), Richardson writes, “In an almost priestly cadence, he builds a sermon around the word required.”
Later, “In all these interactions, even if it has nothing to do with abortion, Parker never misses a chance to offer comfort. This seems to be his version of absolution, often delivered with a moral.”
It would not be unfair to conclude Parker does see himself as a theologian dispensing his own kind of balm, which he calls “verbicaine.”
The story is very long, so here are a few summary points.
#1. You would easily conclude reading Richardson’s piece that Parker does not do abortions past the 16th week at all, not just in Mississippi. In fact, Sarah Kliff, then of the Washington Post, began a highly sympathetic 2012 interview with Parker, describing him as “a doctor who has performed late-term abortions.” If you read other stories, Parker freely acknowledges performing abortions at 24 weeks, 6 days, and beyond.
#2. As noted above, Parker recites information that is important to women considering abortion, but then immediately makes mash of it. But Parker’s willingness to bend—actually mutilate—the truth came out in that interview with Kliff. Here’s just one of the examples NRLC addressed in responding.

“In his interview with Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post, Dr. Willie Parker estimated that 1 percent of abortions occur after the first trimester. This is a gross underestimate. Indeed, in a printed statement opposing the bill that he posted on the internet, dated May 17, Dr. Parker himself wrote that ‘roughly 12% of abortions occur at or after 13 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period,’ citing figures cited by the CDC. This is 12 times the figure he cited in the interview.”

#3. Women who’ve had chemical abortions often are brutally honest about what an RU-486 abortion entails. In comparing chemical to surgical abortions, Parker says only that the “minus” of the former is “heavy bleeding” and “a return visit in two weeks.” Compare that no-big-deal summary with the stories of women who’d bleed for weeks, who can barely straggle out of bed, who experience pain they could not even image, “blood clots the size of golf balls,” and “debilitating, convulsing cramps.”
#4. Opposition to abortion, ultimately, “comes back to the early Judeo-Christian narratives that say the fall of man was caused by a woman, Parker says. ‘That’s woven into our culture, and it has to be deconstructed at every level.’” So at the end of Richardson’s story when Parker matter-of-factly points out the aborted baby’s skull and eyes and the beginnings of a spinal cord, your and my nausea at this ultimate act of dehumanization is actually a reflection of how we blame Eve for everything?
Two other points.
#5. Parker’s “verbicaine” is intended to enable many women to keep submerged a central truth in their lives that keeps trying to surface: what they are about to do violates something at their very core. The most revealing passage in this piece cuts through the nonsense that Richardson, Parker, and the women hide behind:

A woman named Monique asks if she gets a wish. Sure, Parker says.

“Please tell me that you can’t find it.”

“If only we could wish it away,” he says.

Another woman tries to explain—she just got a promotion; she can’t have a baby now.

“I hear ya. Life is full of those kinds of decisions.”

One scan causes him to pause. “Do you want to know if there is more than one?” he asks.

The woman starts to cry. “No.” She wipes away tears with both hands.

When she leaves, he points to the screen. Triplets. He’s seen lots of twins but never triplets. Some women think multiples are more special, so they get more upset.

Yes, I’m sure, “some women” do. Finally
#6. The crux of Parker’s self-delusion—or is it just indifference?—is captured in the conclusion of Richardson’s story:

But here’s the vital question: Is it a person? Not by the standards of the law, he says. Is it viable outside the womb? It is not. So this piece of life—and remember, sperm is alive, eggs are alive, it’s all life—is still totally dependent on a woman. And that dependence puts it in the domain of her choice. “That’s what I embrace,” he says.

But it’s hard not to look at those tiny fingers, no bigger than the tip of a toothpick.

Does that ever disturb him?

“When I recognize whole fetal parts? No. Because I’m not deluded about what this whole process is.”

And what does examining this tissue tell him? Does this satisfy another state regulation?

“It tells me her uterus is empty and she is no longer pregnant.”

Source: NRLC News

Assisted Suicide

 

“Children’s Advocates” in Scotland ask that any assisted suicide legislation include children

By Dave Andrusko

Protesters gather at the March4Life in Belgium earlier this year to call for respect for human life.
Picture: Getty

In June NRL News Today ran a story about what can only be described as a bizarre recommendation. A coalition of what are called children’s charities in Scotland actually recommended that the age of consent to ask for assisted suicide—16—was too high.

Submitted under the collective name “Together,” groups that are ostensibly advocates for children are attempting to piggyback on a proposed assisted suicide. The rationale of Save The Children, Barnardo’s, and Children 1st, among others?

As Peter Kearney wrote in today’s Scotsman.com., they asked (and I am not making this up) the health and sport committee, which is dealing with the assisted suicide proposals, to consider “international examples of comparative legislative.” Who might that be? Belgium, of course, which earlier this year legalized euthanasizing children.

When anticipating where this might head in Scotland, consider what Paul Russell wrote about Belgium, where euthanasia has careened completely out of control. The Belgium Parliament, he wrote,

“fell for the ‘stringent safeguard’ sleight of hand that has patently failed the Belgian people over the last 11 years. In a country where nearly a third of reported euthanasia cases show no record of request or consent and where only a little over half of all euthanasia acts are reported to the government Euthanasia Evaluation Committee (both required by law) and, where this committee has not referred one case for consideration by the authorities, even the semblance of safety and due regard for process is little more than a macabre joke on the Belgian people.”

“Together” indicated “support for the lower age limit of 16 to be removed from the existing bill and for children to be allowed to ask for assisted suicide whenever they are judged mature enough,” according to Kearney. “They actually say in their submission, that ‘the health and sports committee should note that terminal illnesses do not discriminate based on the age of a person and, accordingly, neither should health care.’”

They added, “a child who is capable of forming his or her own views should be assured the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child,” including, obviously, their own self-destruction. “The views of a child must be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity.”

Some legal heavyweights have also weighed in, suggesting that if the age threshold is not eliminated now, there is no reason not to reconsider this in the future.
The Mason Institute, based at the University of Edinburgh and located within the School of Law, told Members of the Scottish Parliament, “While the age limit of 16 might be appropriate now, future reviews of the legislation should consider whether those under 16 who can exercise their autonomy should also be allowed to make use of the law.

“If it is accepted that the so-called ‘mature minor’ is able to both consent and refuse care under the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991, then legal consistency would expect this to be extended to assisted suicide.”

Kearney quotes the anti-euthanasia group “Care Not Killing” which described the proposal as “monstrous” and “unthinkable.” But he also points out how just a few months after there was outrage and alarm when Belgium altered its euthanasia laws to include children, that example “shows that stepping along the path of killing patients is a voyage into an inevitable and heinous moral abyss.”
Near the end of his opinion piece, he comes full circle to observe, “Apart from the novel idea of describing the process of putting someone to death as ‘health care’ these are truly chilling words. These organisations established to defend and protect children appear to be doing the exact opposite.”
My only quarrel would be with Kearney’s use of the word “appear.” There is no “maybe” about what these groups are doing. Under the guise of “autonomy,” they are greasing the skids to ensure that any assisted suicide law passed in Scotland not “discriminate” against children.


Source: NRLC News

Eugenics

The Eugenics Response to Pregnancy: As Long as It’s Healthy

by Gerard Nadal, Ph.D. | 

When Regina was pregnant with our three children, people would ask if it was a boy or a girl. When I responded with, “We don’t know,” I was met with the ubiquitous, iniquitous, mindless, and moronic refrain:
“As long as it’s healthy.”

I would challenge this well-intentioned, ill-thought well-wish with:
“If it isn’t, we’ll love the child all the same, and even more.”
That shook people out of their torpor and made them realize exactly what they were saying. It usually left most pretty angry with me.

“Can’t you just accept a good wish and leave it at that?” was the reply of one associate.
It’s a valid point, but one that fails to own up to what was being said. “As long as it’s healthy,” is a world apart from, “I wish your child health and happiness.” Even in the absence of health, one can have happiness, fulfillment and contentment. In an age of increasing reliance on pre-natal technology to murder the pre-born for the crimes of being female, male, having cleft palate, clubbed foot, spina bifida, Down syndrome, trisomy 18, etc…, “As long as it’s healthy,” rings deadly ominous. It needs to be confronted.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the antidote to our eugenic mentality in a letter to his daughter, Patsy. It stands for all time as the most eloquent reproach to the intolerance of imperfection:

Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for; for none of us, no, not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections, this world would be a desert for our love.

 Source: LifeSite News

Miracle

 

Michigan man says it was God who led them to find abandoned baby, “that all life is precious to Him”

By Dave Andrusko

24 Hour News 8’s Henry Erb speaks to Jeff Kopp, who along with his dog Bobby found a newborn on the side of the road near Diamond Lake.

The Michigan man who found an abandoned five-hour-old baby on the side of a dirt road says, “I feel that we were led to that place, OK, because it was out of the ordinary for me to come in this direction.”
Jeff Pope added, “I tend to think it was God led us this way, that all life is precious to Him.”
The instrument God used was Mr. Pope’s Labrador, Bobby. On Monday, a little after 10:00 am, Bobby pulled Kopp down the road in White Cloud and toward a satellite dish. Kopp initially thought what he saw was a rabbit.

Bobby began sniffing the “rabbit.”
“Then it moved,” Kopp told WOOD TV. “That’s when I started yelling.”
Yesterday, a family court referee in Newaygo County granted the State of Michigan emergency custody of the as-yet unnamed baby girl, who is currently at DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids.
WZZM-TV reported that a Department of Human Services (DHS) worker “said the child will probably be in the hospital for a few more days because she is having trouble with her blood sugar. The baby is also still on an IV and will need to be transferred to bottle feeding before she can leave the hospital.”

Two unnamed relatives of the 14-year-old mother have expressed interest to DHS, WZZM reported, “in either taking temporary custody of the baby or possibly eventually adopting her. The Department of Human Services attempts to place children with relatives if that is found to be a suitable arrangement.”
The DHS worker told the court that after allegedly placing the naked baby on the ground across the street from her house, she went home and fell asleep. The DHS worker said the mother have given birth on a blanket near a fire pit outside of her home that she shares with her father.
As NRL News Today reported Wednesday, it turned out that the young girl reportedly was watching as neighbors found her daughter. She then approached the scene.

“This was just bizarre to me but she looked at us and she said, ‘You know, I am almost 15 years old and if I ever had a baby, I surely would not do something like that,’” Pam Kopp told WZZM.
WZZM also reported:

“The Newaygo County Sheriff’s Department continues to investigate the situation. When deputies first arrived at the teen’s home Monday, they found her father attempting to clean blood from the bathroom of the house. The blood had apparently been brought inside when the teen brought a blanket inside after giving birth. Deputies found dried blood on the 14 year old’s legs as well.

“When DHS workers initially talked with the 14-year-old, she said she didn’t know whose baby it was. Then she later admitted the baby was hers. She did name a male who she says is the father of the child, however when that male was questioned by detectives, he denied having intercourse with the teenage girl.

“Once the Newaygo County Sheriff’s Department completes its investigation, the case will go to the Newaygo County Prosecutor’s Office for consideration.”

Source: NRLC News

People With Disabilities

 

Woman with cystic fibrosis inspires parents to choose life

By Nancy Flanders
Cystic fibrosis (CF) has been in the news a lot lately, mostly because of a little girl named Sarah and her mom Janet and how they changed the transplant rules for children. Also because of new drug therapies that are paving the way to giving people with CF a normal life expectancy. And finally, because a large amount of babies diagnosed with CF are aborted. Some statistics point to over 90%. That’s heartbreaking to me. I’m the mom of a little girl with cystic fibrosis.

Many adults with CF will gladly step up and say that they in no way support the abortion of a child because of a diagnosis of CF. They proudly proclaim that their lives have been worth living, CF or not. They are the ones we should listen to very carefully in this particular abortion debate. They know better than anyone because they have been living every single day of their lives with CF. One such person is Mandy Anderson.

Mandy is a remarkable person. Her parents were told not to expect her to live long enough to graduate from high school. In fact, doctors told them it would be a “miracle” if that happened. Today, Mandy is 32-years-old. And while her health has suffered at times, she lives an amazing life. She’s married. She owns her own business. And she is devoted to helping others live the healthiest, best life possible.

Recently, Mandy wrote a letter to parents who are learning their unborn child has CF. Her words brought tears to my eyes. Mandy is full of hope and love and she manages to send that hope and love right through the computer screen with her words. You must read the entire letter.
Before Mandy speaks to the parents facing a new diagnosis, she offers forgiveness and hope to parents who have already aborted their child because of CF. Parents like Addie Morfoot. She tells them that their child forgives them, and she hopes one day they can forgive themselves as well. This is important. Because if anyone understands the pain and regret of aborting a child, especially a child who was planned and very much wanted, its parents like Addie Morfoot. They need love, forgiveness, and support, not judgement. Mandy writes:
I know the pain of losing a child you never got to hold because I had a very early miscarriage. And while they aren’t the same cause of loss, the hollow ache that never really goes away when your arms are empty of the baby you love so much…that’s a pain I wouldn’t wish upon anyone; I wouldn’t choose that. CF is manageable; however, that hollow emptiness can devour you. So embrace forgiveness.

Mandy says in the letter that at one point in her life, her lung function dropped to 22%. This is usually when doctors start talking about a lung transplant. Mandy, with determination, was able to work hard to get her lung function back up to 74% but she had this to say:

[…] if I’d have had to live my entire life with only 22% lung functions, struggling to breathe, I’d still want to live it. I’d still want the chance to love my parents, meet them, get to know them, feel their warmth and comfort, and experience this beautiful world that God created. Because life is always worth living. […]It’s not impossible to live life with this disease. It’s not even a struggle – IF you choose to see it that way.

Life is always worth living – even with a health condition. Even when you are told that you won’t live to be an adult, life is always worth living. No one is guaranteed even one year on this planet. Most of us will take what we can get and live each day to the fullest. But that is a choice each of us makes – live with hope and determination or choose to see only the negative. Our attitude makes all the difference.

Mandy goes on to reiterate how happy she is to be alive. She talks about how grateful she is that her parents didn’t see abortion as a right or choice or a way to fix that their child had CF. She credits them with having the ability to teach her how to live life with a positive

outlook

.

When an unborn child is diagnosed with a condition such as CF, many parents are so blindsided by the news that they don’t know what to do. Doctors are often quick to offer the “solution” of abortion. But what parents really need is time to absorb the information and talk to CF care specialists. It is also beneficial to talk to families and people who live with CF. This doesn’t just go for babies diagnosed with CF, but for babies diagnosed with any condition. The doctors making the diagnosis are not the experts, so be sure to find one to talk to immediately. And be sure to find someone like Mandy to talk to as well.

As Mandy says:

Choose life and hold that precious baby in your arms, reassuring her that she matters, no matter what.

Editor’s note. Nancy is a work at home mom who writes about parenting, special needs children, and the right to life. She is the lucky mother of three spirited little girls, one who has cystic fibrosis, and she spends any free moment she can find fundraising for a cure for CF. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

Source: NRLC News

Unborn Children

 

Unborn children have already pretty much done everything that a newborn baby does, leading expert tells The Today Show

By Dave Andrusko
Earlier today a friend of 30+ years forwarded me another story from what is turning out to be a font of information about unborn babies: The Today Show, specifically its segments on parenting.

The title of the segment, hosted by Savannah Guthrie (who is pregnant), is “The Secret Life of Babies: New Research about what’s learned inside the womb.” And it’s plenty!
For us the major conclusion drawn is not new but important because it will reach a wider audience: “Life in the womb is much busier than you might expect.”

Here’s what Dr. Bill Fifer, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and described as a leading expert on fetal and newborn learning, told The Today Show:

“Everything that a newborn baby does, a fetus has pretty much done already.”

Dr. Fifer, Guthrie says, is gathering some of the “latest and most cutting edge information about life in the womb.” We wrote about another Today Show episode last week: “Moms can teach their unborn babies nursery rhymes, study shows.” It received, by far, the most “likes” of any post ever on NRL News Today.
Thursday’s broadcast (which can be seen at today.com) alludes to that research from the University of Florida as part of a larger examination of just some of the developmental milestones a baby experiences while she or he is “hanging out in Hotel Uterus,” to quote Guthrie.

The first major milestone, we’re told, is touching. Unborn babies are “exquisitely able to sense information over all parts of their body, although some are more sensitive than others, like around the mouth, around the feet, around the hands,” Dr. Fifer says.

Around the 20th week, sensory systems for taste and smell develop. In addition, there is strong evidence that babies may be able to recognize Mom’s voice by birth.
A good chunk of the piece is to explain how the baby can and does respond to Mom’s behavior, whether it be what she is eating or her moods.

It’s a wonderful 4 minute, 5 second long infomercial for the full humanity of the unborn child. Please watch it at today.com and share it with friends.
Editor’s note. For those who may have missed it ,we are re-publishing last week’s post on “Moms can teach their unborn babies nursery rhymes, study shows.”

Source: NRLC News