As you may remember last week we started a new series talking about why we’ve chosen life for our son with Arthrogryposis. Pregnancies with Arthrogryposis have a 50%+ chance of not reaching term, either because of normal complications associated with Arthogryposis or because of termination. We want you to know that there are other options besides termination and that your baby is a previous human life. We’ve chosen life and we’re going to walk through some of the arguments for terminating a child with deformities or disabilities to see if the arguments are valid.

This week the argument is:

The quality of life will be too poor. You’re doing the child a favor by not allowing it to have a miserable life.

Quality of life, for an individual, is not a valid reason for the intentional termination of their life.  To say that quality of life is a valid reason termination of a child really puts you in a difficult position.  When one argues that way the question always comes to mind: who determines quality of life? You, me an institution? What if one changes the threshold? What if I say, hypothetically of course, that those in wheelchairs or those who have hearing deficiencies should be terminated because their quality of life doesn’t match my subjective standard? Well, you’ll probably say “that’s ridiculous, you can’t end someone’s life because they have a disability.” You might argue that it’s different because we’re talking about an unborn life versus a grown person with those disabilities. Well, that argument still doesn’t stand: I could then say, let’s terminate the lives of unborn babies in extreme poverty stricken areas. Their quality of life would not be up to standard, so it’s probably better to put them out of their misery. Again, you’d probably state that you “wouldn’t go there.” The point is that we need an objective standard that exists outside of us, because even institutions and governments will undergo change. The Christian God of the bible gives us this standard and he says that all life is valuable to him. Lastly, you never know if something miraclous is going to happen. The birth mother of Caleb, one of our triplets, was told multiple times that he would not make it. He had a lot going against him and she chose life. He has had a rough road and has several disabilities, but you can’t look at him now – watch him play, eat and walk and tell me that it would be better for him to not be here, because his quality of life isn’t perfect.

The Lord cares about the life of your baby, he cares about your life. So much so that he gave up all so that you can experience his joy eternal and his love that’s enduring. If you don’t know that love talk to us, we want to share it with you.

All is Grace,
the lopez fam