OPINION:
At President Biden’s State of the Union address this week, a young woman expected to be seated next to First Lady Jill Biden will be held up as a victim and a hero. A victim because she had to leave her home state of Texas to abort her third child; a hero because she ended the life of her daughter who was diagnosed in utero with Trisomy 18.
The genetic disorder is characterized by three copies of chromosome 18 instead of two. It is a life-limiting disorder that can be fatal, but it’s hard to quantify how many of these babies would live because so many are aborted. Some of the babies who do live through birth will die before their first birthdays, and those who survive will need serious medical interventions that can last a lifetime.
Thanks to 50 years of legal abortion in our nation, many Americans – including some pro-life advocates - have been conditioned to believe these special-needs children have no right to life. Even some states that protect most babies from abortion make exceptions for children diagnosed with an illness deemed “incompatible with life.”
But some Trisomy 18 babies are famously alive.
Bella Santorum, the eighth child of former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and his wife, Karen, is looking forward to her 16th birthday in May. In Canada, Brandon Bosma does numerous speaking engagements and even gave a Ted Talk.
In Oklahoma, Megan Hayes, the oldest known individual with full trisomy, will turn 44 in June.
Kate Cox, the mother of two surviving children and Jill Biden’s State of the Union guest said she was concerned the pregnancy would harm her physical health and went to court to try to get permission for the abortion under the exception Texas law makes for life-threatening situations for pregnant women.
However, according to the organization Trisomy18.org, it’s rare for the disorder to harm a mother’s health. The Texas Supreme Court seemed to agree with that assessment, writing in its opinion that “No one disputes that Ms. Cox’s pregnancy has been extremely complicated. Any parents would be devastated to learn of their unborn child’s trisomy 18 diagnosis. Some difficulties in pregnancy, however, even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses.”
Had there been a life-threatening emergency, Ms. Cox’s own doctor could have performed the abortion legally. But by going to court instead, the issue became front-page news. Indeed, a White House spokesman said when the Bidens called Ms. Cox to invite her to the speech, they thanked her for her “courage” in going public with her abortion story.
Another woman expected to be in the audience for Biden’s speech is Dr. Austin Dennard, one of the women suing the state of Texas over its laws protecting the unborn from abortion. Her son was diagnosed in utero with anencephaly, a neural tube defect in which a baby is born without parts of his or her brain and skull. Most babies die before birth, but some can live for hours or days. Dr. Dennard has been invited to the speech as the guest of U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Texas.
“I am so inspired by Dr. Dennard’s bravery and her resilience in the face of Texas’s cruel abortion ban,” Mr. Allred said in a press release.
Dr. Dennard left the state to abort her son and has since had another baby, a son she described as “perfect.”
These are the role models the Democrat Party wants to showcase: Mothers who said no to life as they strived for a perfect child. Mr. Biden and his cohorts want to harden Americans’ hearts as they pursue their policy of taxpayer-funded abortion with no limits. They want us to see abortion as essential health care rather than the intentional murder of a human being.
As is tradition, the Republicans will offer a critique following the Biden speech. But nothing would be more eloquent than spotlighting what can happen when we say yes to life.
So what I’m hoping to find in that State of the Union audience is a sea of those non-perfect children and truly courageous parents who understood that every life, no matter how short or difficult it might be, has value.
• Janet Morana is the executive director of Priests for Life and the co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. She is the author of Everything You Need to Know About Abortion – For Teens.
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