After reading this piece, I am all the more agitated to fight for the rights of special needs children to sue their parents later in life for sheer stupidity:
In the months before their daughter was born in 2007, Deborah and Ariel Levy worried the baby might have Down syndrome.
They say a doctor at the Legacy Center for Maternal-Fetal Medicine assured them that a sample of tissue taken from the placenta early in the pregnancy ruled out the developmental disability, despite the results of later testing that showed the fetus might have it.
But within days of the birth of their daughter, the Southwest Portland couple learned the baby did have Down syndrome. Had they known, they say, they would have terminated the pregnancy. Now they’re suing in Multnomah County Circuit Court, seeking more than $14 million to cover the costs of raising her and providing education, medical care, and speech and physical therapy for their daughter, who turned 2 this month. The suit also seeks money to cover her life-long living expenses.
The Levys declined to be interviewed. Their attorney, David K. Miller, said the toddler is as dear to them as their two older children but they fear being perceived as “heartless.”
I think that the Levys’ self-diagnosis is excruciatingly accurate.
HT: Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke.
They are heartless. As a father of a special needs child, I find the assertion that parents love their Down Syndrome child as much as their other children, but would have killed her had a they known before she was born that she had Down Syndrome to be preposterous. We do not kill those whom we love nor do we sue others for giving us inaccurate information that prevented us from killing someone whom we now claim to love. Put simply, it is a lie.
Were I their two older children, I would find frightening the assertion that their younger disabled sibling is just as dear to their parents as they are. Apparently, none of their children are so dear to them that they wouldn't have killed them had they known before their birth that they would be disabled.
Hopefully, the Levys will learn that God gives us burdens as blessings, not as curses. Special needs children require special effort, effort that changes their parents. Those changes can be for the better, a become a blessing, or for worse, and become a curse. The mother and father, through the grace of God, largely determine which it is.
Thank you for your heart-felt post.