Editor’s note. My family and I will be on vacation through August 25. I will occasionally add new items but for the most part we will repost “the best of the best” — the stories our readers have told us they especially liked over the last ten months.
Zoe Lush’s parents learned about their daughter’s disability before she was born. During an ultrasound at five months’ pregnant, a doctor told Zoe’s mother, “Mrs. Lush, there’s something very wrong with your child.”
Zoe’s parents later learned that Zoe has Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) Type III, a condition that causes brittle bones. Even in the womb, Zoe had multiple fresh and healing fractures. Zoe’s mother said in a video for the BBC, “We were told it was a one in 50,000 chance for it to happen to her. She has a mutation in her DNA which causes her OI.” Doctors did not know whether Zoe would live to birth.
The distraught parents were pressured to abort their daughter. Zoe’s father says they were told abortion was the only “humane” thing to do. They were even told that they should abort Zoe and donate her body to scientific research.
Despite their distress and the pressure to choose abortion, Zoe’s parents chose Life. Pro-Life legislators in Texas are working to pass the Disabled Preborn Justice Act, so that parents like Zoe’s can find support, and children like Zoe are not violently killed in abortion for the sole reason of their disability.
The Lushes journey has been a difficult one. At birth Zoe broke her collar bone, and within the first month of life she fractured arms and legs. She has broken so many bones, her parents have stopped counting. Her dad says, “We stopped counting at around a hundred.” When she was an infant, three people were needed to change her diaper to prevent more fractures.
But her parents and everyone she meets says Zoe “never stops smiling.” Her mother insists, “I would not change Zoe. If I could take her OI back, I would never, ever take it back.” With continued treatment, Zoe is expected to live a long and full life.
Zoe’s story demonstrates the need for laws like the Disabled Preborn Justice Act. No matter what disability a child may have, he or she is still an innocent human being. The deadly discrimination in Texas law denies these children the Right to Life and the opportunity to overcome their disability.
The Disabled Preborn Justice Act would protect disabled babies from violent late abortions. The law would also ban the practice of sex selective abortion and outlaw force or threats of force for anyone, including physicians, attempting to coerce a woman to undergo an abortion due to her preborn child’s ethnicity, sex, or disability.
Send a message to your legislators [www.texasrighttolife.com/endpreborndiscrimination/] to protect babies like Zoe. Disabled children should be protected from discrimination starting in the womb.
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
