Laurie (my wife) and I had the opportunity to attend a five-weekend leadership retreat centering on advocacy for children with disabilities. Although there is much to say about the experience, I wanted to share a thought expressed by one of our speakers that I am still working through and thinking on. It is an argument and discussion point that I hadn’t heard before but one I found extremely compelling.

We were discussing the growing acknowledgment in our society, on different levels, to the need, benefit and health of including people with disabilities into every aspect of our society. Although there are many different definitions of “inclusion” and what it means, the base principle applies to each: that each human being, regardless of their ability, potential or limitations, should be provided equal opportunity to be included in our society on every level. I am becoming more and more aware of how, as a society, and frankly even as the Church, we haven’t embraced this principle and in fact, by our words and actions, devalue people of different abilities – but that is a post for a different day.

The argument the speaker presented was kind of an aside in the presentation but struck home with me as an incongruent piece of a changing societal norm. In a culture that is, on the whole, positively progressing in how it treats people with disabilities and including them more and more areas of societal life, there is one aspect that seems strangely counter-progressive. In this increasingly inclusive world, we concomitantly see a health system and growing ethical system that has embraced the practice of encouraging and performing abortions for those families who, in their prenatal care, are discovered to be carrying a child with some diagnosed disability. The reason often presented is that having a child with a disability would be a to great a burden on the family, the person who has the disability and of course our economically struggling health system to carry the baby to term. However, if, as a culture, we are progressively embracing inclusion of people with disabilities in our schools, workplaces, community areas and churches, wouldn’t it seem like the place inclusion should begin is the equal right to be included in birth.

It is an unjust paradox that a culture would positively shift to the see people with disabilities through their potential, and concurrently not see their right to live or even suggest/lobby for/argue for their prenatal death.

As a parent of a child with a disability who is actively trying to change culture so that it sees our son for his potential rather than his limitations (as we would all like to see seen), the infuriating irony is that individuals, like our son, are increasingly welcomed in schools, community events but sadly and despairingly, not into life outside the womb as doctors and health care professionals encourage parents to abort their children because of their potential and perceived overwhelming burden.

This can’t be right and I, for one, am committed to changing our society.