Advocating for Special Needs Children

Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge. And children with special needs inspire a special love.

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House.

This is a profoundly important human exceptionalism issue that I think all political persuasions can get behind, and indeed, it is one that Senator Obama would be wise to embrace in his own campaign.

The need for vocal support for the worth of such children—and explicit and implicit validation of the choice to allow them to be born—from the highest levels of society could not be more important. As we have noted before here at SHS, in support of S-1810, a very worthy bill co-sponsored by Senators Ted Kennedy and Sam Brownback—stranger political bedfellows there never were—to ensure that prospective parents of such children receive accurate information about special needs children:

Eugenic abortion is a growing problem in my view, with about 90 percent of gestating infants with Down syndrome, dwarfism, or spina bifida aborted rather than carried to term. The rush to withhold or withdraw medical treatment for newborns with serious disabilities is also a rising risk. The bill will not prohibit eugenic abortion or withdrawing treatment, but if passed it will require that parents receive full and accurate information—not just the negative—about raising children with such conditions in the belief that fewer parents who are fully informed will opt for abortion or withdrawing treatment.

If Ted Kennedy and Sam Brownback can join together in this worthy effort, so too can Barack Obama/Joe Biden and John McCain/Sarah Palin. In that event, whoever loses the election, special needs kids will win.