Two weeks ago I took an oath, “so help me God,” in a courtroom where two lawyers asked me questions about my son with multiple disabilities. At the conclusion of their questions, the judge determined that my son did not have the capacity to take care of himself as an adult and that my wife and I would be named his legal guardians, making all decisions about his life and finances for him.

It took about ten minutes. The severity of his life-long disabilities made the decision easy for everyone.

It is also a sign of how weak and vulnerable he is.

To those who identify a person’s value in terms of strength, independence, productivity and creativity, my son has no reason to exist. There are so…

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“It is a highly needed and valuable procedure.”

That statement above is referring to late-term abortion. In other words, says LateTermAbortion.net, it is highly needed and valuable that deadly poison be injected into the heart of an unborn child if the mother so chooses.

This reveals a cruel irony of late term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, the man convicted of murdering viable children after they were born alive during his abortion procedures. He claimed the babies were dead before leaving their mother’s wombs because his intra-cardiac injection had stopped their hearts, and therefore, he wasn’t guilty of murder. A matter of inches in one direction makes it “a guiltless procedure,” but in th…

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One of the common hopes and repeated phrases around the pro-life movement is that “abortion will become as unthinkable as slavery.” I long for such a day.

The only problem is that the elements that made slavery possible are still thinkable now. We see it in how people behave toward children, particularly unborn children.

Consider the legal issues around Baby S., the little girl who God miraculously placed into a loving Christian family after her disabilities were discovered during a surrogate pregnancy for parents who decided they didn’t want her.

When her surrogate mother could not be bullied into an abortion, a lawyer for the genetic father reminded her that she had signed a contract. …

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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5)

Sometimes the darkness is overwhelming: The Chinese health ministry reported that more than 336 million children have been eliminated through abortion since 1971. Joe Carter recently put that number into its gruesome context. Then there’s the horrific practices of Kermit Gosnell being exposed — seven babies, born alive, that he brutally killed. Late-term abortions still make Americans uneasy, but so does having a child with a disability. More and more companies are developing early tests to identify genetic anomalies. “Screening” for Down syndrome and other genetic anomalies is growing rapidly.

The Story of

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Recently a healthy young woman went to see her doctor for a prenatal checkup on her baby girl. She had named her Madison.

Then she went to an abortion clinic to end her daughter’s life.

Four days later, this mom died from complications related to that abortion.

That child went from being wanted — a beloved girl named Madison — to being terminated — one more slaughtered baby in our culture of death.

Why? They found out Madison had fetal anomalies.

Hearing that news as a parent is hard. If you have not experienced the shock of such a diagnosis in your child, then it is difficult to describe how truly horrifying it is. All the bright imaginations about what a little boy or little girl will…

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I know some of you are praying you’ll make it through Christmas — just make it through — not anticipating anything good will come from gathering with extended family and friends. It has become a cliche — right next to the article on what second-graders are excited about for Christmas is the article on the rise in depression during this last month of the year.

You know the sadness is real. While you change the diaper of a teenager, or administer complicated medications, or prevent your non-verbal ten-year-old from hurting himself again, or explain yet again the complicated life of your five-year-old without a diagnosis for her disability, your nieces and nephews and young friends are playin…

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I was recently looking over The New York Times when I stumbled onto an article they recommended: British Conservatives Play the Abortion Card.  

And there it was.

A health secretary wanted to reduce the time frame of abortion to the first 12-weeks of gestation. This didn't go over well with many "because a 12-week limit would prevent testing for many fetal anomalies like Down syndrome, which cannot be detected during early pregnancy."

Implied: we need more time to kill the ones we don't want. And we don't want the ones with Down syndrome.

Here's my reply, or more like an edited version of my initial thoughts:

I'm grateful to God for the boys and girls and men and women with Down s…

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God and his word are the most important things you can share with anyone, including someone who is suffering because of disability. And not far behind are testimonies of God’s extraordinary goodness, even amid the most difficult circumstances.

Greg Lucas was one of the first people considered when the idea of a conference related to disability and the Bible started to come together. He clearly articulates God’s goodness in all things, seeing his disabled son through the lens of the Bible, not the perceptions of the culture or even his own.

His book, Wrestling with an Angel, sets a high standard for how to talk about one’s own experience of suffering while pointing to our all-sufficient …

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This conference is not solely about comfort; it is also about conquest

If you think a conference about God and disability is going to be mostly about comforting those who are hurting, you are only seeing half of the potential. It is certainly about providing hope from God’s word. And it is also about fighting a war:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

Who will the cosmic powers hate more than those God has called indispensible (1 Corinthians 12:22)? Who are they most likely to seek out to destroy,…

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"That book has been a lifeline."

A young man just said this to me last week as he and his wife face indescribable suffering — his youngest son will likely die in the next few months.

If you’ve never experienced that kind of suffering yourself or in your church, you will.  If you have, you know that God uses the testimonies of suffering people to provide comfort, encouragement, and hope in these inconceivable circumstances.

The book this young dad found so helpful is Holding on to Hope: A Pathway Through Suffering to the Heart of God by Nancy Guthrie. It is the story of a family who faced a similar loss when two precious children died because of genetic anomalies. 

God proved tru…

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