Mother of child with Down syndrome: My child is a blessing

Christine Allison, a mother of a child with Down syndrome, wrote about the blessings of raising her daughter, Chrissie.

In her article for Human Life Review, she said children with Down syndrome are special people who have “accepted the dare of life,” who live and thrive when others least expect.

She wrote the following about fetal testing and abortion:

Down Syndrome people are breaking through the walls of their own retardation and grasping their world… Unlike those who would abort them, these Down Syndrome people have accepted the dare of life, which is to live it. In California, an eleven year old girl writes her first line on a computer. She painstakingly taps out “I like God’s finest whispers.” In Brooklyn, a Down fifth grader dashes off the bus to his mother with a report card from his yeshiva; he has earned average grades in all his classes and speaks and writes in three different languages.

When describing how Chrissie overcame challenges as a child with Down syndrome, Allison notes that she is “alarmed” that these children are targeted for abortion while in the womb.

Chrissie is a blessing in a way a normal child is not. It is in describing her that the word “special” rises from banality and comes grippingly alive.

That she may now be a member of the last generation of her kind, a group silently and methodically targeted….alarms my heart.

Christine Allison “A Child to Lead Us” Human Life Review, Summer 1989