Baby with Down syndrome in need of Adoption

On Sunday, there was a small blurb in a local church bulletin:

“Down syndrome baby girl in need of adoption.  For more information, contact …”

Leaving the “people-first language” lecture for another time, I jumped into advocacy mode.  I quickly called the number Monday morning to see what I could do to help … ready to help spread the word, rally the troops (that’s you, my dear readers!), raise funds if necessary … whatever I could do to help this little one find a loving family.  I even contemplated for a minute whether we could take her … after all, I still want a daughter, but in the fog of our current exhaustion, and the chaos of 3 boys ages 4 and under, I knew that it wasn’t the right time – I’m barely able to keep up with my own boys right now.

By the time the woman called me back and gave me the website for her adoption agency, it was Tuesday afternoon – but I was more ready than ever to help however I could.  I quickly pulled up the website to read:

“There has been an extraordinary response to our request for adoptive families for this unborn child. The birth family is currently at the end of the process of deciding on a forever family …”

Of course.

How silly of me.  Lots of families want her!

But, what a fantastic reminder to all of us, especially anyone with a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, that our children are valued and loved.  Children with Down syndrome are wanted … wanted so much that there is a long waiting list of families ready to adopt!  There are so many families that would love to cherish and nurture a child with Down syndrome – again, it breaks my heart that so many of these little lives are lost to abortion.

So … with that reminder … remembering that there is no shortage of families wanting to adopt, I again want to urge you to support  Reece’s Rainbow, an organization that raises funds to help families adopt a child with Down syndrome.  Most of the adoptions are international, and can cost a family up to $30,000.  Reece’s Rainbow has always said there is no shortage of “forever families” for these children, just a shortage of funds to make it happen.

This little girl didn’t need our help after all, but there are countless more children that do.

Earth Day 2010

 

From CatholicVote.Org:

“It’s time to use Earth Day to celebrate nature’s greatest gift – human life.”

“Our goal is to use Earth Day to get Americans to think more deeply about what it means to truly respect the Earth and creation. Prevailing environmental attitudes too often view humans as the enemy of nature. We believe the human person is God’s greatest creation, and the Earth’s greatest resource. Building up a culture of life is the single most important way to build a culture that respects the environment,” said Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote.org Education Fund.

“The members of CatholicVote.org wanted to bring this balanced Catholic view of the environment to the streets,” said Burch, “and that’s why we’ve advertising on over 50 buses in Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.”

“Respect for the God’s creation has a long history in Catholic teaching, long before it became popular with our secular culture,” said Burch.

Pope Benedict XVI has been very vocal in support of proper stewardship of the natural resources that all people share together. Newsweek even dubbed him “the green pope.”

Earlier this year, in his annual address to the Vatican diplomatic corps, Pope Benedict said:  “If we wish to build true peace, how can we separate, or even set at odds, the protection of the environment and the protection of human life, including the life of the unborn?”

The Pope has repeatedly emphasized that respect for the environment must be tied to a larger framework that understands that nature includes a plan of love and truth that comes from God.  And the heart of God’s plan for creation is the human person. 

In his recent encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves.”

Read the full article here.

What do YOU think Nature’s greatest gift is?