Little boy born without a brain can now speak, count, and attend school

Prenatal screening is part of the process of giving birth in our age.  Modern technology has offered expectant parents delights unknown to previous generations – visual images of their baby or babies moving in the womb, their every feature on display.  It also has lent the illusion that technology has delivered us a power over nature that can set aside moral considerations.

This power has however come with a tradeoff, and it has immediate moral consequences.  Doctors will regularly counsel abortion if the preborn babies appear to have abnormalities. It is the purpose of the screening.

As people have lost a sense of the sanctity of life, and activists have made preserving women’s equality indistinguishable from her right to abort, killing the preborn baby has become common.  In fact, it has perversely been construed as an ideological marker, an index of our social commitment to equality.  Doctors have set aside the duty of preserving the health of both patients in favour of a commitment to it.

The human status of the unborn has been sacrificed.  It is as if the most trivial excuse for killing would demonstrate our society’s commitment to women’s equality.

This story is a marvel on so many levels. ‘When Noah Wall was born, the doctors said he probably wouldn’t survive and if he did, he would be severely physically and developmentally disabled. Born with only 2 percent of his brain to a family in Cumbria, England, Noah had no hope — at least according to the doctors.’

Yet now his brain has grown to 80% of a normal size.

Not only should it give expectant families with children who appear to have abnormalities hope, it should also give us reason to think about our understanding of the connection between the brain and the mind, and celebrate the wonder of God’s gift of life.

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