MTM - A Person is a Person No Matter How Small

A viral clip about aborting a baby with Down syndrome lit up the internet, but the part that matters most to me isn’t the comments section. It’s the question sitting underneath it: what is the unborn, really? As a physician and a dad, I walk through that question with the one person who has made it impossible for our family to keep this debate theoretical our son Thomas, now 26, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome and fought for his life from his first moments. 

Thomas was born on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, rushed to the ICU, and spent his earliest weeks in congestive heart failure before a pediatric heart surgeon repaired his heart. I share what that season looked like in real life, and why those details matter when we talk about prenatal diagnosis, disability, and the choices parents feel pressured to make. Then we shift to what Thomas has taught us over decades: how caregiving forms a servant’s heart, how joy can be louder than fear, and why his simple, wholehearted worship often moves a room full of guarded adults to actually sing. 

From there, I lay out the moral framework I believe we can’t avoid: is the unborn a human being or a potential human being? We talk personhood, the image of God, and why I don’t believe value changes with size, location, age, health, or circumstances of conception. If you care about the abortion debate, Down syndrome advocacy, Christian ethics, or the dignity of human life, this conversation will challenge you and it may change how you speak about it. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs a clearer lens, and leave a review with the question you’re still wrestling with.

Transcript

Welcome And The Premise

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Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills, the plague of our culture, and country. Hosted by author and physician Dr. Robert Jackson and his wife Carlana and Daughter Hannah Miller. So listen up because the doctor is dead.

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Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctor's rusty dusty scrapbook.

Viral Abortion Story And The Stats

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Well, just the last two weeks, a social influencer, a couple who bragged about aborting their Downs unborn infant made the rounds on the internet. Well, it created an outrage. It sparked an outrage on the internet. And I have to tell you that it created heartache in our family. Why? Well, it's because of Thomas, our Downs child who's now twenty-six years old and whom we all love desperately. Statistics in the United States show that 67 to 72% of parents who have a prenatal diagnosis of Downs syndrome will abort their unborn Downs baby. In the Scandinavian countries, that statistic is ninety five percent.

Thomas’ Birth And Heart Surgery

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Thomas was born, believe it or not, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It was a snowy day in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I was the obstetrician, and I had the privilege of delivering my ninth child into this world. I immediately knew that there was an issue, and he was hustled off to the ICU, and he began the first ten weeks of his life in congestive heart failure because he had what was called an AV canal. He did not have a partition between the two ventricles. There was no center wall between the two ventricles. And he had four, maybe five, I can't remember exactly, emergency hospitalizations in the first ten weeks of his life, and spent most of his first two and a half months in an ICU setting until he went to Charlotte, North Carolina, where a pediatric heart surgeon operated on his heart. And immediately he went from being a blue baby to being a pink baby, and he went from losing weight to gaining weight, and that was twenty six years ago, and he's done nothing but gain weight ever since. Now he's 190 pounds and he looks like he just graduated from Paris Island with that short haircut of his and that big bull neck, and he looks like a marine recruit, trust me. We call Thomas

The Servant’s Heart Thomas Teaches

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the Professor because God didn't send him here to learn, God sent him here to teach. And I'm here to tell you, Thomas has taught our family a lot of great lessons in life. Primarily he teaches our family how to have a servant's heart. Because you see, Thomas, I call him the backwards boy at times because he always puts his shoes on backwards. Not fifty percent of the time, but just about a hundred percent of the time. And he puts some of his clothes on backwards, so we just have to before we go to church or go to the store, you have to always undo all of the backwardness and put things on correctly so he doesn't look awkward. Now Thomas gives the best hugs, let me tell you. There's nobody in the whole world that gives a better hug than Thomas. When he goes to church, he'll sit down and start looking around the sanctuary. When he sees somebody he knows, he pops up, walks all around the church to give a hug to one of his personal friends. And everybody loves to get a hug from Thomas. But he does require a good bit of service to help him get dressed, to help him with his hygiene. And what does that do for me and my children? Well, we learn a servant's heart. And I know when I'm eighty years old I'm still going to be helping Thomas with shaving and bathing and dressing. But you know, Jesus said that he didn't come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. You know being a servant is a premium value in the kingdom of God, but yet most of us rebel at the whole notion of having to serve someone else for the entirety of their life. And I suspect that's why so many Downs children are aborted in their mother's womb. People don't want to admit to it, but they don't like the idea of having to be a servant to a special needs family member for the entirety of their life. When Thomas was about two years old, my daughter Rebecca was playing with him on the couch and tickling him because Thomas, I tell you, has such an infectious laugh. And she was making him laugh and just having a good time with Thomas, and she popped up over the back of the couch, looked at me and my wife, and said every family should have a Downs baby. Well, my wife and I looked at each other incredulous, remembering the two years of his first years of life when he had surgery and reflux, esophagitis and a feeding tube, and and then we smiled and nodded because we just realized how much value, how much joy Thomas brought to us. And we realized that he was teaching our our children how to have a servant's heart and teaching all of us to respect life. And we both nodded and said, Yeah, every

Uninhibited Worship That Changes A Room

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family should have a Downs child. Now I also point out to you that Thomas worships God with reckless abandon. Oh my goodness, he worships God with liberty and with a whole heart. There are times when we would come into our kitchen and we'd find Thomas on the back porch with his little CD player kneeling down all by himself, with his arms up in the air, his face up to the sky, weeping and worshiping God all by himself, just singing his little worship songs. Now he sings monotone, he really doesn't have any variety to his personal music, but he's still worshiping God. And I promise you, it has to be the sweetest worship that God receives. And at our church, I have to tell you, we go to a big Baptist church. There'll be 500 plus people in the sanctuary, and they're mostly 50 years old and older in the particular service we attend. Most of the older men still wear a coat and tie, and there's Thomas. Now, I'm gonna tell you, these folks, they're not gonna raise their arms until they get to heaven, but not Thomas. He's uninhibited. And he raises his arms, he sways back and forth, and he sings out loud, and sometimes when the choir and the orchestra really get to rolling, Thomas will just stand up, throw his arms up in the air, and he'll just start singing. And here's the amazing part. When he does that, the rest of the congregation will just stand to their feet and start singing too. That's the power that Thomas has in worship.

Human Being Or Potential Human Being

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Now, I read where folks on the internet during this last two weeks complained that prenatal ultrasound and amniocetes can be wrong and people can abort healthy babies. Now I don't dispute that. I'm sure that happens. But really that's not the real issue. Here's the bottom line. The bottom line is the answer to one question. And here it is. What grows in the mother's womb? Is that which grows in the mother's womb a human being or a potential human being? For you see, if that which grows in the mother's womb is a potential human being, then there's really no difference between a appendectomy or a colosystectomy or removing an infected molar, you see that question is fraught with enormous moral implications. But on the other hand, if that which grows in the mother's womb is a human being created in God's image, special in God's economy, a person in every way as you and I are, protected by the fourteenth Amendment that says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, then I submit to you that you and I should not put our head on the pillow any night until we have satisfied our conscience that we've done everything within our personal resources to put a stop to what amounts to the wholesale slaughter of innocent, unborn human beings. Now I want you to think about this. If a mother cannot legally kill a two year old Downs baby, she should not be allowed to kill a two to three month gestation Downs baby in the safety of a mother's womb. And that applies to every other genetic issue as well. Personhood is not defined by size or location. Personhood is not defined by age or health or lack thereof. Personhood is not defined by financial status or race. Personhood is conferred when the per sperm and egg unite to create a brand new human being, a brand new person who is unique and unlike any

Personhood Applied To Hard Cases

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other person who has gone before them or will come after him or her. I realize that we are discussing Downs children, but I want my listeners to understand clearly that this principle applies to every difficult circumstance under which a child may be conceived. It doesn't matter if the child is an unplanned pregnancy or unwanted, or conceived in poverty, or the result of rape or incest. Hear me clearly. There is no circumstance, no matter how desperate or difficult that justifies the murder of an innocent unborn person, an innocent unborn child, an innocent unborn baby. If a mother cannot legally murder her two year old because he was conceived as a result of rape or incest or in poverty, then it's not logical or moral to allow her to do so when that baby is two months gestation in the safety of her womb. Why? Because that baby is a person valued by God and protected by our fourteenth amendment. More than that, who are we to assume that that child's life will not be worth living just because he or she was conceived in difficult circumstances? How can we arrogate to ourselves the right to play God in that child's life?

Criminal Penalties And Deterrence

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Now I want to be clear here. Doctors who kill unborn babies should go to prison. Mothers who pay a doctor to kill their unborn babies should go to prison. Just like a mother who would kill her two-year-old baby, just like Susan Smith from Union, South Carolina, who killed her two sons some years ago and has been in prison for many years since that time. It will only take one conviction of a doctor and a mother, and I promise you that every abortion clinic in this state will close forever. Doctors are not going to risk their medical license and their financial future over a three hundred dollar abortion procedure. You can trust me

Joy, Humor, Dr Seuss, And Farewell

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on that. Now let's go back to Thomas. Thomas is our family clown. He loves to entertain. He's mostly nonverbal. I would say he has forty words in his vocabulary, but he is very well able to communicate, and he's very well able to entertain. Our family can't even imagine being without Thomas. And it's sad for us to think about families who would abort their Downs babies. They have no idea what they're missing out on. Let me conclude with a quote from that famous theologian, Dr. Seuss, who once said a person is a person no matter how small. You're listening to More Than Medicine, and I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson. Remember that Jesus loves you and your doctor loves you. Till next week, I pray that the Lord will bless you real good.

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Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Medicine, Jackson Family Medicine.