Every year since 2010, the venerable baby food company Gerber has chosen a “Gerber baby.” This year’s winner is 18-month-old Lucas Warren of Georgia—the first Gerber baby with Down Syndrome. Lucas’s mother, Cortney, entered her son into the company’s annual contest, which drew around 140,000 entries. The Warrens, who appeared with Lucas on the Today show on Wednesday, will receive $50,000, and Gerber will feature Lucas in its advertisements.
It’s terrific publicity for Gerber, to be sure, but the company deserves praise even so. Children and adults affected by the genetic disease, as anyone who has known them will testify, bring a unique sweetness and gentleness into human interactions. All who know them are blessed, and anything that reminds us of their contributions is worth honoring.
“He may have Down Syndrome,” says his Cortney, “but he’s always Lucas first.” That’s well said.
The unhappy subtext to the Gerber announcement, however—nearly everyone who saw Lucas on the Today show will be aware of it—is that Down Syndrome babies are targeted by the abortion industry. It’s nearly impossible to know with precision how many pregnancies are terminated as a result of a Down Syndrome diagnosis, but recent research on the U.S. population estimates that 67 percent of pregnancies diagnosed with Down end in abortion. That number is almost certainly higher in Europe.
But the politics of abortion are slowly changing. Progressives’ sudden obsession with same-sex marriage and transgender issues, as Fred Barnes documented in a 2011 WEEKLY STANDARD feature piece, has allowed the pro-life movement to make quiet gains in state legislatures. The movement has made impressive progress since 2011. As of 2017, twenty-six states now require an ultrasound before an abortion; in nine of those states, the abortion provider must offer the woman seeking an abortion the opportunity to view an ultrasound image. At least 18 states ban “webcam abortions” in which the abortionist prescribes abortion-inducing pills to the mother by videoconference. Twenty-four states ban abortions after a certain number of weeks (typically 20 weeks, when the unborn can feel pain).
In December, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio signed a law prohibiting doctors from aborting babies based on a Down Syndrome diagnosis. What was surprising about the Ohio debate was how comparatively quiet it was. The pro-choice crowd lodged its usual objections, but the law went into effect without much of the alarmism we’ve come to expect in these debates. We’re guessing that’s because, while most Americans may not yet take a consistently pro-life view, the vast majority rightly sense that Lucas Warren had every right to come into the world—and that the world is a happier place with him in it.
