Editorial: On Sarah Palin, fear, abortion, truth and how to save 96% of children with Down Syndrome / “For Life” Magazine, no. 4 – Spring 2015

by Alexandra Nadane, President
Studenți pentru Viață
Romania’s pro-life students organization

THE Woman

She was born in 1964, into a family of four children. In high school she was a point guard on the girls’ basketball team, winning the 1982 Alaska State Championship at age 18. That same year she joined the Republican Party. In 1984, at age 20, she placed third in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant. In 1996, at 32, she became mayor of Wasilla. In 2004, she was asked to run for the US Senate, but declined at the request of her eldest son, who was concerned that his mother would no longer be able to care for the children. In 2006, at the age of 42, she became Alaska’s youngest-ever governor and the first woman to be elected. In 2008, she ran for US vice-president. In 2014 she launched the online news channel Sarah Palin Channel.

Sarah Palin is a famous woman in the US. She embodies characteristics that some find irreconcilable. Beautiful, smart, rich, famous, with five children, pro-chastity until marriage, faithful to her husband, 100% pro-life and 100% anti-abortion, a politician, a sportswoman, a religious person, a media person…

Could she be THE Woman, the perfect woman, who has all the good things in life, no problems, no troubles, no deprivation, no frustrations?

Her fifth child has Down Syndrome

In 2008, at the age of 44, while campaigning for the US Vice Presidency, she was off the Alaskan border at an oil and gas conference when she learned that her fifth child, with whom she was pregnant, had Down Syndrome.

Her reaction? “There, just for a fleeting moment, I thought, I knew: Nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. It is easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances.”

So she’s not the perfect woman, she wavers too! Now let’s see, what does she do in the “Trouble in Paradise” episode? It’s easy to tell other people not to abort a Down Syndrome baby, but when it’s you?

She felt like the world had come to a standstill. “I thought, ‘God, unless you know more than I do about all this, how in the world would I handle this?’”, she recounted. “I understood then, too, why a woman would consider [abortion] an easier path to perhaps, if you will, do away with the problem, instead of understanding that every child has purpose. There is destiny for every child. And it can be good, in our world. And that’s what I held onto.”

The truth about life with a child who has Down Syndrome

In a 2012 Newsweek article, Sarah Palin wrote: “My prayers were answered beyond my shallow understanding of what true joy could be”… “Yes, we face extra fears and challenges, but our children are a blessing, and the rest of the world is missing out in not knowing this.”

Some days with Trig, her fifth child, are more difficult and she worries about his future all the time, but „at the end of the day I wouldn’t trade the relative difficulties for any convenience or absence of fear. God knew what he was doing when he blessed us with Trig.”

‎What she is experiencing is no exception. The scenarios people have when they hear about children with special needs are often far from reality. Studies conducted by Boston Children’s Hospital in 2011 show that:

• 79% of parents felt their outlook on life was more positive because of them;
• 95% of their sons or daughters without Down syndrome have good relationships with their siblings with Down syndrome;
• 99% of people with Down Syndrome indicated that they were happy with their lives;
• 97% of people with Down Syndrome liked who they are;
• 96% of people with Down Syndrome liked how they look.

How to save 96% of the children with Down Syndrome

And yet what is her secret? How does Sarah Palin manage to fall on her feet in peace as well as in storm?

When asked by Walters if her “right to life” stance on abortion dictated her choice, Palin said her decision was not “politically motivated”: “My decision certainly wasn’t a political decision. It was a holding onto a seed of …that promise that things will be okay if we choose life. And that certainly has come to fruition in my life,” she said.

Her secret is simple: she has chosen the path of truth and she is certain that, because it is the right path, there will be solutions to every problem. So she forges ahead.

What she didn’t know how to solve, she trusted that it would be solved somehow. And it did. For example, she didn’t know how to tell the other kids about their little brother’s diagnosis. Willow, Sarah Palin’s daughter, 14 years old at the time, said she didn’t know Trig had Down Syndrome until he was born: “I was a little shocked. but I don’t care – he’s my brother and I love him”.

Sara Palin wears a sticker on her car saying “My kid has more chromosomes than yours” (people with Down Syndrome have 47 chromosomes instead of 46).

When philosopher Richard Dawkins declared in 2014 that it is immoral not to have an abortion if you find out you’re having a child with Down Syndrome, Sarah Palin responded by posting 11 photos of Trig on her Facebook page, along with the following message:

Mr. Dawkins,

I’d let you meet my son if you promised to open your mind, your eyes, and your heart to a unique kind of absolute beauty.

But, in my request for you to be tolerant, I’d have to warn Trig he must be tolerant, too, because he may superficially look at you as kind of awkward. I’ll make sure he’s polite, though!

Love,

Sarah Palin & family

Let’s tell everyone loud and clear: Every life is a gift! Choose life and all problems will find their answer.