The story of a father who wanted to abort his daughter with Down Syndrome / “For Life” Magazine, no. 4 – Spring 2015

Heath White is a “perfect” man who strives for perfection in everything he does. In school, in sports, in his job as an FBI officer. His first child, Pepper, born in 2005, was, of course, perfect.

Growing up in East Texas, he knew only one thing: success. He won a scholarship to Northwestern University, in the state of Louisiana. There began his passion for running and his string of successes in life.

He told reporters on ESPN’s “E:60” that he had straight A’s in school: “After graduation, I went to law school for a semester, and then I got accepted into pilot training at the U.S. Air Force. I grew up watching Top Gun, so I wanted to be a Maverick”.

Trained for success

After graduating from pilot school, White proposed to his high school sweetheart: “By the end of the graduation, they all gathered around Jennifer, and I got down on my knee and they all yelled, “Will you marry me?”

Jennifer, the future Mrs. White, said yes. In the ESPN documentary, she nostalgically recalls: “After I said yes, a lady walked up to me and she goes, ‘So which one did you pick?’ I said, ‘The one with the ring’”.

Their children would be “perfect, like he was”, she recounted. “They would be smart, because how could they not be? We were both college graduates. They would be perfect.”

The tribulation

A year after they had Pepper, a little girl, the couple, who also wanted a boy, were expecting again. This time, things were not as wonderful. Prenatal tests revealed that the child had Down Syndrome, a condition caused by an extra chromosome and it delays and limits the child’s development both physically and mentally.

The wife bitterly recalls that at that point, not everything was perfect anymore for her husband and that was not good. He wanted everything to be perfect, but that was not the family he had planned.

Asked by the ESPN reporter what she was most afraid of in those moments, Jennifer answered honestly: “That he would leave. That he would just run away”.

“I did everything I could to try and force her into having an abortion,” admitted Heath White. “My main concern was what people would think about me, you know, as a man, a pilot or Air Force officer or whatever. What weakness inside me caused that”.

Jennifer said that her husband was not abusive to her, but was emotionally unavailable.

“Why me?”

“I’ve got genetically superior genes. I’m a winner with winner’s blood. Learning you’re going to have a child with Downs is like experiencing a death. That’s what I felt like, like I was getting a broken baby. All I could think was, why me?” recalled the FBI agent.

Jennifer recounted: “I love this man more than life itself. So I had to think, what if? What if I aborted her? What if I got rid of her? And I remember a little voice in my head saying, no way, it’s not happening. No way. I mean, I contemplated it for maybe an hour. He did for months”.

The turning point

Paisley White was born on March 16, 2007, and Jennifer explained how she felt at the time: “It really felt like I had lost a baby, even though I had one sitting right in front of me. And I think it was after she started feeding that I said, she’s good, she’s perfect”. AS she looked at her, she didn’t even think she looked like she had Down Syndrome. But Heath immediately brought her back to reality, telling her that it was clear the little girl had Down’s Syndrome.

For Heath, who stopped running competitively for several months, there was an emotional disconnection from his wife and newborn baby.

“The turning point, I had her down and I tickled her, and she laughed and giggled at me and tried to push me away”, said Heath White. “And her laughing and smiling and reacting with me, you know, that’s when I realized that she’s just like any other kid. She’s my kid.”

Asked what he feels when he remembers that moment, he said: “Happiness about that moment, that I was actually able, you know, Paisley was able to change me”.

Down Syndrome is his destiny, too

Since then, Jennifer says Heath has started running again – this time pushing Paisley in the stroller.

“To let everybody see that I was proud of her”, he explained. “Nobody knew, you know, the way I felt before she was born. And if I can keep one family, one person from having to live with the guilt and almost making the mistake that I almost made, it’s going to be worth the pain that Paisley will feel later in life, knowing the way I felt”.

On March 2, 2008, before Paisley turned one, they ran their first marathon.

Jeniffer says she and the girl were in the audience, 100 meters from the finish line. Heath saw them and stopped. “He saw us and he stopped and we were like, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to walk her across the finish line’”.

That finish was just a beginning. Heath continued to run races with his daughter. He even won medals with her, including the first place. “One of the first things someone sees when they look at Paisley is Down Syndrome. And I want it to be one of the first things you see when you see me,” said her father, who tattooed her diagnosis on his chest.

The last race

Heath and Jeniffer gave birth to their third child in 2010. Another baby girl, named Tex. And in 2012, at the time of the interview, they were expecting their fourth child, also a baby girl, who was born in October of that same year.

On March 4th this year, at 38, Heath White prepared to push Paisley, now 5 years old, in the place their journey began, Little Rock, Arkansas. It would be their final time. This last race would complete a goal, running together for 321 miles. A number with a deeper meaning. The 321 is significant because Down syndrome is the third replication of the 21st chromosome.

“That one was tough. I had a hard time catching my breath. I don’t know whether it was some physical exertion, but it was pretty emotional knowing that it was the last time,” recalled Heath White.

He said there was no point continuing, to run marathons, as Paisley could play and walk by herself without being pushed in a stroller.

Love is perfection

“Initially, Heath had said, ‘I don’t want to take care of somebody for the rest of my life’ noticed Jennifer. “I think now he looks at it and says, ‘Oh. my goodness, I may not get to take care of her the rest of her life!’”

Indeed, no medal and no distance can erase a father’s worries for his daughter: “My fear is one day somebody calling her retarded. Somebody using that word in her presence. Or making fun of her because she’s different. And having to explain to her, you know, about society. And then having to build her self-esteem back up and let her know how much I love her”.

It’s perhaps one of the reasons why, in between races and marathons, Heath sat down at his desk and started writing a letter to his daughter.

“It was just my way of, you know, repenting”, said Heath White. “Chances are that she never would have known the way I felt before she was born. I went through the entire grieving process. You know, that could have been my dirty secret that I kept with me forever. But I didn’t want it to be, you know, a secret. I wanted her to know that, you know, she was everything to me.”

Dear Paisley,

I wanted to take a second to let you know about the emotional rollercoaster you’ve put me through for the past two years.

I was afraid you would someday find out how scared and selfish I used to be. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that I want you to know the truth. I want people to know how much you taught me, how much I love you.

Before you were born, I only worried about how your disability reflected on me. Now, there’s no better mirror in the world. You’re my light in the dark. And it’s a privilege to be your dad.

Love always,

Daddy

The letter is a confession to someone who has not read it and from whom the author wanted to run away but he us now running towards.

The father who once didn’t want her in his life now says: “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve tried to accomplish, it was never going to be perfect. But my love for Paisley is perfect. I shall always be there to make sure that she crosses the Finish line”.