The Black Hills Pioneer ran a story a few days ago on the Ingalls family who live near Faith. I'm honored to know them; they are a special bunch of folks.
Robert and JoDee (in the picture, JoDee is left, with Sandy Rhoden holding the Ingalls' baby Joey) have 13 children, five of whom are adopted, and many of them have special needs. Here's a little of what the article said:
Today, the oldest child in the family is 15-years old. From there the family has almost every other age covered, with ages including 14, 13, 11, 9, two 8-year olds, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1-year old. Of them all, five have downs syndrome, one is also severely autistic, one has fetal alcohol syndrome, one was exposed to methamphetamines, and another was exposed to another drug. They're all special, and they all bring a specific attribute to the family unit which helps bind them together.
"It just works here," JoDee said. "We are really set up and geared toward the children and their needs. We have always been very interested in special needs. There was a time when we were afraid of it, until our first child had downs syndrome. She just really shattered the myths that we had. We had a lot of false concepts about people who have disabilities. We realize that it's not so bad after all."
We frequently here pro-abortion folks cite birth defects as a reason why we need to keep abortion available. However, even if caring for a child with birth defects is too much for a woman or family, there are plenty of families out there who are willing and even eager to adopt children with special needs.
Families like the Ingalls (and I know other families like them) have an exceptional love and selflessness that, I'll be honest, I cannot claim. But folks like this exist, and they're not as rare as you might think. So it's particularly vexing to me when I hear pro-abortion folks want to end the lives of children who aren't perfect, even before they can get out of the womb. Baby Joey narrowly escaped abortion himself, when his sisters were aborted in the womb he also was in, and the abortion of his sisters has a lot to do with why he has many health problems
The world needs more selfless, loving people like the Ingalls'.
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