March: Why Should Only 'Perfect' Children Be Born?

WASHINGTON -- Every year the March for Life has a different focus, and this year it focused on the group most aborted -- the pre-born diagnosed with some sort of disability.

As the marchers gathered on the National Mall near the Washington Monument, they declared those babies are every bit as deserving of life as any other child.

Americans abort about one out of five of their unborn children. But among these 'special needs' unborn, the abortion rate is a staggering 85 percent.

Kristan Hawkins, a pro-life leader who heads up Students for Life of America, is also mother to a special needs child who didn't get aborted. Six-year-old Gunner suffers from cystic fibrosis.

"Which is a deadly, incurable genetic disease," Hawkins told CBN News.

But she said Gunner's life is so precious, a world without him is unimaginable.

"He's smart. He's articulate. He's so tenderhearted," Hawkins said. "I can't imagine our lives without Gunner."

And Hawkins can't imagine denying him his rich, full existence.

"Gunner likes life. He has a pretty good life with his iPad, his brothers, and all of his Legos," she said, laughing.

Potential GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina also attened a pre-March for Life gathering this week held at the Heritage Foundation. She praised women who refuse to go along with the mainstream and give birth to special needs children or even risk their own lives with troubled pregnancies.

Fiorina spoke of one mother-to-be given a stark medical judgment in 1949.

"That an abortion was her only choice. Her doctors feared for her life," Fiorina said.

But the former Hewlett-Packard CEO told the Heritage Foundation audience that particular pregnant woman had deep faith and great courage. She trusted God with her life and refused to abort, giving birth to that baby she was carrying at tremendous danger to her own life and health.

"She spent almost a year in the hospital following his birth," Fiorina said. "But her son -- my husband -- was the joy of her life, and for over 30 years he has been the rock of mine."

CBN News met up with Dr. Grazie Christie at the March for Life. She often works with parents of the unborn as a radiologist.

But this Catholic Assocation Advisory Board member is philosophical about who is and isn't "disabled."

"All of us are disabled. All of us suffer," she said. "You know we can't avoid all the vicissitudes of life. So why should only 'perfect' children be born? Our lives won't be perfect anyway."

Dr. Christie came to tell the March for Life crowd that ultrasound technology is a wonderful thing for showing people so clearly that a fetus is indeed a human being.

"But ultrasound has a dark side," she explained. "It allows us to make pre-natal diagnoses that are then used to eradicate children that don't quite measure up to the standards that we are developing as a society."

And she said it's those standards that should be eliminated, not the children found unacceptable by them.

Even before this year's March for Life began, Fiorina summed up why the marchers come to Washington D.C. every year on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

"We gather here because we know that no one of us is any better than any other one of us," she said. "We gather here because we know that every human life has potential and every human life is precious."

As every year before this since the U.S. Supreme Court announced it's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the marchers made their way more than a mile from the National Mall, up Constitution Avenue, and massed in front of the Supreme Court.

There they bore witness to the more than 56 million unborn babies slain since Roe v. Wade.