Patterico's Pontifications

2/8/2018

Baby With Down Syndrome Honored As “2018 Gerber Spokesbaby”

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:42 am



[guest post by Dana]

Last year I wrote a post about Iceland’s heartbreaking efforts to successfully abort all babies identified as having Down syndrome. It is now a country that when three babies are born with Down syndrome in one year, it is considered “quite more than usual,” and counselors easily rationalize the disappearance of these children from the landscape of their society, saying:

“We don’t look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication… preventing suffering for the child and for the family. And I think that is more right than seeing it as a murder — that’s so black and white. Life isn’t black and white. Life is grey.”

Yesterday, a happy announcement was made about the celebration of a little fellow with Down syndrome here in the U.S. It was an announcement that would not be made in Iceland. Much to their shame:

Lucas Warren, the first child with Down syndrome to receive the honor of, essentially, America’s cutest baby. The 1-year-old from Dalton, Ga., was selected as “2018 Gerber Spokesbaby” from more than 140,000 photos submitted by parents.

His mother, Cortney Warren, entered Lucas in the contest when a relative mentioned that Gerber put out its annual call for adorable babies, she told “Today.” Warren posted a photo of Lucas sporting a polka dot bow tie and an open-mouthed grin on Instagram and tagged Gerber.

It was Lucas’s smile that won him the iconic contest, said Bill Partyka, chief executive and president of Gerber.

“Every year, we choose the baby who best exemplifies Gerber’s long-standing heritage of recognizing that every baby is a Gerber baby,” Partyka said. “This year, Lucas is the perfect fit.”

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Parents of children with Down syndrome were elated by the selection of Lucas:

“In a puddle of tears over here…my mama heart is so so thankful…when Bodie was born I believed a lie, that others would not value him as much as I do. But, today is a new day. It is such a beautiful, good day,” wrote samanthajob on Instagram.

Instagram user nicki_bloms wrote: “As a mama currently carrying a cutie with an extra chromosome this made my day!!! Thank you Gerber!! ”

What a wonderful moment this is for a special group of parents and their little ones who have been specifically targeted for death in other parts of the world. What a wonderful moment for life! Because, right here and right now any number of babies with Down syndrome are still welcomed into the open arms of their loving parents.

In my post about Iceland, I shared the story of a serendipitous encounter I had with a young man with Down syndrome:

A long while back, I was strolling through a Disney Store during my lunch hour, and a young man turned and hugged me. Out of the blue. This perfect stranger with a big smile on his face then told me he loved me. I was so startled that I just stood there confused. In a moment, an older couple rushed over and gently pulled the young man away. They apologized to me for their son’s burst of affection, and explained that their son was an “exceptional hugger”. Why, yes, I could see that! He loved everyone. Including lucky me. I had a pleasant conversation with the couple, and then said good-bye. I felt happy. It certainly wasn’t one of those Big Deal moments in life, but rather a small quiet one. It was the kind of moment that sneaks up on you, and you know something pure and sweet just shot through the universe, momentarily cutting through the misery, and you happen to be in the right place at the right time to catch that shot of love and tuck it away in your heart.

Every now and then, I pull out that memory just to recall the radiating happiness of that young man. I can still “feel” it. With the news of little Lucas Warren being honored by Gerber, I have the same sort of happiness flooding my heart. Because, as McNeil Cronin, father of a daughter with Down syndrome, said:

“Gerber made a loud statement, a powerful statement. It walks the walk of acceptance and inclusion in a really big and meaningful way.”

Hear, hear!

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

17 Responses to “Baby With Down Syndrome Honored As “2018 Gerber Spokesbaby””

  1. It’s nice to start the morning with happy news.

    Dana (023079)

  2. i think this post needs a pic

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  3. Beautiful news!

    And so surprising that an advertiser took a “righty” position.

    Patricia (3363ec)

  4. Since babies don’t speak, “spokesbaby” seems a bit off.

    Posterbaby?

    Bored Lawyer (998177)

  5. i think this post needs a pic

    Done.

    Dana (023079)

  6. I was strolling through a Disney Store during my lunch hour, and a young man turned and hugged me. Out of the blue. This perfect stranger with a big smile on his face then told me he loved me. I was so startled that I just stood there confused. In a moment, an older couple rushed over and gently pulled the young man away. They apologized to me for their son’s burst of affection, and explained that their son was an “exceptional hugger”. Why, yes, I could see that! He loved everyone. Including lucky me

    Isn’t that Williams Syndrome, not Down Syndrome?

    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/williams-health-love-genetics-books

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  7. 🙂

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  8. Not according to his parents, Sammy Finkelman.

    Dana (023079)

  9. Wonderful story prettier Dana,

    Thank you for sharing that. And well done Gerber!

    Stashiu3 (466cdf)

  10. OT: The Dog Trainer has a new owner and is now privately held.

    http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-los-angeles-times-sold-20180207-story.html

    Kevin M (752a26)

  11. Kevin M.,

    Wow! I took earlier reports with a grain of salt, but confirmed in the Trainer? What’s the over/under on reporter turnover in the next 6 months? Lol.

    Stashiu3 (466cdf)

  12. Great story and a welcome one on any morning.

    Locke (3c9e5e)

  13. One of the reasons I admire and patronize a local Home Depot is the number of mentally disabled people employed there.

    One tends to shy away from such people. I did. Dealing with them daily on business matters made me realize they are just not that different from me.

    Good for Gerber.

    Fred Z (05d938)

  14. When you went down the path of approving the murder of infants, what led you to believe that it would stop at a generalized dislike of having damaged children? Abortion is murder.

    RandomPassenger (bd5f4e)

  15. One tends to shy away from such people. I did. Dealing with them daily on business matters made me realize they are just not that different from me.

    Good for Gerber.
    Fred Z (05d938) — 2/8/2018 @ 6:05 pm

    This may seem like bragging on my part, but I wouldn’t tell this story if I weren’t inspired by you.

    During high school and junior college I worked at a Safeway in Oakland, CA. We had a regular customer who would come in with her disabled daughter. The daughter was at least a teenager, and I still don’t know exactly what was wrong with her. She was not functional, seemed twisted, and was a drooling mess.

    One day she got separated from her mother. I knew she was scared. And I grew disgusted with my fellow human beings. So I went up and hugged her and held onto her until her frantic mother found us.

    Everybody else was acting like she was radioactive or that what she had was contagious. I know there are decent people like you who would have acted similarly, but nobody else was around. I remember what it was like as a child, the fear that would set in if somehow I got separated from my parents in a crowd. She was always going to be that child, and I didn’t care if she drooled on me.

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  16. When you went down the path of approving the murder of infants, what led you to believe that it would stop at a generalized dislike of having damaged children? Abortion is murder.

    RandomPassenger (bd5f4e) — 2/9/2018 @ 4:21 am

    I can’t understand how anyone would abort a child. It’s really beyond me. I know of cases in Britain where women will abort a child simply because they’ve paid for a holiday trip to Spain and want to look good in a bikini. Which is monstrous. I’m sure the same thing happens here, but the women who have abortions for such frivolous reasons aren’t as open about it. I believe that has something to do with the pro-life movement. Which, like Christianity, largely doesn’t exist in Britain.

    I spent seven years in Japan while in the Navy. Unlike here, they don’t try to fool themselves about abortion. It’s legal, and lots of women have them. But they know they’re killing a child, and it tears them up.

    http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/05/May-12-2.jpg

    That’s why there are Buddhist shrines with little idols dedicated to the Mizuko, or water children. Apparently the Japanese believe in something like the river Styx with separates the living and the dead. And they believe that children who die prematurely, for whatever reason including abortion, can’t cross it.

    Fortunately there is the deity Jizo. Jizo is the protector of a great many people including firemen and travelers. Mizuko Jizo protects the prematurely dead, including aborted children. Probably half of the Japanese women who have abortions also have a Mizuko Kuyo, or a Buddhist ceremony to essentially apologize to child they aborted. Some Buddhist shrines exist for no other reason than to honor the Mizuko. And women who have aborted a child will adopt one of those little statues and will outfit it so it’s appropriate for the season, so it doesn’t get too cold in winter. They’ll leave toys for the child. And they’ll leave notes apologizing to their child for what they’ve done.

    They’re not hypocrites when it comes to abortion. Traditionally in Japan abortion has been seen as a necessary evil. Women in Japan have been long been compelled to conform to social norms, although that has been changing in the last few decades. Which used to work to my advantage. There were certain coffee shops in Tokyo I used to visit where Japanese girls getting advanced degrees used to gather. They had no hope in h3ll of marrying a Japanese guy because they couldn’t stand the competition (one Japanese girl I dated explained to me how begging was a common pick-up technique for Japanese guys, and she couldn’t understand why I thought that was funny, although the Japanese guys I played rugby with were nowhere near that pathetic). And then into their hopelessly loveless lives walked, me.

    But getting back to the social norms Japanese women were expected to conform to, among them were not causing their families and especially their husband any trouble if they could avoid it. That included having too many mouths to feed. Buddhism doesn’t weigh against having an abortion, but it also ascribes humanity and value to the unborn at any stage of development. Including a fertilized egg.

    Steve57 (0b1dac)


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