Recently, I read a story about a baby boy born in 1982, known to us only as Baby Doe. Interestingly, this baby who had no name quickly became the center of national debate over the sanctity of human life.

In the court of public opinion, some found this newborn baby boy to be guilty of two grave offenses. First, he had Down syndrome. Somehow, he had managed to breeze through pregnancy without being detected, thus taking away his parents’ ability to abort him in the womb. Second, he was born with a (surgically correctable) condition known as tracheoesophagael fistual. Yet while a nearby hospital and its medical team were ready and willing to perform surgery on him, Baby Doe’s parents chose instead to follow the archaic and biased advice of the mother’s obstetrician…and they did nothing.