Heath White, a champion marathon runner, wanted a perfect family. When his wife was expecting her second child, he discovered that the baby had down syndrome. In his own words, White did “everything I could to force her into having an abortion…my main concern was what people would think about me.”
He later said that he felt like he was getting a “broken baby.”
But when his daughter Paisley was born, he came to love her. Not right away. But he found himself playing with her, listening to her giggle and respond to him, and realized she was “like any other child.”
He would later run with Paisely, pushing her stroller, and say that he wanted to show the world he was proud of her.
He said;
“If I could keep one person, one family, one person, from having to live with the guilt of 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.”
He would run a marathon with Paisley in Little Rock, wearing a T-shirt with her face on it.He continued to run with Paisley to show his pride in her – and got a tattoo. The tattoo reads “down syndrome.” He explains that he got it because
“The first thing that people see when they look at Paisley is down syndrome, I wanted it to be the first thing they see when they look at me.”
Heath White wrote a letter to his daughter, which he shared with ESPN:
“I want you to know how much you’ve taught me, how much I love you.”
This complete about-face by a father who once wanted to abort his child is a beautiful story – but how many parents will never have the opportunity to bond with their down syndrome children? 90% of down syndrome children are aborted and never see the light of day – what a terrible loss both to them and to their parents.
Watch the beautiful story in this 15 minute segment:
Thank you to KRISTI BURTON BROWN for covering this story.