Goforth in faith. (The Last Word).

It's interesting to imagine how the Holy Family would have fared if Bethlehem had been cursed with a Child Protective Services agency. Judging from the zeal of contemporary CPS commissars to break up healthy families while invoking "the best interests of the child," the mythical Bethlehem CPS would probably have taken issue with the fashion and circumstances in which Mary gave birth. As it happens, Mary and Joseph had to evade King Herod's agents, who sought to murder the Christ Child in the "best interests" of the state.

The brief but eventful life of William Reid Goforth, who will turn one in January, includes several nearly fatal encounters with our society's child "protection" apparatus. William's parents, Joshua and Noelle of San Antonio, Texas, were on a ski vacation in Colorado last January when the boy arrived nearly three months premature. Weighing merely one pound four ounces, William wasn't given much of a chance to live, let alone enjoy what our coarsened society considers an adequate "quality of life." An EEG taken when William was a week old showed negligible brain activity. At about the same time doctors projected a "zero percent chance" that he would ever breathe on his own.

William was born on the eve of the 29th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that elevated the discretionary killing of troublesome babies to the status of a "right." In the decades since that decision, the evil ethic inspiring it has infected much of our medical culture. Thus, it's not surprising that almost from the moment of William's birth, his parents Joshua and Noelle were put under relentless pressure to choose death for their tiny child. "We were told constantly that letting him live would be an 'unacceptable outcome,' that his quality of life wouldn't justify the cost," Joshua told THE NEW AMERICAN. But Joshua and Noelle, with family and friends supporting them, understood that only God could make the decision to take William's life.

At one point hospital officials in Colorado Springs told Joshua that they could not "in good conscience" provide any additional care for William. Part of the reason for the hospital's adamancy was the refusal by Joshua and Noelle--a couple in their early 20s who don't have health insurance--to avail themselves of various welfare programs to subsidize the mounting costs of William's care. This painful, principled decision reflects that Joshua and Noelle are devout Christians who were both homeschooled. In the face of the most painful temptation imaginable, they refused to be party to the participatory larceny ...