A young mother named Amber spoke up about discriminatory comments and bullying she has received about her baby boy, Derek, on the social media platform TikTok, where she has been sharing her son’s story.
Derek was born with holoprosencephaly (HPE), a rare brain disorder that includes facial deformities. With HPE, the forebrain doesn’t develop as it should, and the left and right halves of the brain don’t complete their separation. Other symptoms include intellectual disability, small head, cleft lip or palate, and fluid in the brain.
During her pregnancy, she and her partner knew that Derek had health issues, but she said there wasn’t a full picture of his condition until she was about eight months pregnant. Though they considered abortion, the couple ultimately chose life for their son, even knowing he may die at birth. For choosing life, they were called selfish.
“We were ready to say goodbye and if it’s selfish to want to meet him before that, then yeah we’re selfish parents,” said Amber. “But I’m so glad that we did because he lived. He wasn’t dying. He wasn’t suffering. He was fighting to stay alive.”
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Amber is now sharing her family’s story so that other people can see that children like Derek are valuable, no matter their abilities or health conditions. “I’m doing this,” she said, “to show that babies like him can live and can be happy and not suffer.”
When Amber began to share her story on TikTok, she received support, but she also received a large amount of hate from pro-abortion individuals. According to The Mirror, after Amber uploaded a video of her son waking up, she received numerous cruel comments:
You wouldn’t put an animal through this so why a tiny helpless baby. Must have shown on scans.
I’m sorry but that scared me.
It’s going to be the hardest life why even keep it alive?
One viewer even asked if he was an aborted baby and called him an “animal.”
Amber then made a video to address those hateful comments. “There’s no reason to just straight up say, ‘put him out of his misery,’ or ‘put IT out of IT’s misery,’ or ‘put it down,'” she said. “There’s no reason for that. Do some research or look on my account, try to figure out why. Don’t just assume it was something I did. Don’t just assume it was because I had sex with my cousin or something like that. How messed up are you to even think of those things?”
She added, “I’m doing this to show that babies like him can live and can be happy and not suffer.”
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