One Colorado woman who was encouraged to abort her child with Down syndrome has now made it her mission to ensure that other parents have support when facing the same diagnosis.
Marsha Weigum, a Jamaican immigrant, was pregnant with her sixth child when doctors told her the preborn baby had a 99% chance of a Down syndrome diagnosis.
Marsha told the Post Independent that she had already had some experience working with children who had Down syndrome.
“Down syndrome, the word is not strange to me,” she said. “That’s the job I did. My favorite child of them all working with the organization was one with Down syndrome.”
She asked her doctor, “What’s next for the prenatal care? Do we need to be doing something different?” But instead of hearing words of support, she was offered the option to abort her son and was given a laundry list of ways in which her child would likely struggle in the world.
“I listened to her, but the minute she said termination, I didn’t think I wanted to hear much more,” Marsha explained. “These children are awesome, they’re innocent children, and now here I am having my own.”
Marsha found that during the rest of her pregnancy, she had to fight for information and resources for the best ways she could help her son. It was this struggle that led to her determination that no other mother in her shoes be left without resources.
“I want the next woman who’s gonna come through here to have something they can refer to … It shouldn’t be just this,” Marsha said. “People say, ‘You can just go kill it because it could be bothersome to your life and to your family.’ That’s the kind of madness I was feeling. How do I do something about this? How do I change this? This is where I live.”
She and her husband also found comfort in the scripture verse, Proverbs 31:8-9, which says: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
“I love this scripture so much because if my husband and I didn’t decide to speak up for this child and say, ‘We aren’t gonna terminate him because you perceive that he’s gonna be a burden to society,’ then he wouldn’t be here,” Marsha explained. “So I realized I’ve got to be the voice for those who are voiceless.”
To that end, she was inspired to start an organization called Our Voice for the Voiceless. Though the nonprofit isn’t slated to officially launch until next year, Marsha says it will give parents of children with Down syndrome the resources and support they need to navigate the diagnosis.
“If nothing else, I want people in the community to know that there is hope … You know what real, true hope is? Hope is the confident expectation that God is going to do what he says he will do,” she said.
