I recently received notification that a photo of my beautiful 9-year-old daughter Chloe will be appearing in the Down syndrome awareness video on the News Corporation Sony Big Screen located in the heart of Times Square, New York City. Chloe will appear in the bright LIGHTS of Broadway on Saturday, September 22 as part of the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS) annual Times Square video presentation which embodies the NDSS mission to promote the value, acceptance, and inclusion of people with Down syndrome. The photo of Chloe was selected from over 1,000 entries in the NDSS worldwide call for photos, and Chloe Kondrich is pictured in her Angels Baseball uniform.
This truly will be a magical event when you consider not long ago individuals like Chloe would have been excluded from most school and community activities and sent to the darkness of an institution. Chloe is an incredible LIGHT in this world planting countless positive seeds as she shows people her ABILITIES, and the LIGHT that Chloe and other individuals with Down syndrome emit will be on display at the Times Square big screen. What a visual for our most precious resource—LIFE!
There is however something very dark occurring in the Down syndrome community that receives very little attention and needs to be brought into the LIGHT of public debate at the international level. Current estimates are that [more than] 90 percent of children diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome are targeted and terminated in the darkness, and their LIGHT is something this ever darkening world cannot afford to lose. As prenatal testing advances at lightning speed and our culture becomes more obsessed with false perceptions of perfection, the Down syndrome LIGHT will continue to dim until one day the video presentation in Times Square may become a dark tribute to an extinct species of priceless human beings. If you are in the New York City area on 9/22, please join us and many others for a celebration of Life, and help us to spread the Light that will surround and eliminate a culture of darkness and death.
John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Kurt Kondrich is the father of a beautiful daughter who has Down syndrome and who has been a priceless blessing to his family and community. When Kurt became aware of the higher than 90 percent abortion rate for children prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome, he literally could not sleep at night. In early August 2008, he had a disturbing dream about people with disabilities being exterminated and, after praying, he came up with the name SADSIN (Stop Aborting Down Syndrome Individuals Now) for a web site to defend and protect children with Down syndrome. He has since embarked on a mission to make sure people are aware of this genocide. He wants people to see the beautiful faces of our kids and realize the priceless blessings and gifts they are to a society that has lost focus.
This article has been reprinted with permission and can be found at http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kondrich/120818.