Did you know that if you're born in Eastern Europe with an extra chromosome, a culture of shame at your "disability" would haunt you? Your family would be strongly encouraged to relinquish all rights and responsibilities to you and you would most likely end up in an orphanage? It would be understaffed and underfunded, and you would suffer. You wouldn't receive the love you need to thrive. You would be stripped of the basic human right to a family. You wouldn't be adored and cuddled and fed properly. Your needs wouldn't be attended to. You would lay in dirty diapers all day in a bug-infested crib. Your cries would be ignored so long, you would eventually give up on trying to get your needs met. You would suffer greatly from under stimulation, malnutrition, and neglect. You would have no chance in these conditions to become the incredible person you have the potential to become.
And if no one came to rescue you, at age four you would be ripped from your comparatively lovely baby home and placed in a cold, hard, adult mental institution. There would be no one to take care of you at all. You would be placed in a crib (and sometimes shackled to the crib) and left to rot. Stronger adults would steal your food and many times your innocence. 90% of children with Down syndrome placed in adult mental institutions die within the first year. If you need further proof:
THIS IS NOT OKAY. This is not the country where Meg lives, but conditions across Eastern Europe are similar. Every child on earth deserves to have a family that loves and adores them. God loves these choice spirits. He wants them to have families. "The worth of souls is great in the sight of God." So while our lives are hectic, our house full, our schedules crazy, and our budget tight, we have made the decision to save one. The purpose of this blog is to share our experience, raise awareness of this issue, and to raise money to assist in the fees associated with Meg's adoption. Any help you might provide would be greatly appreciated and we welcome your comments and questions! Join us on our journey as we rush to save our newest love, Miss Meg!
