For me, and an unfortunately high and increasing number of others, Father’s Day is hard to celebrate. My story is fairly unique in that I was conceived through date-rape and was lovingly raised by my birthmother. My father does not know of my existence but I do know he was married at the time of the rape. The weirdness of not having a dad faded as I entered puberty and grew to understand my unique family unit. However, I wouldn’t understand exactly how unique until I was 18, when my mom told me the truth of her abuse. Despite the weirdness, I never felt overwhelmed by pain on Father’s Day because I knew my mom loved me and God saw me as inherently valuable.

My mom did an amazing job raising me. She selflessly did the job of both parents to the best of her ability. She was protective, limiting negative media influence and providing positive male role models. She was selfless, orienting her life around caring for me while working a full-time job. She was nurturing, guiding me towards treating women with respect and becoming someone who could love his spouse well. Though I cannot picture God as a father, I look forward to the day when I get to be one.  It is a task I feel uniquely purposed for. Furthermore, I cannot believe the purpose of my life is shallow enough to encompass luck; I feel a yoke of responsibility for this great gift of life I have been afforded, a gift that millions of others have had stolen away. I must use my voice to promote peace, justice, understanding and faith.

If I could say something to my father it would be, “I forgive you.”  Though I’ve heard many people tell me I “deserve” to hate him or even tell his family of his past and ruin their lives, I do not see it that way. As a no exceptions pro-lifer, I must treat those conceived in rape with equal amounts of respect as their fathers, who have the same inherent value. I do make a thorough distinction between finding such violent actions wholly abhorrent and taking justice into my own hands. It is not for me to exact revenge; that is the government’s job on Earth and God’s job after it. All I can do is pray for the best for my father, seeking God’s goodness and influence in his life. As a compelling example of Jesus, my mother has taught me to experience and extend God’s forgiveness, not dwell in bitter anger. God’s call on my life is too valuable to waste time hating my father on Father’s Day.

My name is Nicholas Charles D’Angelo, and my mother chose life for me.

We thought they were helping.  Every time we took our daughter Faith to the hospital for her illness, they would nurse her back to health.  Faith has Trisomy 18 (Edwards Syndrome).  Trisomy 21 is Downs Syndrome.  Trisomy 18 is much harsher with 90% of these children not reaching their first birthday.  At this time, Faith was 2 ½ years old and began to have some serious illnesses that almost took her life several times.  The hospital did some basic things to help her get over the illness and we thought that they were giving her the necessary care any other child would receive.  However when I had an opportunity to ask Rick Santorum for some advice since his little girl Bella also has Trisomy 18,  Rick gave me advice that I had never heard from the mouth of a single doctor.  I was somewhat skeptical when he first shared the list of things that we should be doing for Faith, but he convinced me with some very straight forward and honest comments.  He said if we didn’t do this that we were going to lose our daughter...now you know how he convinced me.

After receiving this list of items, I went to visit my wife, Jesi, and Faith in the hospital during my lunch later that day.  When we showed this list to the doctors, they told us that NOBODY does this. Huh?  We pushed to get the doctors to help us, but after a third hospital visit and a near death experience for Faith caused by the same problem, we finally figured out that they would not treat her.  I know, I know…why did we go back to them?  Well, you expect your doctors to help you and parents in our situation often trust, but need to realize that trust MUST be earned (as we have learned).

This is when we learned about “Slow Code,” although we had not discovered this term yet.  Because of our experience with multiple hospitals, Jesi and I began a journey to get the law changed in Michigan.  During our journey, Jesi researched medical journals on Trisomy 18 which is when we learned the term Slow Code.  Slow Code is when the medical providers offer the appearance of treatment, but knowingly administer the treatment so slowly that it is useless to the patient.  This may sound crazy and like something we might make up.  We not only learned the term from their industry journals, but we experienced it.  There are times in a hospital where you might hear CODE BLUE for an emergency, but why is it you never hear CODE SLOW?  Hospitals hide this practice in a deceitful way so they can inflict their decision on the patient.  This is not care, but lethal neglect or intentional death which I have always termed murder.

In one article of the Journal of Perinatology, a pediatric ethics committee discussed an option of Slow Code as a possible solution in the case of an infant with poor prognosis.  CPR had been offered to the parents and was later withheld by way of a DNR placed on the patient by doctors.  The committee debated this decision, but only from the perspective that CPR should probably have never been offered in the first place.  So here we have a committee of medical “caregivers” suggesting that forms of care should not even be offered to patients based upon their value(less) judgment.  Withholding  medical care and suggestions for treatment is now the medically ethical way to handle a patient?  In the end, this particular committee decided that it is deceitful to use Slow Code.  Ya think?  The fact that this suggestion was even considered legitimate enough to be discussed is troubling.

This brings us back to our daughter Faith.  We were not even offered what we now know to be pretty basic treatment for today’s medicine.  Our daughter Faith had severe sleep apnea which most novices in sleep apnea could have determined.  She had a small jaw which was obvious to anyone with even a little experience.  Our problem, we were not even novices at this point and we had no clue.  We cornered a doctor for an hour in the doctor’s office before he finally told us that if he were in our shoes, he would go to the other hospital.  Really?  After three trips to his hospital and on the verge of a fourth, we finally had some honesty.  Our daughter needed a sleep study which showed the necessity for a Bipap (very similar to a Cpap) to help her breath at night.  When we reached the other hospital, they could not understand why we were not provided with this help for our daughter.  Faith is now 5 years old and doing things that the first group of doctors said would never be possible.  Well, they were right about one thing.  She never would have started walking or probably even have survived had we followed their advice, or lack thereof.

Brad Smith; Married for 16 years to Jesi and the proud father of 5 children living in Rochester Hills, Michigan; Save The 1 pro-life speaker, pro-life blogger, and Board Member