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Most people think of Saint Joseph as silent background in the Nativity, but I keep coming back to one urgent question: what does his quiet courage look like when unborn babies with Down syndrome are being targeted for abortion? I’m Lori, and this first chapter of Saint Joseph, Protector of the Unborn is both personal and prayerful, rooted in my sister Stacy’s life and the ache of knowing how many children who look like her never get the chance to be born.
I share how my devotion to Saint Joseph deepened after Stacy’s death, shaped by Father Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year community and Father Donald Calloway’s consecration to Saint Joseph. We pray together, and we reflect on Saint Joseph’s role as foster father and legal father of Jesus, a man entrusted with protecting a child the world did not understand. That’s why I talk about Saint Joseph as patron of the unborn, especially for babies diagnosed with Trisomy 21 and labeled as disposable.
We also start tracing the road that led from genetics to eugenics through the story of Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, the French Catholic doctor who first published findings about the extra chromosome 21. His work affirmed that people with Down syndrome have something extra, not something less, yet he later watched that knowledge become a tool for elimination. To ground all of this in real life, I share a joyful story from Stacy’s adulthood: her journey to Confirmation and the way her faith lit up an entire parish.
If you care about Down syndrome awareness, Catholic pro-life witness, prenatal diagnosis ethics, and the power of prayer, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find this conversation. What part of the story stays with you most?
Credits: Francois Lespes, Jerome Lejeune, to the least of these my brothers and sisters (Ignatius Press, 2026)
Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos
Of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II
On the Person and Mission of St. Joseph in The Life of Christ and of The Church
