For the pro-life community, stories of mothers who choose to keep their baby after receiving a prenatal diagnosis of a birth defect are seen as inspirational. I’m one of those stories, actually. In 2012, my husband deployed to Afghanistan while he was in the Marine Corps on New Year’s Day. Two days later, I had an amniocentesis after prenatal screenings indicated that my baby had a higher-than-normal risk of having Down syndrome; three days after that, I got a phone call confirming that, yes, my son did indeed have Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome. It was hard at first, and scary, and gut-wrenching. I cried for days. I mourned the baby I thought I had, because I didn’t know any better. I never considered abortion, but all of my hopes and dreams for my son felt like they had been destroyed. Of course, that went away as I learned more about Down syndrome. Today, Wyatt is a happy three-year-old who loves to sing and play with his brother and sisters. My dreams for him became the same as my dreams for my other children. Unfortunately, a world that is inclusive of my son, and others like him, does not yet exist.

When my husband got out of the Marine Corps, we left North Carolina and moved back to our hometown. I set about trying to find a school for our kids to attend. My oldest son would be starting pre-k, so Wyatt was still a few years away from starting school. However, I didn’t want to send my other children to a school where their brother would not be welcome, so knowing how a school felt about inclusion of children with disabilities was important. I called around to private school after private school, and almost every time, I got the same message: we can’t accept children with Down syndrome. There were “special” schools I could send Wyatt to, but the fact that my only options were to send Wyatt to public school or to a separate school for children with disabilities was infuriating. This included Catholic schools — in my diocese, there is not one single school that accepts children with Down syndrome, or any other disability. Considering how staunchly pro-life the Catholic Church is, I found this to be particularly shocking.

I did some research and discovered that this was not just a local problem, or a Catholic one. Private schools across the country overwhelmingly do not accept children with disabilities, although there are exceptions. Private schools don’t receive federal funding like public schools do to educate children with special needs, so it’s more difficult for private schools to hire the necessary staff. It’s not impossible, but it’s harder. And the reality is, we live in a world where inclusion of people with disabilities is not exactly a priority. But once someone will tell you, right to your face, that your child and children like him are not welcome at their school, it certainly will become a priority.

When I talk about my dreams for Wyatt now, this is part of it. I want him to live in a world where he is not seen as less worthy than “normal” children. I want him to be seen as someone who is just as deserving of an education at the school of our choosing as any other child. After all, if a private school turned away black children, because “if we accept one kid like him, we’d have to take them all”, there would be outrage. Yet it’s perfectly acceptable to discriminate against children with Down syndrome in this exact way.

The reasoning often is that educating children with disabilities alongside their typical peers would ruin the education of the typical children. That argument in and of itself is insulting, because it insinuates that typical children are more deserving of an exceptional education than children with disabilities are. But not only is it insulting, it’s wrong. Schools that are inclusive of children with disabilities actually provide a better education for all students, and for one simple reason: because those teachers must teach to each individual student’s abilities and learning style, which is beneficial for everyone. No two students learn the same way, and inclusive learning environments mean that every student gets a more individualized education. Children in inclusive schools, both with disabilities and without, end up earning better grades and higher test scores, because the education for all children ends up being superior. Studies show that typical students receive more learning opportunities in inclusive classrooms than they do outside of them. We also find that when students are placed in inclusive classrooms, they become more accepting of people with disabilities.

The only reason to not fight for inclusion is ignorance and outright discrimination.

Imagine a world where children were raised to see another child with Down syndrome as just a regular kid, another one of their classmates and nothing else. Pro-lifers often talk about preventing the abortion of preborn babies with Down syndrome, but part of that includes changing the world that these babies will be born into. Making the claim that children with Down syndrome must be kept hidden away, separated from the “normal” kids lest their presence just ruin everything for the more important people who actually do deserve a good education, is not acceptable anymore.

My dream now is that the rest of the world will agree.