Rarely will you find a YouTube video that will grab your heart—and hold on more firmly—than “The Right Choice” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcVYFxGixkU). It is Christian’s story—the son of Lacey and Chris Buchanan—a tender but not sugarcoated recollection of how the couple moved from joy at discovering Lacey was pregnant, to frantic worry that “something was wrong” with their unborn son, to a safe birth in 2011 after which they discovered Christian was blind.
The video—already seen by millions around the worlds–is also an account of what happened when she first took Christian out in public (of how that sapped her spirits) and what has transpired since. Lacey tells the story by holding up to the camera pieces of paper with short narratives.
“I couldn’t go anywhere without someone doing something to point out Christian,” Buchanan said through pieces of paper. “Some people would even ask me, ‘What’s wrong with your son?’” Indeed, one asked why she hadn’t aborted him.
Christian was born “without eyes,” by which she means (as she explains on her blog) a condition known as Microphalmia—literally “little eyes.” While Christian is not completely blind, he “has some light and dark perception at best,” Lacey explains at https://christianbuchanan.blogspot.ca.
But Christian’s condition drew plenty of stares. People can be so cruel. But as he made small steps forward (his development was slowed down because of his vision problems), it buoyed Lacey’s spirits. When he first began laughing and playing, it was a great triumph for the Buchanan family.
We write a lot at National Right to Life News Today about people with disabilities. They are a prime target of the “assisted suicide” movement, when older, of the prenatal eugenics crowd, when they are in utero.
That’s one of the many reasons “The Right Choice” is so powerful. Lacey is candid about the struggles and the challenges which makes her recollections of the steps forward all the more encouraging and honest. She said she “gasped” when a Facebook friend described her as the “epitome” of a good mother. To the outsider she does seem like a terrific mom.
The video is a no-holds-barred recounting of a couple that had no experience raising a child, let alone one who was almost entirely blind. With music by recording artists Fernando Ortega and Chris Tomlin playing gently in the background, the viewer is captivated not only by this Christian couple’s courageous story but by the range of emotions that play out on Lacey’s face.
She communicates not just with those sheets of white lined paper held up to the camera but with a smile and a near-tear. It is not for nothing that she ends with
“those judgmental glances & whispers don’t really bother me anymore. Because I know Chris is beautiful, inside and out.
“I also know I did the right thing by not aborting Christian. He is the love of my life.”
You can watch “The Right Choice” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcVYFxGixkU and follow Lacey on her blog at https://christianbuchanan.blogspot.ca.
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