As the parent of a medically complex child, I can tell you plainly: Medicaid made it possible to choose life for my son, Ethan, and to keep choosing it every single day.
Now, Republican lawmakers are doing the opposite. They are choosing death for kids like Ethan, children whose lives depend on Medicaid coverage for surgeries, medications and home-based care. These cuts will devastate families, not balance budgets.
At 25 weeks pregnant, I learned that my unborn baby had heterotaxy, a rare disease where internal organs are missing, multiplied, malformed or misplaced. Ethan was born with five spleens, a laundry list of severe heart defects and two left lungs. As a pediatric ICU nurse, I knew that the doctor across the desk from me that day wasn’t exaggerating when she called his condition “likely incompatible with life.” I also knew how expensive his survival would be if we chose to fight those odds.
It wasn’t until I walked into a Medicaid office, terrified and ashamed, that someone finally said: You’re not alone. We can figure this out. That moment changed everything. I’d spent my whole life thinking that “good people” didn’t need Medicaid, that the whole system was filled with fraud and abuse and leeches on the state. I left knowing that it was so much more.
Medicaid covered the rest of my prenatal care; allowed Ethan to be born at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he could get the immediate, intensive care he needed; and paid for his first two open-heart surgeries, one at just six days old and the next before he was five months old. We’re on private insurance now, but I will be forever grateful for the breathing room and support Medicaid offered us. I want this for all kids, for every family.
Because Medicaid allowed us to choose life for him in those first terrifying, uncertain days, Ethan is absolutely thriving, 11 years later. He’s smart, curious and so wonderfully himself. He loves math and science, has a Minecraft world going with his best friend, and leaves Lego creations all over our living room.
Medicaid let us stop worrying about groceries and start focusing on what Ethan needed. It gave us room to breathe, grow and eventually transition to private insurance. That stability is why I fight so hard to protect it, and I’m fighting not just for my child, but for every family.
Today, I’m a pediatric home health nurse. I care for children like Ethan so they can stay home, safe, loved and surrounded by family, instead of living in hospitals or institutions. Medicaid makes that possible too. One of my patients gets to attend school in a mainstream classroom because I’m there to manage his complex needs while he gets to learn alongside his peers. Another child I care for receives respite support that keeps her family together under one roof where her siblings and puppy can pile onto her bed to watch the sunset together in her butterfly-themed bedroom. Without Medicaid, these kids would lose not just care, but connection and community.
I know this system from both sides of the bed. Medicaid saves lives. It’s not charity. It’s a lifeline. It allows children to grow, families to stabilize and communities to thrive.
As a person of deep faith, I believe in the command to love our neighbors and care for the vulnerable. Jesus didn’t say to protect only the “deserving poor” or help only those who can work. He said to feed the hungry, heal the sick and care for the least of us. That’s what choosing life really means.
Ethan has taught me that being pro-life must mean being pro-child, pro-parent, pro-disabled and pro-community. It’s not about slogans or party lines. It’s about whether we truly value the lives of the most vulnerable among us.
God isn’t writing our health policy: we are. And we will be judged by what we choose.