Alison Davis

Pray for Alison Davis, pictured here on her last visit this year to Lourdes with Colin Harte who cares for and assists her, she has become increasingly frail of late, and I think would be very appreciative of your prayers at the moment.

Her story is remarkable, she tells a little of it here, it is from a 2009 talk she gave at a pro-Life conference in New Zealand.

The most compelling argument I can present is my own experience. I have suffered a lot of pain throughout my life, and now need increasing doses of morphine, but even that doesn't always alleviate the pain. In addition to spina bifida and hydrocephalus, and using a wheelchair full time, I also have emphysema, a breathing problem that makes me susceptible to chest infections, arthritis, lordosis and kyphoscoliosis - causing my spine to twist out of shape in every possible direction, and osteoporosis - brittle bones, which has caused my spine to collapse and trap nerves. When the pain is at its worst I can't move or think or speak.

She has been a remarkable campaigner for disability rights and through her own suffering has come to understand the beauty and preciousness of life.

Since every human being is made in the image of God, each is of infinite value and Jesus would have paid the same price for one as for all, the same price for the same -infinite -value.
Because of this infinite human value, one minute of life is as precious as a hundred years
(how could a hundred years be precious but not the individual minutes and hours and days
which comprised it?) A short life is as valuable as a long one and a profoundly disabled life
as precious as one labelled "perfectly healthy.”