You are worthy if you are convenient, if you are affordable, if you meet the requirements.

And it is a lie, top to bottom, the most dangerous lie there is, and it does its worst damage to exactly the people least able to defend themselves against it — to the sick, and the disabled, and the very young, and the very old, all the people whose worth the world is always trying to discount because they cost something to love.

My niece was three days old, and the world had already, through a frightened man in a hospital, tried to put a condition on her — tried to say that a mark on her back, a surgery, a line item on a medical bill, might make her less than a whole and precious child.

And it was not true.