In March, 16-year-old Jeremiah Thomas was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive bone cancer. Since then, he has battled chemotherapy, radiation, a collapsed lung, paralysis, and, unfortunately, many social media trolls.
But Jeremiah also has forged an unlikely partnership with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
With perhaps only weeks left to live, Jeremiah—a former all-star, state champion football player from Waco, Texas—has been told numerous times on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook that he is not dying soon enough … because he took a stand for life.
“Cancer is giving your mom a late term abortion. Lmao [laughing my a– off],” one message said.
“Jeremiah … You aren’t dead yet? God do your job!” taunted another.
“Good Riddance,” another posted to Jeremiah’s prayer group page on Facebook, following with a one-star review.
Jeremiah’s mother, Kendra Thomas, quoted one person as saying Jeremiah has “a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic [sic], hateful” agenda, and another as saying “He’s garbage and is suffering as he deserves.”
All of this because Jeremiah made a “legacy wish” through the 38-year-old Make-A-Wish Foundation’s chapter for the North Texas region.
Jeremiah’s wish was to abolish abortion. The teen made his reasoning public June 24 by posting “A Letter to My Generation,” describing his Christian faith and writing in part:
We have grown up in a culture of death, sexual confusion, immorality and fatherlessness. This culture of death I speak of consists of abortion, homosexuality and suicide.
One third of our generation has been wiped out due to abortion. Over 25 million people have died as a result of AIDS. Even without AIDS, the life expectancy of a homosexual man or woman is about 33 years shorter than that of a heterosexual.
More young people die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined.
We have been handed a bill of goods that has completely destroyed us. In our nation, we have chosen death and received the curse.
Kendra Thomas, Jeremiah’s mother, posted his story and a section of “A Letter to My Generation” to her Facebook page July 19. As of 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, it had been shared about 1,200 times and garnered 1,700 Facebook reactions.
In her post, Thomas shared Jeremiah’s struggle with his terminal illness, known as osteoblastic osteosarcoma, and the backlash he received from the left for his comments on the “culture of death.” She appealed to her audience to keep her son in prayer.
Jeremiah’s family set up a GoFundMe page three months ago to help raise money for surgery to help Jeremiah fight paralysis. It had reached $115,000 as of Aug. 1.
“How would you feel if an army of abortion supporters, homosexuals, and social justice warriors flooded your child’s social media account to cyberbully him AS HE DIED?” she asked.
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While Jeremiah’s attackers were asking who is “the disgusting kid” who “could have gone to Disneyland for free,” his mother said, “Jeremiah was busy serving God.”
A spokeswoman for the Make-A-Wish Foundation for the Central and South Texas region told The Daily Signal in a phone interview that the organization is “not politically affiliated.”
Robbie Aaron, marketing and communications manager at the foundation’s North Texas chapter, said Wednesday that the chapter set up a shopping spree for Jeremiah a couple of weeks ago.
“We don’t discriminate in wishes. It’s not our place to judge what someone wants,” Aaron said.
Instead of letting the hate get to him, his mother said, Jeremiah shut it out, even when he left hospice and returned home for what could be the last time.
But Jeremiah hasn’t been idle. Instead, he has been speaking with Abbott, the state’s pro-life Republican governor, about passing a bill to abolish abortion in the state and make his “legacy wish” a reality.
“Your wish is on the Republican Party platform position and it’s what we’re going to be pursuing this next legislative session—that’s to outlaw abortion altogether in the state of Texas,” Abbott told Jeremiah in a now viral video of their June 17 phone conversation, referring to proposed legislation. “And so, your wish has [been] granted.”
To the surprise of some, perhaps, Jeremiah also posted a photo of himself on Instagram that showed him praying, with the caption “Anyone need prayer?”
“He opened up his Instagram for prayer requests,” Kendra Thomas wrote on Facebook, adding:
Jeremiah’s response to those who hate him is to bless them. To pray for them.
This is what he told me[:] ‘I pity them. To have that much darkness in your heart that you’d want a kid with cancer to die. Makes me wonder what happened to them in their life.
‘It’s a scary place to be—mentally and spiritually. I pray God would have mercy on them.’
… How can a 16-year-old terminal cancer patient forgive those who wish him dead?
Jesus. Jeremiah can forgive others because he’s been forgiven.
LifeNews Note: Katherine Rohloff writes for The Daily Signal, where this column originally appeared.
