The Value of Life - July 2004 and Today

For the past week at least, our local newspaper has carried the controversial story of an Ocean City, MD mother who is accused of murder for allowing one of her twin babies to be born into the toilet and left to drown.

What a horrifying story ... yet equally troubling is the convoluted rationalization of our country to pass a law such as the one under which this woman is being accused. According to Delaware's The News Journal, Maryland's Viable Fetus Statute is a "2005 law (which) allows murder convictions of people who cause the deaths of fetuses that could live outside the womb. The law contains a specific exemption for women who have abortions or abort fetuses themselves."

Does anyone else see the irony of this statement? Our country is so determined to protect the "rights" of women that we have blinded ourselves to simple common sense. If the unborn child is a human being, then causing his or her death - whether inside or outside the womb, whether by the child's mother or an another source, whether by choice or circumstance - is equally morally wrong.

Recently, I came across a handwritten page of my own thoughts dating back to a July 2004 visit to a former abortion clinic (which to the glory of God, now houses a world-wide crisis pregnancy ministry.) I thought it fitting to share those thoughts here today:

Two days ago, I walked through a former abortion clinic. A door which had been a locked and armed sentry now stood open to allow us to become witnesses of all the sorrow and suffering which had taken place there. Granted, the tools and furniture were gone, leaving only the stains of their former presence. But the violence and grief, despair and death, still echoed in the silent rooms. I did not want to hear the stories that those walls could tell.

Ten years ... 20,000 abortions. At an average of 2,000 a year, tiny lives being viciously snuffed out ... and other lives losing their innocence forever.

14,000 lives were ended in the seven years that my husband and I struggled to conceive even one ... 14,000 pregnancies "terminated" in the time we wished to create even one.

The pain can be unbearable. Theirs ... mine.

The questions can be deafening. Where ... where is my child? Yours ... whom you rejected, sacrificed on the altar of fear, self, greed and convenience. Mine ... whom I long for with every fiber of my being, to love cherish and protect.

I will never forget that silent walk, their pain mingling with mine. Have mercy, O Lord. On the souls of the unborn children whose blood cries out for justice; on the mothers whose souls cry out for peace and restoration; on me, whose heart cries out for a child who may never come ...

-shg 07.2004