"You know what's worse than that?" It's a junior high game of one-up-manship where each person tries to add the worst thing they can imagine to a pile of already horrible ideas. I guess, on some level, there's never a situation where you couldn't also have an infected paper cut or be wearing soiled pants. Still, it describes very well the thoughts I've been having on a subject America has been grappling with on a political, religious and moral front for my whole life.
What's worse than killing a baby? Honestly. I read an article about a doctor who had accidentally decapitated a little girl during delivery and I almost threw up just thinking about it. Can you imagine how you'd live with yourself if you killed someone's baby, even if it was a completely unavoidable accident? Think about it for just a minute. If you tripped over something and fell on a baby or hit a stroller that shot out in front of you in traffic, would you ever get over that? I think it would be the sort of thing that haunted me for the rest of my life.
So, what's worse than accidentally killing a baby? Killing a baby on purpose. People do it. In times of war, whole families are shot down. Not too long ago, a would-be gangsta shot an infant right in front of his mother on the sidewalk to prove something to his 'homies'. We don't go nearly long enough between news stories of babies beaten or shaken to death, usually by family members or Mom's boyfriend. It seems like you'd have to have something horribly wrong with you to do such a thing. I don't know if those people wake up one day and realize what they've done. Are their hearts filled with unspeakable sorrow?
Worse than killing a baby in war or in rage? Killing babies professionally, day after day. Sure, we can call them the "products of conception" or "tissue". Pretend that their "cells" do not constitute a human being. But I don't see how the men and women who have to reassemble them to make sure they removed all the parts can really believe that lie. They usually crush the little faces to make them easier to evacuate, so maybe that makes them seem less like babies. Still, they account for fingers and toes like the excited parents of newborns before they toss the little bodies in the trash. I've heard the testimony of now pro-life abortionists and abortion clinic staff. They pay for their work with pieces of their souls.
Worse than being paid to kill babies? A mother making the choice to kill her own baby. No one, no doctor or stranger or boyfriend, is as responsible for a new life as the mother. No one will more vehemently and violently defend the life of a child than it's own parents. No one will love a child like it's mother, so there is nothing so unnatural, so ugly as a mother taking the life of her own son or daughter. It happens, of course, that mothers drown or strangle or poison their kids, and the few who do not take their own lives immediately are almost always found to be suffering from a severe mental or emotional disorder. Women in their right mind defend their children, they don't kill them.
So what could possibly be worse than a mother deciding her child should die? A society that tries to normalize that behavior. We don't just take the lives of innocent children in what should be the safety of their mother's womb, we deny their very existence. We pretend that they aren't real. We attempt to un-make them. We tell these women that an abortion is very much the same as never having been pregnant at all.
And what's worse than dying? People acting as though you never lived. Never spoken of. Never shared. Your own mother's darkest secret. Denied, like Peter denied Christ on the night when He was betrayed.
46 million human lives snuffed out by abortion every year around the world?
No, I do not know them.
What could be worse than trying to unmake life? Standing before God, who said to us, "Whatsoever you do unto the least of My brethren, you do unto Me." and having to admit you did nothing for the most defenseless, most innocent of His children.
