Forty years of silent screaming

The moment is still seared into my memory. Indeed, I can still feel the revulsion that was far too much for a little child to have to grasp.

It was this day in 1983. I had seen on the news about something called "abortion". Seems that it was the tenth anniversary of it being allowed. So I asked Mom what "abortion" means.

"It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."

A chunk of my childhood died that day. There are some who would think of it as "no big deal". But to me it was the beginning of a loss of innocence. The first bricks of the wall of naivety that had secured this small child away from the madness of man's own making, come crumbling down to Earth.

"It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."

My God.

And then some years later as a foolish teenager who thought himself wise, I was stupidly defending abortion. It seemed the "enlightened" thing to do, I thought. Thankfully that phase didn't survive my high school years. I'm hoping that twenty years of writing in opposition of abortion has helped me atone for it.

I made an attempt to do it as a columnist on our student newspaper at Elon, the first spring that I was a student there. My first piece as a columnist was about abortion: how it was destroying our culture, our sense of morality.

One week later while walking around with the flu and a 104-degree temperature (what an idiot) a female student walked up to me and said into my ear "You stupid pro-life fucking piece of shit."

I received some death threats too. I took a pro-life position and people claimed to want me dead for it. I'll always take perverse pride in knowing that at least a few people read my premiere essay and took it seriously...

And now, here we are: the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court decision that established a "right" to terminate an unborn child.

Funny thing: we admit that human life ends when the heartbeat stops. Why then shouldn't human life begin when a heartbeat starts?

And there is a heartbeat there. In fact, there have been roughly fifty-five million hearts that have stopped beating since this day in 1973.

See those photos on the right? Ultrasound imaging has been refined to the point where high-definition 3D pictures can be made of the unborn child within the womb of his or her mother. We can now chronicle in stark detail the development of a baby for practically its entire nine months of gestation.

Look at those pictures.

Do any of those look like "unviable tissue mass" to you?

Does a mere clump of cells within the body possess a face? Fingers? Toes?

Can a benign tumor yawn? Can it smile?

Does an appendix scream in pain when it is ripped open during a "medical procedure"?

Yes, there are screams. The first of many. There have been abortionists who halted their "practice" at once when they heard the sound of an unborn baby's agony. Too often there are other screams too. The screams of those who realize sooner or later "Dear God, have mercy on me for what I have done..."

Fifty-five million hearts silenced. Fifty-five million people. Killed without being allowed to draw breath beyond the comforting warmth of their mothers' wombs.

Now think about what we have lost in those forty years...

We have lost great scientists.

We have lost great physicians.

We have lost great artists.

We have lost great athletes.

We have lost great leaders, great statesmen.

I've been dabbling in filmmaking for several years now. How many directors, writers, actors, cinematographers have we been robbed of? Their gifts never to see the light of day, the flicker of the big screen.

Fifty-five million people, dead before they were born. The Nazi regime murdered 12 million.

And yet some dare to wonder why there is such violent in our streets. In our homes. In our schools.

How the hell can we possibly claim to value the preciousness of human life we see every day, when we don't give a damn about the preciousness of human life when it is at its most vulnerable?

I... don't see how that is possible at all.

"But Chris, it's a woman's body."

Bullshit.

Yeah, I said "bullshit".

It's not a "woman's body". It's the body of a whole another person. A person with his or her own chromosomes and brain activity. If a woman doesn't want to be bound to one body, she shouldn't be reckless with her own. If she is, then there are alternatives. There are thousands of barren couples in this country who are desperate to have a child in their life. Let them have that opportunity.

Fifty-five million children dead. Across the span of forty years.

Forty is the biblical number of completion. God made the children of Israel wander in the wilderness for forty years. From that weak and timid band of refugees came a strong and hardened people who took back the land promised their fathers. Forty is the age of full maturity, in body and mind and spirit.

What have we come to, in the forty years that God has mercifully allowed us since this day in 1973?

Can we say honestly proclaim that four full decades of abortion have nurtured within us a better heart and soul?

Or maybe it is that we no longer have that soul. Perhaps, we don't deserve it. Forty years is an awful long time to look back upon an error and repent of it. For one individual or for a people entire.

More laws will not restore the soul of our culture. Taking guns away won't replenish it. Not all of the politicians and psychologists and pop culture icons put together will bring back a thing that God has given us but we have chosen to let fall away.

President Barack Obama surrounded himself with children last week when he signed his executive orders pertaining to gun laws. Imagine how many more could have been there if he and those like him and allowed those children to live.

Don't talk to me about the violence on the evening news when we let the greatest violence of all happen in the clinical sterility of a "clinic".

Forty years.

How far we have come.

I don't know of any better way to wrap this up than to defer to the wisdom of one of the most beloved people of the modern era...

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion, because if a mother can kill her own child what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between." -- Mother Teresa

Categories: abortion, personal reflection, united states