In Memoriam

In Memory...

Of a person I never met,

In honor of a life barely lived,

May we never forget

The value of forty-five minutes.

He was born alive, despite all efforts to accomplish the opposite. He was breathing, but only for a very short time. He was a fighter, but there was just too much for him to overcome. I did not know him. His own parents did not know him. No one knew him, except for one woman, a nurse, who made sure that for those precious forty-five minutes, he was not alone. I learned about him while reading an article about Barack Obama’s complete and unwavering support for abortion—any and all abortions. Within the article was that nurse’s testimony of one abortion that did not quite go as expected, and it had a profound effect on me that I was not expecting. In fact, when I came across this one short phrase, I started crying:

“…an aborted Down Syndrome baby…”

I can picture in my mind many sweet, precious faces – some I know personally, some I’ve seen in magazines and on TV – sweet, precious people, who happen to have Down Syndrome.  They smile, they laugh, they love – and they bring joy to everyone around them.

Why was this baby, who happened to have Down Syndrome, not given a chance to live? For several reasons. First of all, pre-natal testing can tell expectant parents that their baby might have Down Syndrome, and for some people, a Down Syndrome baby is an “unwanted” baby. Secondly, our country has taken away any legal restraint to protect the lives of the “unwanted’s”. Therefore, those who do not realize that all life is valuable and sacred - even when it is not exactly what we had expected; those who consider a precious child with Down Syndrome something to be thrown out with the trash—well, they are free to end the lives of their very own children.

This Down Syndrome baby, had he been given the chance to live, would have smiled, laughed, loved, and brought such joy to his parents. But instead, he was pulled prematurely from the womb with the intent to end his life.  And when he survived that horrible process, his parents rejected him again – they would not even hold him.  Without the compassion of that nurse, he would have been left to die alone – in what sounded to me like the equivalent of a dirty laundry hamper.

But he did die – he was “an aborted Down Syndrome baby”.  How many Down Syndrome babies have been aborted?  I can hardly bear to think about it. And it will not stop there. As the pre-natal testing gets more and more sophisticated, how many babies with other handicaps or diseases will be aborted?  How many babies with a gene that pre-disposes them to a certain kind of disease will be aborted?  How many brown-eyed babies will be aborted, because the parents are just desperate for a blue-eyed child?

The proponents of abortion want it to be safe, legal, and rare.  Well, it is legal all right – but safe?  For the tiny lives being destroyed – it is anything but safe.  For the women going through the abortion – they claim it is safe, but is that true?  What is the truth about the long-term physical and emotional, not to mention spiritual effects, of abortion on women?  If anyone knows, they are certainly not telling. And has making it legal made it rare?  Absolutely not – the numbers of lives lost through abortion is astounding, and scientific advances are making it possible to label more and more pre-born babies “unwanted”.  And since killing “unwanted” babies is legal – killing “unwanted” babies is done.

“…an aborted Down Syndrome baby…”

I do not know who he was.  I do not know who he would have been.  But I know where he is now.  He is in the kingdom of heaven, and he is with Jesus. His short, forty-five minute life has touched my heart - so much so that I want to speak out against the society that allowed him to be so terribly mistreated, so cruelly destroyed.  And I want to speak up in his defense, to say that he did not deserve what he received. No one deserves that.

I will not forget him.  For me, he will represent all of the millions of lives that have been lost through this horrible procedure.  Sometimes, the numbers are just so huge that you can only look at the problem from a distance, without it reaching your heart.  Sometimes, you need to hear just one person’s story.  Sometimes, your heart needs to hear something like...

“…an aborted Down Syndrome baby…”

I do not think I have ever cried over abortion before.

I am ashamed that it has taken me this long.



To that unnamed little boy, that “...aborted Down Syndrome baby…”:

You may have only lived for forty-five minutes, and your life was not valued or protected by those who were supposed to take care of you—but that forty-five minutes has had a profound effect on me, and many others, I’m sure. Oh, yes indeed, little boy—your time here on earth, as short as it was, had much value. You have completely changed my heart about abortion—it used to be just an issue, now it is about you. And the love, grief, sorrow, and loss that I feel for you needs to be multiplied by the millions—and if that happens, I will be a little bit closer to understanding the heart of God and how much it must grieve Him to see what we have allowed to be done to you and all the others, and how much He must abhor this scourge, this evil, this atrocity that we dare to call a “right” - abortion.

Thank you, little boy. You rest now. Your work is done. It is time for those of us still here—to get busy.