It's hard to put into words what this week has done to my heart.
On Friday, I found myself driving to play practice with an abnormal level of adrenaline pumping through my veins. I felt driven 10/10 to do something after becoming aware of a horrific situation that recently occurred. As we rehearsed lines for the production--telling the story of Amy Carmichael and her passionate rescue of children out of human trafficking--each line made me more concerned for the people I knew were in danger. "Amy, you cannot rescue children like that! We could be prosecuted!" "I have never been afraid to fight. [...] It is a good thing to do the impossible."
Still feeling abnormal and trying to comprehend the barbarism I had seen, I took a seat in the hospital cafeteria today for my lunch break and grabbed my Bible--somehow I opened right to the book of Esther. I flipped to the passage that immediately came to mind: "Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, 'Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for some a time as this?'" (Esther 4:13-14, emphasis added).
What is my strange problem this week??? It's really not exclusive to the last few days.
Something barbaric is happening every single day.
I have been completely unable to live normally ever since becoming aware of it.
At age thirteen, I first saw an abortion procedure online and because of that my life direction became drastically altered.
Knowing the purposeful dismemberment, poisoning and starvation of living children was happening all the time around me left my heart devastated and wordless.
That child I originally saw being dismembered when I was thirteen years old was probably around 15-18 weeks gestation.
This week, breaking news was released that five preborn children were found near the trash outside Washington Surgi-Clinic by a DC local pro-life activist. These children were huge and were indeed viable--one baby is thought to have been 32 weeks gestation, another was 28 weeks, and another yet 26 weeks. I have looked at the graphic images of their poor, broken bodies several times since their release on Friday. I have seen images of micropreemies born at 21 and 22 weeks. They often look frail, thin and breakable. The babies who were recently aborted at the stages of 26-32 weeks look like they had been growing strong, healthy and large until their development was brought to a purposeful end. They were no micropreemies, but children who were, at one point, well nourished and well beyond the point of viability.
In the words of former abortionist Dr. Kathi Aultman who assessed the bodies of these babies:
"[He] looks like he should have been in the nursery" [1].
These precious children were not in a nursery basinet, but in a biohazard container.
One of these children has her eye open and her skull cut open. This child was termed "Baby Girl #1." I can hardly fathom that Baby Girl #1--with her curious little mind that wanted to look around and see the world for herself--never viewed the arms of love or a mother's embrace, but only the gruesome abortionist's bloody tools. Her first sight outside of normal developmental life in the womb was of instruments that would soon cause her total demise and cut her curious little mind straight out of her head.
Then there was "Baby Boy #1" who was completely intact and possibly killed via an induction method. When you look at his little--yet big--body, all you see is a beautiful infant who was abandoned rather than loved. No part of his body had been dismembered; only his skin showed signs of breakdown--to the point that when assessed by several physicians, it was unclear to them exactly what method of abortion was used to kill him. Could he have been born alive then left to die? The abortionist who killed him--Cesare Santangelo--has stated on video that he is willing to leave infants to die who are born alive after he attempts to destroy them in the womb. "It's all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point [...] We would not help it" [2].
Cesare Santangelo, I will have you know something. Every time you end the life of an embryo or fetus in your abortion clinic, the child is not an "it." He or she is a valuable human person who is precious. Look at the hands of these five beautiful children whose development you caused to come to a stop. Peer closely at their hands--perfect little fingers that want to wrap safely around the hand of their mother, with developed fingernails protecting their fully formed nail beds. Such intricate detail on even their tiny limbs, meanwhile you have told their mothers they are not fully human but merely clumps of cells. These children have left your clinic to tell the world their heart-rending story. The world will see the infants you caused to die and maybe even those you saw born alive--those whom you perhaps watched have a rise and fall of their chest wall--clearly exhibiting respiratory effort and need for medical care so that they may live beyond this moment they "accidentally survived" your brutal acts against them.
This killing must be stopped.
Every single day in America, 2,363 babies are aborted.
Today we know part of the story of five of those lives who were despised and forgotten by this world.
Our war for these children, as the pro-life movement, is being waged forcefully. Despite the horrific toll of 63.5 million babies being killed since 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided, we are a movement that has been achieving victories for the children. We have arrived to the year we will find out if alas the decision of death--Roe v. Wade--will be overturned by the case Dobbs v. Jackson. We feel the grief and overwhelming horror at times when we know more thoroughly what is happening to our preborn brothers and sisters--such as this week as we plead for justice for the five babies found in D.C. Yet when we find ourselves sadly in the ashes, mourning the loss of these beautiful people who could not defend themselves, we will rise again with increased vigor. We will stand up with ferocity and undaunted bravery and we will confront again the evil darkness that plagues our world. We will not stay silent and we will not be complacent. Seeing their suffering will not turn us away; rather knowing their pain more fully, we will also pursue justice for their cause more adamantly.
Amy Carmichael herself often felt the pain and challenge of fighting against horrors done to children. She called the children she sought to save her "Lotus buds."
"All souls are His, all flowers. An alien power has possessed them, counted them his for so many generations, that we have almost acquiesced in the shameful confiscation. But neither souls nor flowers are his who did not make them. They were never truly his. They belong to the Lord of all the earth, the Creator, the Redeemer. The little Lotus buds are His--His and not another's. The children of the temples of South India are His--His and not another's. So now we go forth with the Owner Himself to claim His own possession. There is hope in the thought, and confidence and the purest inspiration. And, stirred to the very depths, as we are and must be many a time when we see the tender Lotus buds gathered by a hand that has no right to them, and crushed underfoot; bewildered and sore troubled, as the heart cannot help being sometimes, when the mystery of the apparent victory of evil over good is overwhelming: even so there will be always a hush, a rest, a repose of spirit, as we stand by the Lotus-pools of life and seek in His Name to gather His flowers" [3].
Let us seek in God's name to gather His flowers as we rise from the ashes of grief this week.
We see their needs, their pain, their wounds, and their brokenness and we resolutely refuse to run away from the fight.
I am so grateful these children's bodies escaped the abortion clinic and trash heap so that we could see their suffering and be reminded that what is done 2,363 times every day to children must be fought and brought to a full stop.
Perhaps we were indeed born for such a time as this...born and not dismembered that we may fight for those who are dehumanized, denied any human rights and degraded by our modern society.
Let us resolve afresh to see the unborn child as eternally worth our efforts on their behalf, and let us--with Amy--grasp the reality of our cause's horrors, and yet take action in the name of Jesus for those who go down to death nameless.
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1. Dorman, Sam. “Aborted Babies Discovered in DC May Indicate Infanticide after Attempted Abortions.” Live Action News, 1 Apr. 2022, https://www.liveaction.org/news/infant-bodies-infanticide-attempted-abortions/.
2. Live Action Films. “Inhuman: Undercover in America's Late-Term Abortion Industry - Washington, D.C.” YouTube, 28 Apr. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxOWyumLufA&t=24s.
3. Carmichael, Amy, and Penn. Lotus Buds. Morgan and Scott, 1910. p.7
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