The last couple of weeks I have been in a pondering
mood…maybe it is just that time of year but my soul has been deeply
troubled. The summer and fall were
filled with stress and conflict with the upcoming election. I think it began then. You see the main issue of the election
for me was that of life. It wasn’t a political issue because it
is personal to me. I was to be aborted…for the health of my mother. My mother had spent a great deal
of her young life in a sanatorium for those infected with TB. She had lost a husband and a baby to
this dreaded disease but it was “arrested” [their term since it is never cured]
and could now enter life again.
She married my father and was told to not get pregnant. She did,
however, not long after she married.
After having lost one child she was being told she would have to abort
the second one for her own health.
She refused and I was born.
(My mother lived for another 40 years after my birth.) So, this abortion thing is personal to
me. But this writing is not so
much about abortion but to consider when
life begins to matter.
January 22, 1973 is a day that changed our country forever. Thanks
to women like Betty Freidan and Gloria Steinem, children were relabeled as distractions rather than blessings. Children after all were the reason
women were not achieving all they could. If we could get rid of this distraction, life would be wonderful. So in 1973, the Supreme Court decided
that not allowing the aborting of a baby for any reason was unconstitutional.
The ruling was termed Roe vs. Wade. Women were now free to be all that they
could be! No longer would they
have back ally abortions…it was legal now to rid yourself of this distraction. Fast forward several years…women were beginning to feel
guilt from these actions. It
wasn’t as easy as they thought.
Depression grew and the freedom they were promised was fleeting by the
knowledge of what they had done.
We had to do something to abate these feelings so what we did is
redefine when life begins.
When I was in college no one ever questioned when life
began. We had studied basic
biology and knew when it began. But now, to soothe the consciences of those who
choose to rid themselves of a baby, many tried to justify the act by
questioning the beginning of life. They did this by declaring “It wasn’t really a baby yet…it
was a fetus.” Somehow making it clinical would help and we could justify our
guilt.
But this issue goes much further than aborting babies in the
womb. Since that day in January 1973… murders have increased in our country. There is seldom a day that goes by that
my news app doesn’t mention yet another murder in the capital city! Unthinkably, we see mothers and fathers
killing their own children. Recently, one of the most heinous instances was a
mother killing her child to get back at the father for an indiscretion. She filmed the murder to show him and
felt justified. We are seeing teens
as young as 12 killing other teens without remorse. Why? I have pondered this and came to this conclusion: Could
it be that if life doesn’t matter at the start it never really matters?
You see that is the way sin goes…it never takes you where
you thought you were going to end up.
Society thought, out of sight (or womb) out of mind but the reality is
that if life doesn’t matter in the womb, when does it matter? At one? At twelve? At 93?
If it doesn’t matter at the start, sub-consciously, does it ever matter?
It happens on the ending side, as well as our elderly are
thrown aside instead of being honored because they are no longer useful to
society. They are also considered distractions
and it costs too much to maintain a distraction.
Recently, I visited two graveyards. One was from a town that doesn’t exist
any more and the other was the graveyard at my husband’s childhood church. The
first was on a hike with my children. We walked around this neglected graveyard
of a town long since gone and I was stunned as I read the headstones. One hit me especially hard: Emily Rose born June 18, 1883, died
June 22, 1883. Forever,
memorialized even though her life lasted only 2 days. The stone stared up at me screaming out…Emily Rose was alive
and her life was important to someone.
She existed. I looked at
all the other grave markers and realized even though I never knew these people,
there was a connection with them, I couldn’t deny. They had lived.
They were. The grave
markers are there to prove it.
The other graveyard was a showing of family heritage. It showed that there were those who came before us with their stories and their trials. They mattered. Their lives were important. We learned valuable lessons from them.
We lost so much when life became disposable. Life means
something to God…heritage means so much to God. Any bible student will tell you that. Read Matthew 1. Read the numerous
“begats” throughout the Bible and we clearly see it matters. God knows us while we are in our
mother’s wombs. He created each of
us for a purpose and not a single one of us is a distraction to Him!
So as we argue whether black lives matter, white lives
matter, blue lives matter…let’s go back to the beginning…when life begins
determines what lives matter.
