Dakota Beacon

It is always startling to me when I talk to people that advocate pre-birth infanticide. I like to ask them the question, “When is an unborn child a human being?” The answer is always void of science and common sense as the engrained refrain is regurgitated, “When they are born!” Then when you remind them that in Fargo, at the Red River Women’s Clinic that tiny beings with fingers, toes, eyes, ears, noses, eyebrows, even little girls with all of the eggs in her ovaries that she will ever have are ripped apart as they are sucked out of the womb……the infanticider’s retort is “It’s only a fetus”, as if the term “fetus” which is a medical description of the period of time during the life cycle is instead a designation of sub-humanity.

Just prior to a recent discussion the mother of a Down’s Syndrome son voiced her concerns of how medical technology was so readily able to discern the sex of, the possible imperfection of, or if “God forbid, the gay gene”, and how these test drove the killing of many “fetuses”. As we talked afterwards it was apparent how precious her “imperfect” son was to her.

Perhaps you may think that I have gone a little overboard in the recent issues of this publication when it comes to the unborn. Well, all I can say to that is that sometimes your life experiences compel you to do all that you can to protect the innocent unborn, maybe because they are human beings, maybe because the are defenseless, and maybe because we can never judge the significance, regardless of perceived “defect”, of any human, born or unborn.

I will never forget the first time I met Gary. He had called me for an estimate on some remodeling. When I got to his house there he sat, covered in grime, surrounded by old insulation and heating duct parts. “You look like duct soup”, I joked. “Quack, Quack” he exclaimed. We burst out laughing and instantly we were buddies.

Gary had big, kind, gentle brown eyes. He was probably nicest person I have ever known. For about 7 years I did carpentry work on the rental properties that he and his mother owned. I can only begin to tell you of the kindness that man showed me and how we laughed constantly for years. Once, on the way back form the lumber yard we saw a frightened dog on a very busy street. Gary and I took that dog door to door until it got home. Gary then insisted that he pay me for the 4 hours we spent looking for the owners because the search was his idea. Another time when I was so desperate for cash that I was going to sell my table-saw to a mutual friend, Gary called me. “Don’t sell that saw to Mark, I’m on my way over”. Without any discussion Gary handed me a wad of cash and said, “Pay me when your family doesn’t need it”. Everywhere Gary went he spread kindness.

I loved Gary. I cried when his mother told me that he was sick again in the fall of 1988. I cried because I realized then that my suspicions were true, that Gary was dying of AIDS. Holding the hand of your best friend, so young, so kind, who had been so full of fun and energy while he is dying changes you forever. I thank God for Gary, though I still cannot understand why he is gone. But what if he had never been?

Jake was my next door neighbor when I was in second, third and fourth grades. Jake was big, strong, impossible to anger, and happy at all times. Jake was in his late teens and a Downs-syndrome child. I called him “Jake-o” or “Big, bad Jake”, he called me “Tee”. We spent our days playing hide and seek, wrestling (he would always let me win which inspired great mirth), and just generally running around in the woods. Jake was an incredible baseball batter. He would pound a hit that looked like a homerun and wait until the ball cleared the fence to begin skipping and dancing around the bases as the rest of us broke into the chant, “Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake.…”. The pure joy and exultation on his face was infectious. I can’t remember having more fun playing baseball than with Jake. I thank God for Jake. But what if he had never been?

At the time of her birth my niece McKenzie was the most premature (16 ounces) child to be born and survive in St. Louis County, Missouri. She was considered a miracle. Today, at 24 years she is by all accounts “a live wire”. My fondest memory of her was from the family reunion when she was 6 years old. She just wanted to crawl all over me, to be held and cuddled. Such an affectionate kid, a beautiful spirit, so easy to love, a miraculous gift from God. But what if she had never been?

Holding McKenzie I realized that she had a beautiful spirit. The realization of the beauty of her spirit, that spark of human kind got me to wondering about the moment that she changed from a genetically unique collection of cells into a human having a spirit. Did her spirit develop after her premature birth during the time that she would have spent in the womb? Did her spirit come into being exactly 9 months after her conception? When is that exact moment when a collection of cells becomes a human?

After he was gone, Gary’s mother told me that he had been flawed and if she had known of the pain he would have in his life should would not have allowed him to be born. What if Jake’s parents had known that he would be born mentally retarded and decided that it was just better that he were not allowed to be born? What if it had been decided that McKenzie would be too much trouble and expense to keep alive?

Are there people not yet born who will do great and kind things? Are there people not yet born who will be an inspiration to those who know them? Are there people not yet born who will do wonderful things because they have beautiful spirits? But what if they never are? How can we predict the human potential of the unborn?

Studies of identical twins and the human GNOME projects seem to substantiate the fact that much of who we are is hard wired. The code is all there at the first division of the fertilized egg. As our technology allows more and more knowledge of the process that is human life what if we find that it is a continuum and that the humanness, the spirit, that spark is there at that first division of the fertilized egg?

Imagine a young woman with a big and growing problem. Imagine that she listens to Planned Parenthood and the National Organization of Women and decides that it is her reproductive right to make a “choice” to end her problem. Imagine that someday after she has chosen a surgical form of birth control that she realizes that science proves that life is a continuum and that she had initiated infanticide? Is it possible that the belief that you killed your child would leave deep and permanent scars on the psyche of these women?

You all know people conceived under inconvenient or difficult circumstances. Go ask their mothers if they think, in retrospect, that they would have been better off to have decided to have her child destroyed before birth. Find, if you can, the birth mother of an unexpected child, ask her if bearing that child and then offering a childless couple the chance to fill a void in their lives was worth giving birth. Ask the mother of a Down’s Syndrome child if they wish they would have terminated that child’s life to make their own life less difficult. Ask the mother of a homosexual if they would have destroyed that child if they had known what was going to transpire. Ask an adopted person if they are glad that their mother did not have them destroyed as a method of birth control.

You all know how the vast majority of those questions would be answered, yet the insanity of pre-birth infanticide remains largely unexamined. “Abortion” is a clinical abstraction, done in a neat and clean clinic, under the care of people who are so “compassionate”.  Now ask yourself the question, “Is this really about license for promiscuity and an industry of death with billions of dollars of blood money at stake?” But, you already know the answer, don’t you?

How many beautiful people like Jake will not bless another child because a fetal test indicates he will be “mentally impaired”? What if Gary’s mother had made a “choice”? How can we know the effect of the life of an unborn?

The title of this article posed a question. Who can know the value of the unborn? No one.