Have you ever watched CSPAN and cried? I have. Around 6 p.m. on Tuesday, February 26, 2019.
I didn’t have tissue ready, I wasn’t expecting it. The tears caught me completely off guard.
I must have watched, however, because deep down I was doubtful of the outcome. Though I had high hopes, they were dashed.
Fourty-four of our U.S. senators said “nay” and S.331 was blocked.
This bill, if passed by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate, would have made it illegal and punishable in all 50 states NOT to help an infant born alive after an attempted abortion.
It is truly reprehensible that our nation’s leaders decided NOT to support this legislation.
It is deeply disturbing that we actually need laws to dictate this kind of behavior, but history tells us that human nature is prone to evil. In ancient cultures, unwanted born children were left in the elements to die. In the U.S. today, we’re just more discreet.
Jill Stanek knows this. She is the Chicago-area labor and delivery nurse that discovered an infant born alive after a failed abortion being left to die in a dirty utility room behind closed doors. (See this interview with Stanek from 2009 https://www.clmagazine.org/topic/pro-life-champions/jill-stanek-pro-life-blogging-pioneer/)
But then there is Gianna Jessen. She is alive today because an abortion worker decided to care for her after she was accidentally born alive at 30 weeks, weighing two pounds. Jessen’s mother tried unsuccessfully to have her aborted by saline injection. Jessen’s story is amazing! See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/09/27/the-only-reason-i-am-alive-is-the-fact-that-the-abortionist-had-not-yet-arrived-at-work/?utm_term=.b56fee68a0b9
In 2002, our U.S. Senators acted justly regarding this matter. The Born-Alive Infant Protection Act passed UNANIMOUSLY. Senate Bill 311 would have added protections to this existing federal law, requiring that a child born alive after an attempted abortion be treated with the same level of care as a premature infant born at the same stage of pregnancy, and that the child be transported to a hospital for proper care.
What has changed in the ensuing 17 years? What kind of nation have we become? We must know that 46 years of legalized abortion has desensitized us. Forget the rhetoric, the politics, the ugly antics. They are not the cause, they are symptoms. We are reaping the consequences of cheapening life.
According to Michigan Right to Life, “The logic of abortion demands we dehumanize our own children by suggesting that some lives are unworthy of life. It's foolish to believe that logic doesn't ultimately extend to infanticide, and eventually to an embrace of euthanasia for adults.”
I called my Michigan senators before the vote to encourage support of the bill. After it failed, I sent a thank you note to Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, for sponsoring S.331. I sent a very different kind of note to my Michigan senators.
Notes are obviously not enough. Pray, write, stand vigil in front of an abortion clinic, volunteer at a pregnancy care center or for Safe Families. Love on moms, dads and babies!
Legalized murder of humans—preborn and born—is insanity. Absolutely NO good comes from abortion. It has not lessened poverty, reduced child abuse or liberated women.
Revelations
Embryology has settled it.
From The American College of Pediatricians:
"The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception—fertilization. At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is one of form, not nature. This statement focuses on the scientific evidence of when an individual human life begins."
And before we could see it, with magnificent 20th century magnification, the 10th century BC Psalmist prophetically declared it:
For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
We either have faith or we have none. And this faith is not based on fluff, or feelings. It is based on facts. Before we saw a zygote magnified by technology, we trusted that when a woman’s period stopped, nine months later, she would have a baby.
We must believe and act on the fact that every baby is wanted and that every mother can embrace or, at least, endure, her pregnancy supported by loving individuals, whether to parent or to allow someone else that privilege.
We must speak out and act on behalf of the preborn and born alike, not simply out of a well-intentioned tenderness or flimsy notion of “right”, but out of a well-formed belief that ALL life is good and worth protecting, not just because we think so, but because our Creator says so.
“In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
More information HERE on current federal law and Michigan law regarding infanticide
There is ALWAYS hope and healing available for a woman who has experienced abortion -- more HERE
Read and sign "A Declaration for Life" HERE
Truly sad. :(
My daughter was born 4 weeks premature, (32 weeks), at no fault of her own. She was perfectly formed; 10 toes, 10 fingers, a beating heart and air-filled lungs. She went on to be Cuma Sum Laude of her college grauating class & a beautiful, intelligent woman.
Thank you Shawn, for sharing this story & your heart!