I've followed the on-going Kermit Gosnell case at a safe distance meaning, I know about it and feel the horror of it, and of the media refusing to make it national news, but I cannot bring myself to always read what does come out about it, because of how sickening the whole thing is. I do read some, because I feel that the babies who were killed deserve to be known about and remembered. I avoid the more graphic things because I already feel sick at the vague, foggy idea of ending a baby's life, without the graphic details that I can all too easily imagine.
Today is the day that I saw a too-graphic picture and got sucked in. I looked at their faces, their cold, little unnamed faces lying in the trash. I saw the close-up of the neck wound that killed them after they were born alive. I read that one mother watched while her baby was killed that way. I am sure it was the most shocking and wrenching moment of her life. I am sure nobody told her an abortion would be like that. I am sure she was told it would be safe and harmless, and that she was only having a mass of tissue removed. Her baby, like the others, turned out to be a real baby, and struggled to survive until the cruel moment when the nurse ended it's little life. On it's birth-day.
The torture that must drive any woman to abort her baby must be nothing compared to the torture afterwards, especially for that mother I read about. The hurt I felt just reading about it was so overwhelming, and I have not walked in her shoes or had the life she had that must have made her feel that there was no other option for her baby.
The babies, though. I could not go on with my day after seeing their little bodies and faces and realizing, not for the first time, but somehow more painfully than usual, that they had no names, nobody knew who they were, ever. I could only sit on the living room floor sobbing for them, that they had such a terrible end when they should have been welcomed, named, warmed and bathed and loved. One baby boy looked so cold and lonely, especially. I couldn't think how to get up off the floor and stop crying for him, for all of them.
Finally I just asked God if he would fix it. He is God, who else could you ask? Who else would know what to do? I don't know what He'll do, but I do know that He is planning to do something. Someday He will put everything right. (See the whole book of Isaiah.) I find comfort in knowing that he is so kind that he even notices when a sparrow falls out of the sky, (Matthew 10:29) that he puts each one of our tears in a bottle. (Psalm 56:8) I guess he also puts each of those babies' tears into their own little bottle, too.
I saw this picture of my little baby boy, and I wanted all of the aborted babies to just be taken care of like he is in this picture- soft, warm, relaxed, comforted and loved- all of the things that they're not when they die.
But then I thought that actually, God loves them. He loves them all the time. He is much more heart-broken about their deaths than I could ever be, and I think that after they die, as cruel as that is, that He takes them and warms them, and gives them their own name that only He knows, and has known from before the beginning of time. (Revelation 2:17-- I'm not sure if that verse can be applied here, but maybe it can.) And He knows them, He knows who they are and who they were meant to be. Maybe He even gives them birthday parties. I do not have Scriptural basis for that last one, but for most of these ideas, I think there is.
I know there are many other tragedies in the world, and many hearts more broken than mine. This one hit me today even though it is something that I've cared about my whole life, and I just needed to share it. I do pray for everyone involved in the atrocity of abortion, from those who carry it out, to those who are hurt by it, to those who are trying to help.
