I don't want to use my blog as a soapbox. And normally I won't. But today, I couldn't help myself. This is my soapbox. If you don't like soapboxes, I suggest you stop reading here. You've been warned.
I'm still in a mass of hurt and anger when I think of the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings. I grieve for young lives not yet lived, for hurting families missing a huge portion of their daily lives. I grieve for innocence lost as witnesses will never erase that horror from their minds, nor will they ever feel completely safe again.
But a small part of me sits back in confusion. Yes, the nation and the world are outraged that such an atrocity happened, especially to small children. And yet... we sit complacently by as hundreds of thousands more innocent children are murdered every single day. And most of us don't think twice about it.
The abortion debate has raged for as long as abortion has been around, and it still continues in the U.S.A. today. Advances in science have progressed so much that we can actually know that the baby inside is a living human being.
I saw my baby's heartbeat on a monitor at eight weeks past conception. The little bean, the little life. I was amazed.
Then why is it still legal to kill a human? An innocent, defenseless human? Because it's convenient.
Think of how very inconvenient it would be for lawmakers to realize that they have legalized infanticide for decades. How awful it would be to admit that they had a hand in allowing a genocide to continue in a country that is supposed to stand for freedom from oppression and tyranny. That's supposed to be a place where the underdog and the underprivileged can come out on top.
In conversation with a friend a couple of weeks ago, he said, "Abortion will never be outlawed in the U.S. again. There's no point in voting for government representatives who are against it because it just won't happen."
My heart cringed at those words. If we give up the fight, even if the odds seem overwhelming, are we not conceding defeat?
A quote from one of my favorite movies, Newsies, says this: "Sometimes all it takes is a voice, one voice that becomes a hundred, then a thousand, unless it's silenced."
I will be a voice. I will be a voice for those that have no voice, whose voices are silenced before they're even born.
The school shooting at Sandy Hook, I think, had little to do with gun
control and accessibility to guns. I didn't know Adam Lanza or his
family. But one thing I do know is that our culture today has little
respect for life. We've slowly become jaded to abortion, violent crime,
etc. Adam Lanza is dead and will not be physically hurting anyone else. But the
source of the problem still remains. Until our culture can recognize that
life, all life, is precious, this problem will continue.
Let's work to become a culture that values life at its very beginning or even its very end (don't get me started on euthanasia - this soapbox can only handle so much). Let's value life, no matter who's it is, whether it's a white baby or a black baby, a boy baby or a girl baby, a pastor's baby or a rapist's baby.
Food for thought.
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