Karen, how cold-hearted your post sounds.
I showed it to my wife, and these were her reactions:
No living person would have reason to grieve over someone with whom they never had a relationship. There is no harm to the living
"Tell that to a young mom who has lost her baby to a miscarriage or to a stillbirth. Tell that to the grief counselors who work in prenatal hospitals. Tell that to those of us who have carried babies for nine months only to to see them die after just moments of life. Tell that to those of us who faithfully lay flowers at the grave of children we never knew. Tell us again 'there's no reason to suffer over it.'"
And, since you can't suffer unless you're alive, they never had occasion to suffer either.
"What of leap! (but not of faith). Do you really know that there is no pain inflicted on a fetus during an late-term abortion? Can you assure us that crushing the brain of a fetus with forceps is painless? Have you ever looked at an ultrasound of a growing fetus, counted all the fingers and toes, watched the legs and arms move, and then decided that this object is not living, cannot suffer, cannot feel pain?"
That was my wife. For myself, the "can't suffer unless your alive" astonishes me. You must be dead-set against the laws in some states that forbid pregnant women from drinking. Or the laws that allow people to be charged with murder (or manslaughter) for causing the death of a fetus. You must think it's okay for a pregnant teenager to snuff out the life of a fetus as it emerges in a toilet stall and stuff it in a garbage can.
Karen, I like and respect you, and I'm going to write off your clinical and dispassionate dismissal of these enormous human tragedies as just a "thoughtless moment." Regardless of which side of the abortion debate we stand on, events such as miscarriages, stillbirths, or abortions happen to real people and the emotional toll they take are very real, and very deep, and very lasting.
Hope you have a good evening.
JC |
