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Compassion

A friend of mine recently found an abandoned newborn kitten. Feeling compassion for the tiny thing, he took her home and tried to care for her the best he could. The kitten was so small that she fit in my friend’s hand. She successfully ate from a bottle for a few days, but then went to sleep one night and never woke up.

My friend’s FB friends followed the saga on his page and were sad when the poor kitten died. He got lots of sympathy and many comments on his posts over the course of the few days he tried to be a caregiver.

As I looked at pictures of the kitten, it struck me that she was about the size of a 20-week-old preborn baby.

And then the disparity between the compassion for a preborn baby and compassion for a dead kitten struck me. Not a disparity among his friends, but in society in general.

Of course, we should have compassion for any of God’s creatures who die, and it was sad that the kitten did not survive. Pets are wonderful and bring lots of joy to their owners. But they are not human beings.

So, if we feel sadness for a kitten who dies, shouldn’t we feel immensely sadder when a human being—created in the image and likeness of God—dies?

A preborn baby IS a human being. There’s no disputing that. And a human being is immeasurably more valuable than a kitten.

Why can’t our society see that we must speak for preborn babies and protect them? Many of us understand that, but not nearly enough. And not nearly enough elected officials.

We have become a culture that throws things away when we don’t want them—and that includes our children.

Maybe it’s because some people don’t really understand what happens during an abortion. Maybe they haven’t seen pictures of a dead baby or heard testimony about what happens during an abortion. Maybe they want to live in denial so that they can continue to call a baby a “choice.”

So let’s let Dr. Anthony Levatino tell us what happens. Dr. Levatino recently retired as an OB/GYN, and in the first few years of his practice, he performed abortions. When a family tragedy struck, he realized the true horror of what he was doing. He now spends his time educating about the reality of what happens during an abortion. A few years ago he spoke in front of the House Judiciary Committee and described a D&E (dilation and evacuation) abortion of a 22-week-old preborn baby, who is about “the length of your hand plus a couple of inches.” Levatino said:

Picture yourself introducing this [he holds up a Sopher clamp] and grabbing anything you can blindly, and pull. And I do mean hard. And out pops a leg about that big [he holds up his fingers to indicate about 3 inches] which you put down on the table next to you. Reach in again. Pull again. Pull out an arm about the same length, which you put down on the table next to you. And use this instrument again and again to tear out the spine, the intestines, the heart, and lungs. A head in a baby that size is about the size of a large plumb. You can’t see it. . . . You know you did it right if you crush down on the instrument and white material runs out of the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. Then you can pull out skull pieces.

Yes, this was once a living human being. Now he is in pieces on a table being reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle.

What happens to him is unconscionable. That is why we must fight for him. That is why we must use our voices, especially on Election Day, to vote for pro-life candidates who can help us give the babies voices and help us fight for their lives. The babies cannot do it themselves; it is our responsibility.

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About the author

Susan Ciancio

Susan Ciancio is the editor of Celebrate Life Magazine and executive editor for the Culture of Life Studies Program.