Sometimes the worst headlines aren’t the ones that poorly describe a news story but the ones that plainly describe it. Consider this headline coming out of Greenville, S.C., last Saturday: “Newborn baby found in Bi-Lo Center toilet.”Read the rest.
It’s a terrible headline to absorb because it describes a terrible horror: A pregnant mother walks into an arena bathroom during a performance of Ringling Bros. Circus on a Friday night, delivers a 6-pound baby boy into a toilet, and leaves him to choke and freeze in the cold, dirty water.
Amazingly, a cleaning crew found the baby alive but suffering from hypothermia. The workers administered life-saving aid until paramedics arrived, and doctors upgraded the newborn’s condition from critical to good within five days.
The boy’s mother surrendered to police: Jessica Blackham, 24, is a married mother of a 4-year-old child. Authorities didn’t elaborate on Blackham’s mindset but charged her with two counts of felony child abuse and one count of unlawful neglect toward a child. If a jury convicts her on all charges, Blackham faces up to 50 years in prison.
The story evokes gut-wrenching questions: What kind of evil or desperation could hurl this young mother to the depths of deadly abandonment? Blackham’s need for Christ-centered intervention aimed at repentance, redemption, and restoration is profound. One hopes she’ll somehow encounter gospel-saturated counsel, not merely state-ordered treatment.
A broader question: Why do crimes like these invoke outrage in a country that allows some 1.2 million abortions a year? The Guttmacher Institute reports that 23 percent of abortionists in the United States abort unborn children after 20 weeks, and that 11 percent abort at 24 weeks—both within the range of viability outside the womb.
The difference must be the perception: For many, a baby’s remains discarded in a medical pail are more palatable than a baby left in a toilet, though the deadly intention is the same. Planned Parenthood CEO Jill June, recently complaining about pro-life activists in Iowa, pointed out that only six abortions in the state took place after the 20th week in 2009. Pan back to the Bi-Lo Center: Imagine “only” six babies abandoned in toilets.
Now a deeper question: Why should every man, woman, and child identify with this abandoned baby boy? I spent days trying to avoid the mental image of a shivering infant gasping for breath and wallowing in blood, utterly abandoned and helpless. It was too horrible to contemplate—until I realized that I was just like him.
(HT: @drmoore)
Denny Burk writes more here today on these inconsistencies.
1 comment:
These types of the things are commonly occur every where such that mothers are leaving their child abandoned. And they are found in very bad condition.
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