Death before Birth

I have not watched any of the Center for Medical Progress's expose videos on Planned Parenthood and StemExpress, a company which handles the disposal/redistribution of body parts from aborted babies. There is an argument from some quarters that everyone ought to see the videos, ought to have to come to term with tiny arms and legs being nudged around in dishes, ought to hear laughing employees declare, "Another boy!" as they examine what's left of the poor innocent.

I don't need a video to show me what preborn babies look like. I held one in my hand ten years ago, a wee eight-weeks-developed baby, my own. I don't know why it died, but it looked perfect. It (I don't know whether it was a girl or a boy, and I don't prefer to assign it an arbitrary gender) didn't even fill up the palm of my hand. Baby had all ten fingers and all ten toes, but what has always stayed with me are the big beautiful blue eyes.

I know that some parents want to give a conditional baptism to a child who's been miscarried. We didn't. The baby had died two weeks before I miscarried, apparently, and baptizing a two-weeks-dead body seems a mockery of the sacrament. We had no doubts that God had taken the little one to himself.

The baby's existence and death didn't have to be justified on the grounds of becoming medical research material.  It was never "useful". It did not further the aims of science. And because the baby was human, it deserved a human burial. So we buried it, the only gift we were able to give the baby in its brief lifetime.

I did not take any photos of my baby, but you can see a sweet little eight-week-old baby here. It looks just like mine did. I don't need hidden videos to convince me that abortion is an evil evil business, and I don't want to see these dead little one dismembered when it's hard enough to see a dead little one intact.