Recently we welcomed two new nephews into our extended family (my brother and his wife’s third child and my brother-in-law and his wife’s fourth) – and they were born within 24 hours of each other! For the rest of their lives, we will celebrate March 1st and 2nd as their birthdays.
But what would you think if their parents decided to ignore those days? What would you think if their parents forbade these children from celebrating or even acknowledging their birthdays – no gifts, no cake, no cards, no mention whatsoever, as if the day didn’t exist? Do parents have the right to erase a child’s day of birth? What if they pointed out how expensive birthdays are, how much they inconvenience adults’ lives, and what a burden these celebrations are on adults?
And what if our Supreme Court found “penumbras, formed by emanations”
[1] in the Bill of Rights that gave parents such a right to erase a child’s day of birth? And what if this right was championed by politicians, even ensconced in their party platform? And what if this right was defended by media pundits and publishing giants like
The New York Times, The Washington Post, and
The Boston Globe? And what if we were forced to support it through our tax dollars?
Wouldn’t you want to stand up and say, “Stop! These children have birthdays! And every child deserves his or her birth to be celebrated! Doesn’t anyone care about the needs of the child? Doesn’t anyone see the inherent value in the child? And doesn’t anyone see how incredibly selfish we adults are being?”
Fortunately, that world is a fiction. Tragically, our actual world is far worse. Our world doesn’t deny children the right to celebrate their birthday; our world is denying children the right to have a birth day. Since 1973, abortion in America has denied 52,000,000 babies their birth days. That’s equivalent to the populations of Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan!
This is more than a national tragedy; it is a national evil. All 52,000,000
[2] aborted babies deserved a birth day and our laws currently allow them to be denied it, claiming it’s the parent’s right. If parents don’t have the right to deny the celebration of a child’s birthday, why do they have the right to deny the child’s actual birth?
Yes, there are hard cases. Yes, there are financial burdens. But do those hard cases and those financial burdens justify the choice to deny a child his birth day? Doesn’t every newly conceived life have the right to his birth day? If we wouldn’t support laws or politicians who’d champion the erasing of birthday celebrations, how can we support laws or politicians who are championing the termination of the baby in the womb and his right to his birth day?
It’s time for the church to stand as one and say, “Every baby deserves a birth day!” For suggestions on how to gain your voice, come visit with me. Let’s gain our voice together.
[1] This is the precise language used by Justice Douglas in a 1965 Supreme Court case that influenced Justice Blackmun in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that struck down laws forbidding abortions in America.
[2] And this number says nothing of the chemical abortions performed at home with abortifacient drugs (such as RU-486) and even less of the abortions caused by drugs marketed as contraceptives (such as Ella and Plan-B, and possibly even the standard oral contraceptive) which may prevent a fertilized embryo from implanting in his mother’s uterus.
