by Mary Rose, Assistant Director of Campus Outreach 

Today I met a girl who owes her life to a victim of abortion.  Her mother was eleven weeks pregnant and on her way to have her killed when she saw an image of a dead child, slaughtered by abortion.  She changed her mind and carried her daughter to term.  Today, instead of having been torn into pieces and flushed down the garbage disposal, that girl is riding her bike across her college campus, a happy, well-rounded adult.  

Sometimes I wonder about displaying images of abortion victims.  Is it right to show their pictures in public?  Is it respectful to them?  Is it an exploitation of their deaths?  But if we do not show the injustice, and especially if we do not show the individual victims, how do we recognize them as individual victims?  Because they are victims.  Every abortion ends the life of an individual child of God.  A person created by God with an eternal plan, but cruelly executed before birth.  We must recognize them as individual victims of injustice or risk forgetting that they are, indeed, individual human beings.  

The death of that individual child on the sign saved the life of the college student I met.  That baby did not die entirely in vain.  His or her death saved the girl I met today.  But it wasn’t just the baby’s death that saved her life.  If the baby’s death had been done discreetly and his or her body had been disposed of quietly in the trash, that baby’s death might have ended, leaving behind nothing but despair in his or her parents.  He or she would never have had a part in saving someone’s life.  What saved the student was not just the baby’s death, but the image of the baby, a victim of abortion.  The mother saw the individual victim and did not want to victimize her own daughter.  

That baby saved a life through his or her death.  The girl I met is grateful, and I hope that little baby knows it.

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