I hate to repost this poem from five years ago. I hate needing to. In response to the Supreme Court's overthrow of the Roe vs. Wade decision in 2022, states like Montana, who enacted more restrictive abortion requirements, have been targeted with proposed constitutional initiatives to enshrine (their word, how ironic) abortion rights. These are not grassroots efforts within individual states, they are sponsored attacks by Planned Parenthood and their wealthy supporters. In our state this imported initiative is called CI-128.
I was in high school in the early 70's when Roe vs. Wade mated with an activist Supreme Court and gave birth to abortion rights. I did not always believe in God the way I do now, but even then, I suspected that he might exist and that I might have to answer to him someday, so I did not want standing up for the right to suck unborn babies from the womb stinking up my pile of good deeds. Later, as a Christian, I prayed for a reversal of Roe with a fervency like the black Christians of 1857 must have had when praying about the Dred Scott decision. The ruling where a racist Supreme Court found that, though blacks were undeniably human, they were also the property of their owners, therefore, had no personal rights. But perhaps our pro-life prayers were not as fervent as theirs, since Dred Scott was overturned by the abolishment of slavery only eleven years later and Roe's reign of terror lasted nearly 50.
As my poem points out, there is nothing new about the "right" to kill babies. The main difference is that, throughout history that privilege had been the prerogative of the fathers, especially against their daughters, who were often considered a liability, instead of an asset like a son. Now we are more enlightened, and have placed those life or death decisions into the hands of the babies' mothers and, perhaps unintentionally, their abusive lovers, and/or sex traffickers. Since we are also more also enlightened now about fetal development from conception to birth, we are without excuse for pretending that the unborn, though undeniably human, are the property of their mothers, therefore, have no personal rights. CI-128 is not about keeping the government out of a women's reproductive rights, it is government sanction for wrongs against the reproduced. There are blood stains on this year's ballot, the blood of babes.
And Molech Smiles
Long before the time of Christ,
babies were sometimes sacrificed.
Rolled on Molech's waiting arms
into the idol's fiery tomb
for a better crop, a bigger herd,
future success by blood insured,
or a father's whim to kill his child.
And Molech smiled.
There were other ways
in those barbarous days,
babies died inside a womb
ripped open by a warrior's sword.
One less enemy to fight.
But all in war is justified.
One less mother, one less child.
And Molech smiled.
We know the truth in modern times,
scan the unborn, so abortion finds
its tiny target. Deaths the fiercest savage
might scarcely comprehend.
Dissected by a healer's hands
with a smaller sword, of cleaner steel,
we claim the right to kill our child.
And Molech smiles.
No comments:
Post a Comment