Ground Zero

"Two years ago - - in a touching gesture that would eventually extend to all of Southern California and across the country - - [Debi] Faris began burying the children, most of them infants, who, especially in Los Angeles County, turn up with horrifying regularity in trash cans, on roads, on front lawns, and on beaches."

From "The Garden of Angels,"San Diego Union-Tribune, July 12

"The decision by pro-choice leaders to oppose a ban on partial birth abortion - - the most visible abortion issue before the public - - may have redefined what it means to be pro-choice. If true, it has expanded the definition to include a procedure that most Americans, and even many liberal Americans, find objectionable."

Lydia Saad, managing editor, The Gallup Poll

"Birth is the beginning of it all, ground zero, the moment from which the clock starts ticking. Not so, declares Janet DePietro. Birth may be a grand occasion, says the Johns Hopkins University psychologist, but 'it is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens.'"

Psychology Today, September/October 1998

Should you steel yourself sufficiently to make it through the emotional wringer that follows I suspect that you, like me, will strain to make sense of the state of the Union, circa September 1998. Let's begin our tour with Psychology Today.

*There is in its September/October issue a highly entertaining, thought-provoking synopsis of the new wave of research that illustrates how "the roots of human behavior" begin to develop "just weeks after conception." The reader cannot help but be enchanted by the evidence that showcases the developmental sophistication of the unborn baby who "savors its mother's meals" and selectively responds to various of her mother's movements, her laugh, the sound of her voice, the stories she reads her. Incredible.

It makes for a different kind of incredible reading, however, when, less than 72 hours after I finish this wonderful account, 36 senators voted to sustain President Clinton's horrific veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a gift to the most doctrinaire pro-abortion President in history.

*On September 15, USA Today ran a captivating tale that offers one possible answer to the unresolved question of why the mother's immune system doesn't attack her unborn baby. After all, since half of the baby's genes come from her father, oughtn't this "foreigner" come under siege?

It may be that the unborn child comes equipped with an ingenious survival mechanism. Apparently, the child develops a natural mechanism - - an enzyme called IDO manufactured by white blood cells and specialized cells in the placenta - - to turn off "Mom's immune system for the duration of pregnancy," USA Today reports. Yet in creating "an immunological haven," the baby amazingly does so "without affecting Mom's ability to fight off infections elsewhere in her body."

Yet barely a week later, a minority of U.S. senators was able to block action on the Child Custody Protection Act. Pro-abortion senators such as Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) insisted on offering entirely unrelated amendments. Given the limited amount of time left in the session, entanglement would kill the bill this time around. Chief sponsor Spencer Abraham (R-Mi.) tried to "invoke cloture," which, had he been successful, would have blocked consideration of the unrelated "killer" amendments while still allowing germane amendments. The cloture motion was supported 54-45, but that fell six short of the required 60 votes. For now, at least, statutory rapists will continue to enjoy their own "haven," safe from the reach of state parental involvement laws.

*Finally, surfing the net just the other day I found a home page for Don Williams, the "Gentle Giant," who was for many years my favorite country singer before I lost track of his work. Eagerly I scanned the page and learned that Don has written a new Christmas song, "Pretty Little Baby Child." For reasons I cannot fully explain, this reminder of the greatest birth in history prompted me to reopen a letter that holds a story from the July 12 San Diego Union-Tribune.

One night, a little over two years ago, Debi Faris was cooking dinner when she heard of "a dead newborn baby stuffed inside a duffel bag like someone's soiled laundry" and tossed onto the shoulder of the Harbor Freeway in San Pedro. Debi "couldn't shake the story from her mind" - - the thought of that little boy who lacked even a name, a child with "no family, no one to love him or care for him or anything."

After conferring with her family (and knowing that police would immediately suspect she had a role in the child's death), Debi offered to give him a dignified burial. Had she not opened her heart, the child would have been "cremated like the other unclaimed bodies at the morgue" and put in a common grave. The police quickly figured out she is a "one-of-a-kind person" and agreed. In a chilling foreboding of what was to come, even before Debi was able to pick up the first baby, a call came in about "another full-term newborn who had likely been suffocated and pitched into a trash bin."

Her eyes now opened, Debi and her husband decided to purchase 44 small plots, never imagining that all these sites at the "Garden of Angels" would be filled in their lifetime. In June, "Grace, the 31st child, was laid to rest."

Through all the soul-splintering work, only once did Debi think she would lose it. It was while she was wrapping the body of a seven-month-old whose parents had shaken to death. But "as she was digging deep for extra strength, she suddenly heard what sounded like her favorite hymn. Standing behind, watching over her, were 18 coroner's workers, faintly singing 'Amazing Grace.'"

I recount this incredible story of honorable people attempting to redeem what remains of our common humanity because they remind me of you. Understand it was not just the magnificent compassion of Debi, her husband, and their three kids. It was also the outpouring of caring by so many strangers who took personally what happened to these abandoned children.

According to the Union-Tribune account, which surely ought to win a Pulitzer Prize, senior citizens knit baby blankets in which to wrap the children; kids buy toys to put in the caskets, paid for by the money they raised from candy sales; a hardened cop cries at the funeral of "Michael," a two-week old who had "crawled out of his diaper trying to get to the top of a trash can he was thrown into on Skid Row"; ordinary citizens attend the funerals, the kind of people who bring "a plush yellow bunny and a bouquet for a baby they never knew." Up to 150 people who have no connection to the little ones show up at the funerals "to weep and pay last respects." Unwanted in life, these children have been adopted in death.

For us it is axiomatic that there are fundamental bonds that hold a culture together. When they are debased and despoiled and ultimately destroyed, as they are in abortion, it is naive - - make that criminally obtuse - - to expect the mercilessness to be confined to the immediate victim, in this case the unborn child. Yet many still cannot see the connection between abortion and the savagery that is sweeping our land.

Think of the contrasting responses as a kind of Rorschach test of the soul. When shown a contemporary portrait of violence in America, those who have failed to truly "look" at abortion see only a turmoil of undifferentiated images. Their moral vision has grown blurry from lack of use.

By contrast, those equipped with vision sharpened by their willingness to look the brutality of abortion straight in the eye have no difficulty distinguishing the individual components of the larger picture.

In the foreground we are able to make out the pitiful sight of thousands and thousands of newborn babies, disposed of like so many plastic wrappers (the lucky ones get buried in places like the Garden of Angels). Looking closer we observe ostensibly morally sentient human beings so at war with their own humanity they will defend the loathsome partial-birth abortion technique. As we peer still deeper we can discern the image of desensitized children murdering other children. And in the background we can make out the ever-sharper likeness of a physician "assisting" his sick, elderly patient to kill herself.

Even though our moral vision may fail us, perhaps the unborn's cry for justice and mercy will break through. But how? Through the instrument of your voice. Let me tell you story that may illustrate what I mean.

Recently, a friend sent me a sweet note about her 8- and 9-year-old daughters. Both were auditioning for parts in an upcoming play to be put on by a very prestigious children's theater. Both had passed the first audition. One child, whose confidence seems unlimited, aced the call-back, which was entirely singing. But her sister, whose voice was not where she would want it to be, was very nervous. She quickly lost it-her place, her pitch, her nerve.

She was given a second chance. Given the circumstances, I imagine no one would have been terribly surprised if matters had gone from bad to worse. But as she began her sister, who had been watching, came over, stood next to her, and "sang quietly into her ear." Her reassuring presence and tender assistance helped pull her sister back on pitch and she finished nicely. Imagine how their parents must have felt when they saw their daughter put an arm around her still obviously distressed sister, rub her back gently, smile, and whisper something into her ear.

Isn't that what we must do? Our beloved nation has lost her way. Individually, what countless millions of women and men need is for you and me to whisper gently in their ears, offer a compassionate smile of reassurance, and softly tell them we are here to help them pick up the pieces in the aftermath of a tragically wrong decision.

So far our benighted opponents have bent the world to their bloody will. Thanks to you, however, someday the nations will bend in a different direction. Strengthened by your love and your empathy people will search their hearts. And when they do they will bend in sorrow and remorse to ask forgiveness from the littlest Americans.

dha