SNAP SHOTS OF MIRACLES

By Jean Garton

People often remind me that, despite my most valiant efforts, I have not been able to lose my Brooklyn accent. There is no escaping the fact that I was born, bred, and educated in the Big Apple.

Many of my relatives still live there. I know firsthand that before September 11 most New Yorkers were not fond of those Twin Towers. It wasn't until they were gone and they realized what they had lost - - and how - - that they wanted them back.

That same sense of loss is common among aborted women. The lost child becomes more and more precious with the passage of time.

Grief is a constant companion on a life-long journey of bitterness and sorrow.
An ancient folk tale reminds me of the plight of these regret-filled women. It tells of two monks who came to a river swollen by rains.

Standing at the edge was a little old lady with a basket of goods. She was so tiny and bent over that the waters would have swirled over her head.

"Would you carry me across?" she plaintively asked. One monk refused, but the other agreed. Placing her on his shoulders, he carried the old woman through the rising waters.

When they reached the other side, the woman went her way and the monks went their way. The two men walked on in silence. An hour passed. Then another, and still a third.

Not a single word was spoken until, finally, the monk who had not helped the woman turned to the one who had and blurted out: " How could you have carried her when we vowed never to touch a woman?" "Ah," said the other monk, "I carried her but a few minutes. You have carried her for three hours."

How like women confronting an untimely pregnancy. Some, with the help of pro-life individuals and support centers, are able to carry their child through the swirling waters of embarrassment, loneliness, and economic hardship.

Others "choose" abortion. Yet, so often, like ships on a stormy sea, they are capsized by a tidal wave of guilt and remorse.

Recalling the ancient tale, it is surely true that while some mothers carry a child for nine months, other mothers who abort carry the memory of their lost child for a lifetime.

LIVING WITH A LESSON

Understandably, we see the September 11 terrorist attack in mega- terms, a tragedy that caught up thousands in its net of horror. Yet, as time goes by, we learn of snapshots of individual miracles on that tragic day.

We learned of a man preparing to leave his apartment for work at the World Trade Center. His wife, however, urged him not to go; she said she was in labor. He took her to the hospital that morning and watched his baby being born while the building where he would have been crumbled to the ground.

Think about that for a minute! Even before entering the world, that baby's first act was to save his father's life.

A few weeks ago, there were many babies at the Arkansas March for Life in Little Rock. Despite the cold and windy weather, there were 5,000 people on hand.

There were babies in strollers; babies in slings and snugglies; babies in backpacks, on fathers' shoulders and in mothers' wombs. They were part of the crowd that walked 15 long blocks with the mournful sound of bagpipes leading the way to the State Capitol.

Young and old alike stood in the chill on the Capitol Mall for 45 minutes of speeches. Gov. Mike Huckabee spoke first and then U.S. Senator Tim Hutchinson. As keynote speaker, I went last.

In that large crowd somewhere was my daughter and her family. The next day, her youngest daughter, Claire, asked her mother, "What was that all about yesterday with all those people?"

"Those are people," my daughter explained, "who want to change a very bad law. It's a law that says if a mommy doesn't want the baby growing in her tummy she can pay someone to kill it."

Claire instinctively recoiled at the idea. She cried, "I'll have her baby!"

Claire is not unique. Most children that age would respond in the same way. Unlike adults, they have not yet learned how clever and resourceful the human mind can be when it's engaged in self-justification.

Thus it was last month that Claire, herself an abortion survivor and an adopted child, joined the pro-life ranks. At the ripe old age of five she already grasped the ABCs: what abortion does and why it is wrong.

So, as we begin another year surrounded by a regime of legalized abortion, let us pledge that we will keep on marching and meeting, preaching and praying, lobbying and voting until the rest of the country learns that lesson.

That is the pro-life curriculum that even a child can grasp.