What About Mrs. Brown?
© 01.05.07 By Elisa Williams

Human sacrifice has always been the mark of barbaric, uncivilized cultures. It is all the more abhorrent when those who make the sacrifices are parents ritually killing their own children. In the great civilized west we cannot imagine what demonic sympathies a people could have in order to eagerly kill other humans - indeed kill their own offspring.

There are still dark and ugly places where this goes on - probably more than we know. But nowhere does this type of murder happen more then in the so called civilized world. Daily more than four thousand American children are killed in a bloody and horrible way. Most people you meet on the street are not the kind who would condone murder let alone commit it. Yet in a country like ours where the people are its voice, no sound can be heard. Why is that?

While we consider ourselves the champions of freedom and believe it is our duty to give what we have to the rest of the world (even at great personal cost), our own children, the children of America are denied the most fundamental of freedoms: the right to live. But then we must consider the argument put before us. Is it not a woman's right to decide whether or not she carries and gives birth to her baby? It is her own body and health after all. And so, if she doesn't want her baby to live that's okay, and it is her right. Respect her. After all the ‘fetus' is not truly human yet just a blob of tissue. Isn't this true?

Hence if a woman has a right to have her child killed when it is five weeks conceived then does she not have the right to kill him at three years? When does the baby gain ‘human-ship'? At the first beat of his heart, his first breath, his first step, his first day of school?

Perhaps you wouldn't say anything if Mrs. Brown across the street had an abortion but what if one day she decided her first grader was taking up too much time, was taxing her health and made too many messes.

It is a warm autumn afternoon and the school bus stops out front to let off little Jake. He runs up the walk, his back pack bouncing up and down, blond hair tousled a grin on his little face, happy to be home. Mrs. Brown watches him from the living room window. As he starts up the steps she turns and makes her way to the kitchen. From a drawer she takes a carving knife and slowly walks back to the front door. She doesn't really want to do this to her child but it is best for everyone. Jake pushes open the front door, eyes bright, searching for the one person who means the world to him. But it isn't a hug and kiss that wait for him today.

If children are human then they are human from the moment they are conceived. You cannot separate body and soul, the elements of human kind. There remains only one question. What are you going to do about Mrs. Brown?