The following is an updated version of a collumn that I published last year. It is a tribute to my little sister Mary Elizabeth, who would have turned nine next Wednesday.
Hail Mary …
I am the oldest of nine kids: three boys and six girls. If you were to look at any McMorris family photo album, however, you would notice that there are only eight children standing beside my mother and father.
Full of grace …
You will not find my little sister Mary Elizabeth sitting on my father’s knee or learning to take her first steps. There is only one photograph of my baby sister; it shows a beautiful eight pound baby girl in a peaceful sleep. That picture was taken on the 5th of December 1998 when my family was blessed with our sixth child.
The Lord is with thee …
This child, however, was not meant for this Earth. God had other plans for my little sister. Mary Elizabeth, you see, is more than just my mother’s child, my father’s daughter or my younger sister. She is a child of God, who He called from the earth before she had the chance to bless it with her first breath. And this is why Dec. 5 marks my little sister’s date of birth, as well as the anniversary of her death.
“Sudden infant death,” the doctors in the delivery room solemnly explained. “She was a completely healthy and normal infant — there is no medical explanation for this sort of tragedy,” the coroner tried to explain to us. In my anger, I turned my back on God and the world around me. I descended into anti-theism; this was, after all, the easiest and most simple path for an angry 12-year-old to channel his grief.
The words of the hospital staff rung loud and clear through my head — it was God’s fault that I could never hold my baby sister or tell her how much I loved her.
Blessed art thou …
“Your sister died without sin,” Father Palmer said at the funeral service. “A saint,” Father Michael told me over dinner several weeks later. “God called her to his kingdom because she was too good for this Earth,” the priest explained.
The clouds of anger and rage that had consumed my immature mind began to part; there was light in my world again. The words of the hospital staff finally became clear to me. “There is no medical explanation” for such a profound miracle. There was nothing sudden about Mary Elizabeth’s death; it was all part of the gift that the Divine had given my family.
Amongst women …
“I will not lie in your bed,” she told him. Saint Margaret was martyred shortly thereafter — beheaded for her refusal to lie with a Roman prefect. She is now celebrated as the patron saint of pregnant women and childbirth. Saint Margaret, however, has not been able to protect all of God’s children. In fact, some of these infants have shared her fate in the name of an invented Constitutional “right.”
And blessed is the fruit …
“Why are you against reproductive rights?” they ask me. Apparently, liberals feel that partial birth abortion is a Constitutional right. Delivery room doctors, they contest, should have the ability to stab a baby in the back of the head and suck the infant’s brain out.
Of thy womb Jesus …
“You must be exaggerating, there is no way such a cruel and barbaric process could exist,” they say. Partial birth abortion, however, had been practiced in the U.S. for decades; thousands of perfectly normal and healthy babies have been intentionally terminated in this manner.
Holy Mary …
“It is my body,” they will scream. But that catchphrase is not a very convincing argument against protecting babies as healthy as my little sister; murder in the name of convenience, can never be excused. Allowing doctors or expectant woman to terminate the child whenever they find it appropriate represents the most sudden of infant deaths.
Mother of God …
“Abortion should be safe, legal and rare,” a philandering former governor of Arkansas told the United States voters. Right around the time of Mary Elizabeth’s death, however, this same man vetoed a bill that would have made the practice of partial birth abortion illegal. The value of life was thrown out the window.
Pray for us sinners …
“By abortion the Mother does not learn to love, but kills her own child- to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women to the same trouble. So abortion leads to more abortion,” Mother Teresa said. Rarity, you see, is not enough for our society, abolishing such a hateful practice is the only path.
Now …
Earlier this month, abortion advocates in Virginia turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s ban on partial birth. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld a federal ban of partial birth abortion last year, reversing a previous ruling — made while Sandra Day O’Connor sat on the bench — which struck down the ban. Although the majority of Americans believe that sticking a fork in a baby’s head and sucking his or her brain out is morally indefensible, these abortion zealots will stop at nothing to justify infanticide. Hopefully, the courts will continue to protect the unborn from such a barbaric end.
And at the hour of our death …
“I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born,” a Hollywood actor turned statesman once explained. Man was intended to preserve life, not advance death.
Amen.
Bill McMorris is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at bmcmorris@cornellsun.com [1]. Heartless, Not Stupid appears alternate Wednesdays.
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[1] mailto:bmcmorris@cornellsun.com