FINDING WORDS FOR THE EMPTY SPACES<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/b>by\u00a0Rick Lewers when an Anglican\u00a0Minister in the ACT. (Rick is now Bishop of the\u00a0Diocese of Armidale, Australia)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 10:15am and the phone rings.\u00a0 A voice speaks filled with pain.\u00a0 A hope has been destroyed, plans have screeched to a halt and the newly-painted bedroom will never be seen by the eyes of the one for whom it was painted.<\/p>\n
The voice stammers and cracks, a long silence, and sobbing is heard.<\/p>\n
\u2018Could you bury our baby?\u2019<\/p>\n
It\u2019s another day in the life of the church minister.\u00a0 Like a surgeon life can so quickly transplant another\u2019s grief into your own life.\u00a0 From the day of conception for this couple they rejoiced in the child forming in the womb. This would be their child.\u00a0 But this child didn\u2019t make it into the world. So was it a child at all?<\/p>\n
Should I comfort them with the views of this age: \u2018Well, it really wasn\u2019t a viable human being anyway\u2026\u2019?<\/p>\n
What depths of depravity could one sink to in even suggesting such a thing? A child has been lost. Their child has been lost.\u00a0 But it could so easily have been me or you saying those empty words, \u2018I lost my child\u2019. No caring person would for a moment suggest that it was anything but my child. Yesterday\u2019s anger, in light of this call, is now surpassed. In the same moment I grieve with this family I recall yesterday\u2019s news.\u00a0 I am told, not asked, that money contributed by me by way of taxes has been granted to support the quiet termination of other children\u2019s lives.\u00a0 That is of course if you call them children.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s strange how you can have two different views separated only by the distance between two hospitals.\u00a0 What in one room we see as grieving parents, we see in another room as the abortion of a \u2018non-viable\u2019 pregnancy.\u00a0 What we see in one room as a loss of enormous magnitude others declare as a relief, an escape. The sorrow I see in one room and the scars left behind by a stillbirth are contrasted with a government that grants money to support the stillbirths of many children.<\/p>\n
Should I be angry that they use my money? How should I respond to the use of my money to support that which is immoral? What a confused world I live in.\u00a0 Months ago the Government banned circuses entering the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) because they were deemed to be cruel to the animals.\u00a0 A choice to spend my money on a ticket to the circus was taken from me.\u00a0 Now that same Government grants money, my money, to the destruction of human life.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pity we are not all elephants; we might have more chance of surviving.\u00a0 Along with the circuses perhaps we should ban the Government from entering the ACT.<\/p>\n
Could the Government please explain to this grieving family and to me why they are using our money to terminate children like the one this family lost? Taught to honour and respect leadership, to obey those in authority doesn\u2019t give the people of Australia or the ACT permission to let those in authority betray the people they are supposed to serve.<\/p>\n
A government not held to account is a dangerous government.\u00a0 Honour, respect and obedience are something won but in recent times those who govern seem to be running at a loss. They wonder why. Why don\u2019t we Canberrans tell them?<\/p>\n
See also, Killing Baby Girls: Belief and its Consequences<\/a> and in Tasmania at this time, Abortion Law for Tasmania? <\/a> and\u00a0 UPDATE: Tasmania\u2019s Proposed Abortion Law Changes<\/a>.\u00a0 Also,\u00a0Abortion Tas: Hospital Chaplain’s perspective<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FINDING WORDS FOR THE EMPTY SPACES \u00a0by\u00a0Rick Lewers when an Anglican\u00a0Minister in the ACT. (Rick is now Bishop of the\u00a0Diocese of Armidale, Australia) It\u2019s 10:15am and the phone rings.\u00a0 A voice speaks filled with pain.\u00a0 A hope has been destroyed, … Continue reading