Love Them Now and Love Them Later

“So you kill them now or you kill them later. You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair. So, you kill them now or you kill them later.”
- State Rep. John Rogers, D-Birmingham.

That was the shocking and horrifying comment made on the floor of the House of Representatives of Alabama on Tuesday. The comment was made during a debate to severely limit abortion in that state.

It is difficult to even understand what Representative Rogers is claiming here. The next day he made additional comments to a pair of Alabama reporters and seems to believe that every child who is unwanted will grow up to be addicted to drugs, suffer starvation, and be executed by the State or die in prison.

This is a hopeless viewpoint. It is the view that no one can overcome their circumstances and rise above their humble beginnings.

He ignores every example of great people who did overcome harsh and cold upbringings to be great men and women who advanced noble causes in this land. People from all centuries have overcome a loveless childhood to bless America. Just to list two examples, both Oprah Winfrey and Benjamin Franklin overcame terrible childhood experiences to be incredible blessings to the world.

Representative Rogers ignores the power of the human spirit to overcome hardship. We do not have to either kill a child now or kill the child later. Those children have strength and beauty, and they can overcome the hardship of being unwanted and unloved.

More than that, Representative Rogers ignores the beauty of adoption. How many children were unwanted by their birth parents, but were received into the loving arms of adoptive parents? Hundreds of famous examples exist, but thousands if not millions of cases exist which we will never hear about or read about.

So many people have lived beautiful lives and loved deeply on this earth despite not being wanted or loved by their parents.  Killing them is not the best option.

Just because someone is “unwanted” and “unloved” by their birth parents does not mean they should be killed. We should love them, not kill them. 

We should love them now and love them later.