Survival of the despised

In the new novel Lila by Marilynne Robinson, the protagonist is reading chapter 16 of Ezekiel, which describes the birth of an unwanted baby: “On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.”

That passage continues with a declaration of God’s mercy: “When I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field. … I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine.”

Survival of the despised, not survival of the fittest. That’s a theme throughout the Bible. In Robinson’s novel, the Ezekiel passage reminds Lila of her own story, of how a woman named Doll rescued her and took her in: “She mothered her as if she were a child someone could want.” Lila was about to die, because it seemed that no one wanted her—but Doll did.

Who would want a child with disabilities? The National Council for Adoption points out that many do, and our lead story profiles the growing number of special needs ministries at churches. Who would take care of a child placed by a panicked mom in a church’s “baby box”? Our second story reports that Texas enacted the first U.S. safe-haven law in 1999, and now all 50 states have one, as does Korea.

Perhaps because of its Christian heritage, the United States has been—not always, but often—a haven for the despised. No other country has a welcome like the Statue of Liberty offers: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus wrote those words in 1883 as New Yorkers were raising money to construct the pedestal for the statue. Her poem, “The New Colossus,” arose in reaction to Jewish immigrants fleeing from anti-Semitic violence in Russia and arriving in America destitute but willing to work hard: The welcome mat was out. Others in future decades would react differently. Margaret Sanger, founder of what became Planned Parenthood, preferred to kill off what she called in 1919 “the growing stream of the unfit.”

Those two women reacted to the tired, poor, huddled masses in diametrically opposed ways. Today we are seeing a parallel divide. Some who had abortions or promoted the practice are repentant. Others adamantly defend what they did or espoused. Our third article shows how some articulate Americans who favored abortion rights in a theoretical way now proclaim that the bloody practice of abortion is right: They have moved from pro-choice to pro-abortion. Our fourth article shows how Taiwan now has more abortions than births, not by government decree but by individual choice. The consequences are severe, not only for babies but for an entire society.

We report on how Christian ministries are learning to invite the disabled into the church, and are providing safe havens for abandoned babies. We also look back to the 1930s and show how in that decade pro-abortionists planted the seeds that grew into the noxious plants of the 1970s. And we report on new pro-life state-level laws.