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Sunday, February 2, 2014

So Many Empty Chairs

Editor’s note. This delightful story appeared in the January issue of National Right to Life News which can be read in its entirety online  using this link.  Be sure to pass this along to all your pro-life family and friends.


 by Joleigh Little
Region Coordinator and Teens for Life Director, Wisconsin Right to Life

Numbers.
 
So not my thing.

I prefer letters that make words which become sentences. In fact, I love them. And while abortion can be explained in words, opposed in words and, eventually, eradicated with words, I don’t think it can be adequately understood without the numbers.

Knowing this, I tried to wrap my tiny fourteen year old brain around the numbers. It was 1985. I’d just marked the 12th anniversary of Roe v. Wade – my first as a full-fledged right-to-life advocate.

Our cold Wisconsin winter morphed into spring and one rainy Saturday when I was home alone I decided to try to not only understand the vastness of the abortion tragedy, but to help explain it to others.

I knew that abortion killed 1.5 million children a year (thankfully considerably lower now). I figured I would pull out the old stack of catalogs on our living room shelf and cut out the faces of the kids in the children’s clothing section. Logic dictated that after a good, hard day’s work I would be well on my way. My goal was a display banner that would show the tragedy of abortion.

A simple banner with 1.5 million faces on it. (I laugh now and understand the frustration my math teachers felt all those years.)

So I got out my scissors, stacked up three or four massive catalogs alongside my paper, glue and paintbrush, and I went at it. I cut carefully around tiny faces. I left entire legions of child models headless. I cut for hours, amassing what I was certain was a large dent in my project.

Once all of the catalogs were depleted, I decided to tally them up. I knew I’d probably have to borrow a few more catalogs to get the job done, but I was pretty sure I was well on my way. I counted the faces.

continue reading at http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org

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