Their eyes had failed them.
Or they had failed their eyes…
~The Glass Menagerie

What have we done? That was the question that overwhelmed me as I was praying this morning—brought me to tears. What have we done? What kind of people have we evolved to be?

Perhaps you have heard it on the news. A nationally recognized health services organization has been recorded while talking openly about the harvesting and distribution of fetal tissue. When I heard about it from one of our household members I thought it was another right wing conspiracy theory, an urban legend that would soon appear at Snopes dot com.

It isn’t. It won’t. It is true.

$candal

But what is the scandal? That the organization might be exchanging the tissue for money.

The scandal is not that a group—numerous groups—are crushing unborn, living human beings, carefully protecting and preserving the pieces of their bodies that are wanted.  It is not that those same human beings are dismembered and pieces of them distributed; the remaining parts disposed of. The scandal is that body parts are sold…for money. As though the act of taking apart unborn infants would be acceptable were it not for the profit motive.

Do we hear ourselves? How sensible it all seems? Medical research needs what’s left of discarded human beings. Think of the good. Waste not the bodies of the unwanted. The end justifies the means.

Not About Laws

Those of us who weep will be written off. We will be accused of wanting to pass laws; to impose our morality on others.

No. Not even close.

It’s too late for that. It has always been too late. Laws do not change hearts. We who weep are grieving for what we have become as a people. How easily we made the turn from reverence for the life of the innocent to expediency. We have established a higher value—a new god to which we will sacrifice our children. That is why we weep.

We weep because our eyes have failed us. Worse. We have failed our eyes. We have refused to follow the example of Judas, following, instead the example of the powerful:

Judas … regretted what he had done and returned the thirty silver coins … saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us …”