The humanity of the unborn

I just listened to a very moving documentary on CBC radio.

It was about a former Klu Klux member named Charles Marcus Edwards, who together with James Ford Seale, were involved in the abductions and killings of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, two young African Americans in Mississippi in 1964.

The brother of one of the victims, Thomas Moore, along with CBC reporter David Ridgen, had tracked down Edwards. Moore and Edwards had met previously in 2006 when Edwards denied any involvement in the killings. That visit, and Edwards subsequent testifying against his partner Seale, lands Seale in prison where he died in 2011.

In 2011 when Edwards is again visited by Moore and Ridgen, the visit is very different. This time Edwards and Moore speak openly about what happened. This time Edwards apologizes to Moore, and even invites him to his Baptist church on Sunday, where he is a deacon.

The two men sit on a swing with the bees buzzing on a stinking hot Mississippi day and talk about the past.

Rigden tells us he was literally shaking, at what he witnessed. He is deeply moved by the scene unfolding before him. Edwards now knows that what he did those many years ago, was wrong and he says so.

It is difficult not to compare this story to our Canada now, and our own abortion culture.

There was a lot of hatred and unspeakable atrocities against African Americans back in those days. Yet hatred and crimes against them, is mostly a thing of the past. And we all are--and rightly so--aghast if we hear of any crime that involves any kind of racial violence. We can't, and don't, tolerate it anymore.

There are some who aren't happy with the comparison of abortion to the slavery or crimes against African Americans. It doesn't really matter if they are happy or not; the similarities are there.

In both cases, human beings are treated with hatred because of who they are: the colour of their skin; their pre-born status; their presumed property status; their unwantedness. Yet both are human. Both have value. Both are worthy of love and respect. Both are precious.

It will change though. The day will come when we will meet the news of the killing of pre-born children with the same horror that we now feel when we listen to documentaries like the one above.

I am looking forward to the day when a CBC reporter witnesses the meeting of a famous abortion doctor and the women whose child he has aborted.

When he sits down with her on a white swing on his front porch and tells her how sorry he is. When he tells her he wished he had really helped her through her unplanned pregnancy. When he tells her that he now knows he was wrong and begs her for her forgiveness. When he tells her he was wrong for what he did to her. When he apologizes for all the other women he didn't help either. It will be a moment worth watching.

We will watch the reporter as he stands transfixed at the scene unfolding in front of him. How he can't help but literally shake, knowing that history is being made.

It will be a day when the hatred of the most unwanted of the unwanted, will end. It may also take 47 years. That's okay. We can wait.