Column: Thoughts on abortion: How can we not grieve millions of wasted lives since Roe v. Wade?

Next to my bathroom sink, I have a “rogue’s gallery” of the children of friends and family.  Every time I glance at this collage, I remember happy times: recitals and birthday parties and family vacations. My niece trying to swing a baseball bat bigger than she is.

In one corner of the frame, there is an empty space. It represents a little face that never saw the light of day. His mother “chose” his life away. They told her it was the easiest way. A decade later, she is still grieving.

When I first discovered what had happened, I blamed myself. I had been living in another state, completely oblivious. Still, I couldn’t help but feel guilty. If I hadn’t been so far away, maybe I could have given her the kind of support she needed to choose differently. Maybe.

Would it have mattered? We’ll never know. She was young, and caught up in a high school romance. Ignoring the chastity lectures, like many teens, she never guessed how quickly the consequences would catch up with her. In the end she “handled” things herself. "Just a blob of tissue," they said. But every year, she’d see a child who was the same age as the one she lost . . . and wish she’d had the nerve to run when she had the chance. So do I.

Each year at this time, hundreds of thousands of people converge on Washington for the annual "March for Life." More than once I have considered getting on the Ann Arbor bus along with other local residents heading for Washington. But I've never actually done it. The truth is, this particular anniversary evokes feelings in me that I would just as soon process privately.

However, silence only perpetuates the problem. We have to talk about it. Respectfully, yet directly. To remain silent is simply not an option. Too much is at stake.

Fifty million people. That's a lot of wasted lives. If these children had been allowed to live, standing shoulder to shoulder, they would stretch from Los Angeles to Bangor, Maine . . . nearly three times. As a society, how can we ignore this? How can we not miss them, grieve for them? How can we pretend their destruction was someone else's legitimate personal choice, and that it has no affect on the rest of us? How many of these children were future doctors, physicists, artists, teachers... and mothers, eliminating future generations as well? How long can we deny the gift of life, and retain our own humanity?

"No man is an island," wrote John Donne, "entire of itself.
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . . .
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee."

Heidi Hess Saxton is a contributor to the AnnArbor.com "Parenting" channel. She is a graduate student at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, and a married adoptive mother of two children. You can reach her at heidi.hess.saxton@gmail.com.