Thoughts for today:

Heroes have been back in style for a while now. They plunge into danger, into the unknown and they save lives. Most of them – the heroes we celebrate – wear uniforms and some wave to us from parade routes.

But not all. Some heroes weather danger more quietly. But they are heroes still.

In our town, last year, a young woman, about to enter her senior year of high school found herself to be pregnant. She had the father of the baby married, and soon after they discovered that she was carrying twins.

Conjoined twins, and seriously so. Their condition is known as “dicephalus,” which means that they are joined at the trunk, have two legs, have many separate organs, but share a heart. Separation is, and always will be, impossible.

So there you have it. A high school girl carrying severely disabled babies who might well not survive long after birth, and who, if they did survive would face daunting challenges.

Abortion, a legal option, was never an option for April and Rocky, the parents, nor for any of their family members. This daughter of a United Methodist pastor, unbelievably young, chose a truly brave path, in a time and culture in which so many abortions are justified by far less “serious” reasons – as if you could ever have a good, serious reason to take a child’s life. But that’s the way we think these days, isn’t it?

The babies, Nicole and Rebecca Marie were born on January 20. Their prognosis is extremely uncertain, but one can marvel at the front-page coverage of the event in our local newspaper, in which the couple’s family and friends are gathered around the little family, thanking God for a “miracle.”

These people are heroes, not only for the lives of their own children that they have nurtured and treasured in a society that proclaims they would be better off being killed in the womb, but for the possible, unknown lives they might be saving through their witness.

Who knows what young woman has read about April, and gained the courage to choose life for her own baby?

Who knows how many parents, distressed about their daughter’s pregnancy, and perhaps even intent on getting her to the abortionist before it’s too late, read about this family that has simply surrounded a young couple and their children with love and support and thought – “They can do it under such difficult circumstances. We can do this too. We can manage.”

But where ever you have heroes, you also have villains. And the villains for today are across the country, in a Pittsburgh abortion clinic where clients are encouraged, if they so wish, to write farewell letters to the babies they have consented to abort.

The letters, written on pink and red hearts, line the hallway of the clinic.

An act of kindness, you say? Well, think again. What kindness, what kind of moral sense, informs an environment in which people make money for killing other people, followed by public apologies and love notes by those who should be protecting the dead for consenting to their killing?

Can you say “cognitive dissonance?” Better yet, can you say “insane?”

I’m all for being absolutely clear at all times about the humanity of the unborn, and I suppose this is “better,” in some weird universe than pretending that what’s happening is something other than what it is.
It’s a danger sign, really, when you think about it. It’s a sign that we are entering Dostoevskys “everything is permissible” world. It’s bad enough that we pretend that abortion doesn’t kill a baby. Now that we acknowledge the baby, and still kill it, with love notes from mom, what in the world is left to be immoral? Anything?

Heroes, anywhere you look, are people who discern the value of another life and do all they can to save that live, no matter what the price. Villains are those who either don’t acknowledge that life, or do so in words, and then not only do nothing to save it, but actively destroy it, bag it up for the garbage, pick up their paycheck and go home.

Take your pick. Choose your side. I’ll take the heroes. And you?