Matt's Niece

As I’m writing this, it’s been nearly a week since we returned from our spring Justice Ride, and I’m still re-adjusting to normal life and catching up on sleep. Getting to spend this past week in Florida with our team was an amazing blessing in several ways. Not only was I able to have several awesome conversations with the students on campus, I was also able to mentor and develop deep relationships with our Justice Riders. Throughout the week, I had opportunities to spend time with nearly all our new Justice Riders; getting to know them, encouraging them, helping them, and making them laugh. It was an amazing experience getting to see them all grow and mature in those few short days.

Now, we’re back from Florida and starting to get back into the swing of normal outreaches. Just this morning, our team was at the Columbus Planned Parenthood sidewalk counseling. While we were there, a man named Matt stopped and dropped his sister off. As he was waiting outside talking with the escorts, my coworker, Sam, and I took turns calling out to him. After nearly an hour, he pulled into the parking lot of the pregnancy resource center next door to speak with us. He told us how he agreed with everything we were saying to him and that his sister already had three little boys and now was four months pregnant with her first girl. Several months before, she had lost a baby boy and was absolutely devastated.  She even had him cremated and keeps his urn on the mantel.

“It just doesn’t make any sense!” he said. “She still cries over the miscarried baby she had cremated. If this abortion is the way she treats her preborn daughter, she might as well throw her other baby’s ashes away!”

Matt raised a good point and pointed out a fatal inconsistency in the pro-choice narrative. Why is it okay to end one life, but the accidental loss of another is a tragedy? We live in a culture obsessed with equality, yet we consistently fail to grant equal treatment to the preborn. That is not okay.

Sadly, even though Matt tried as hard as he could to save his niece’s life, we think it was too late. His sister was on the third day of a three-day procedure. So, while we may never know the outcome of today, we know one thing: that precious baby girl did not die in vain. She was loved, and her life was fought for.