I will never, ever forget the story of a young black girl I met at an abortion clinic in Los Angeles one Saturday morning. I was protesting near the clinic when I saw the young lady approach the front door. I talked to her, and tried to encourage her to put her baby up for adoption. She said it was too late to make that decision. The young lady then told me her story. She said she had gone into the clinic that Thursday. The doctor had injected something into her womb. For three days the baby KICKED AND GASPED FOR LIFE. On the third day, the baby died. She told me that when the baby expired, it was devastating to her. She also told me she would never ever be able to overcome the experience.
I asked the girl why she chose to go through the process. She said she was encouraged to do this by her mother and boyfriend. That employees in the clinic told her she wouldn’t feel anything. They said that she was carrying a fetus and NOT A BABY and that she could not afford to take care of a baby at her age. I asked how old she was. She replied that she was thirteen!

This story comes from an essay on abortion and black men by Jesse Lee Peterson. (Thanks to King of Fools for the link to this essay.) I am reminded that we don’t live in George W. Bush’s “culture of life,” but rather we live in a culture of death. We de-humanize those who are inconvenient and helpless, and then we try to live with what we have done.
Terri Schiavo will become a victim of this culture of death next week unless something happens to stop those who are determined to starve her to death. She, too, has been de-humanized, called a vegetable, by those to whom she is an inconvenience and a liability. According to the website, Terri’s Fight,

Terri is purposefully interactive, alert, curious, lovely young woman who lives with a very serious disability. She lives free of any life support machines and receives nutrition through a tube that is connected only at meal times.

What kind of culture allows unborn babies and disabled adults to be murdered, and not only murdered but put to death in a torturous, slow, and painful way? A culture that worships death, of course. We may talk about progress, and enlightenment, and compassion for the weak all we want to, but if this death happens to Terri Schiavo and as long as thirteen year old girls are encouraged by lies to kill their own children, we are no more progressive or enlightened or compassionate than the Islamic terrorists we fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. May God have mercy on us all.