HaloScan.com - Comments

Christina Dunnigan of Real Choice writes:

I think of the people I've come to know, working in the mental retardation field. And I reflect that the fact that they've been institutionalized is more society's loss than it is their own loss. To never have known Chris, Jeff, Tony, Myron, Geneva, Sandra, Elaine, or Sharon is a greater loss to those who never knew them than it is to Chris, Jeff, Tony, Myron, Geneva, Sandra, Elaine, or Sharon.

The young person who refuses to listen to Mozart because he's old-people music loses far more than Mozart loses for having not been listened to.

Snuffing the likes of Chris, Jeff, Tony, Myron, Geneva, Sandra, Elaine, or Sharon in-utero on the grounds that they have nothing to offer and nothing to live for doesn't just deprive the child of his or her life. It deprives society of the child. Just as snuffing Mozart would have deprived the world.

Mozart was mentally ill, a drug addict, a sad little man who lived a tragic life. That didn't mean he had nothing to say worth hearing. Nobody can, from the outside, pick their own criteria for whose voice should be silenced and whose should be heard.

Say Amen!

If we are judged by how we treat the least among us, then let us throw ourselves upon the feet of the Lord and beg for mercy. The eclipsed voices of our handicapped brothers and sisters, murdered in the womb, testify against us. How many more will we exterminate? How many more lives will we deny our society, our world?

How much longer can we expect to play God?