The Massacre of Miracles

She was five weeks old.  I was an innocent bystander watching as they unloaded the car.  Her grandpa lifted her slowly out of the car seat with his strong hands, browned by many years of work and play in the sun.  Then he was turning and slowly lowering her again.  Suddenly she was in my arms.  I almost held my breath, certain that any wrong movement and this tender, sleeping life would disintegrate. 

Her mom, who I have vague recollections of meeting, chatted away about what a great baby she was, seemingly unaware that I was holding a miracle.  This was not a toy doll, this was not a toddler chattering away.  This was a baby, and she was sleeping in my arms.  Her mom left me to play with her son at the cars and trains station with a casual - if you get tired, just lay her in the stroller. 

I mustered all my instincts and slowly rocked and bobbed in a rhythmic dance that women have participated since Cain was born to Eve.  A few times she slowly lifted an eyelid, being summoned from slumber by a child's crashing block towers, or other incidents of mayhem happening at playgroup.  I tried to adjust the crook of my elbow to the magic angle - the one that wouldn't leave her with a tiny neck ache upon waking.

There it was, life, lying asleep in my arms.  I wonder how often people who cheer on abortion hold babies.  I wonder if they knew anything about the little sleepers they dismiss as accidents, if they's still cheer on a woman's right to choose the death penalty? 

How many authors and artists and economists will never ever be given the chance to transfix the world?  Would we have cures for diseases that plague us if we had spared a future doctor?    Were this a war punctuated by gunfire and filmed by news cameras reporting 44million casualties in one year, something would be done.  The bloodshed would not be allowed to continue. 

But in the back rooms of clinics, you hear no gunfire.  There are no news anchors counting the climbing death toll on the 7 o'clock news with pictures of bereaved families.  Instead, the scratchy sound of pens signing grants to fund the purchase of scalpels for Planned Parenthood and bumpers slathered with "Proud Pro-Choice" and "I can make my own choice" barely make an impression.  Would it be as inconspicuous if it said "Proud supporter of Darfur genocide"?   

A person's a person, no matter how small.  

Little Miss Sunshine