A July 19 article in the Sun Journal reporting on the signing, by Gov. Janet Mills, of the recently passed expanded abortion rights legislation featured a photograph of smiling pro-choice supporters, obviously pleased with their victory.

Where are the tears?

It appears pro-choice advocates have but two expressions: either smiling in delight when abortion rights laws are passed or legitimized by the courts, or red-faced with anger when laws limiting abortion access are passed or validated by the courts.

Where are the tears?

Have we so successfully culled from the human psyche the innate sense of parenthood that we no longer shed tears for the millions of souls lost, the emotional and physical burdens borne by both the women who experience abortion procedures and the fathers who lose the opportunity to raise a child?

Have we successfully immunized mothers and fathers from the love, compassion, and excitement that comes from the birth of a child? Have the ambiguous yet broadly accepted version of women’s rights replaced the protection and preservation of life as the preeminent standard of civilization?

Where are the tears?

Where are the tears for a society that spends millions to advocate for animal shelters and the protection of endangered species, from the snail darter fish to the spotted owl, and the Right whale, yet blithely dismisses the destruction of its own species as simply a right to be celebrated?

Where are the tears?

I noticed that one of the individuals in the article’s photograph appears to be a member of the clergy. I wonder if they offer prayers for the souls of the lives destroyed by the procedure or the mother and her family who may be traumatized now or in the future by the loss of a child.

Where are the prayers?

Where are the tears?

I am sympathetic to those women who, for truly urgent medical issues, may need to terminate a pregnancy, but statistically they represent a very small percentage of the procedures. I do fear for a society that has come to believe that the human life growing inside a woman is merely a bunch of cells, a tumor or cancer to be excised at will without a thought or consequence.

Where are the tears for that society, that mother, that family, and especially that human soul rejected by all, and returned to God … life unlived.

Where are the tears?

David E. Peck, Lisbon