How can we expect respect for life?

How can we expect respect for life?

My heart breaks for every parent who lost a child at Sandy Hill Elementary School. Now the names are coming out in the news, the photos, the stories. Do you feel the grip on your heart too? Unexplained loss, no reason, no way to understand — just an empty hole. How can the death of someone else’s child hurt so much? Could there be anything worse?

What if the killer was a doctor, someone who has vowed to help people? Would that be worse, harder to understand? What if the killer was that child’s own mother, considered completely sane, and her weapon was her right to choose? Does that break your heart? Now you may understand how those who pray and work to end abortion feel when they consider the over 3,000 children lost to abortion every day. These children have no names, no photos. Maybe an ultrasound, that is all. No chance for a story.

How can we end the shootings, you ask? Maybe the question should be: How can we live in a country where the right to own a semiautomatic weapon is more important the right to be born? How can we expect anyone to respect life, when our laws do not? When our mothers do not?

Cindy Jerger

Hampshire