This is sanctity of life week and as we enter into the anniversary month of 35 years of Roe v. Wade I thought it more than appropriate to finally post my Horton Hears A Who post. And I know you are asking what those two things have in common, eh? Quite a lot, actually!I found myself watching the movie with my kids recently and enjoying how much it followed the book. And it struck me how very important the message in that movie was. How many times have I read this book?? Why didn't I grasp it before? I realized how profound Horton is. Horton tries to get across to his neighbors that "A person's a person no matter how small!" but they don't believe there are even any persons on his speck of dust. Yet Horton risks his life and his reputation to make sure he does everything he can to save those persons that he knows exist. Now- these persons he wants to save are so little that no one else can see them and no one else can hear them, yet Horton KNOWS that their lives have value and meaning even though they are so small. Why? because Horton is pro-life! (Suck in a big gasp of air here) yes- he's PRO-LIFE (yes, I do know that Seuss said he did not want this story to be portrayed in that light)!
With the throwing around of words and making the issue of abortion being a woman's choice, we have mostly lost site of what it is truly about. It's about destroying a person. The bible says thou shall not kill. Our law says you must be punished, even with the death penalty, for committing murder, but by dehumanizing a person and giving them the status of fetus we have reduced the killing of people to "it's a woman's choice".
I know- some of you may be gasping at my words. You have bought the line about it being a woman's choice and you are pro-woman, pro-choice and you can't see what I'm really saying. All you can hear is that I believe in taking away a woman's right to choose. That's not what this is about. I am saying to you this: A person is a person, no matter how small. The sixth week of gestation (maybe only two weeks after most woman find themselves pregnant) the developing person has their heart and brain activity. By the end of the 12th week the little person is scientifically called a fetus. Fetus is Latin for offspring, by the way. And your little offspring is a person. That group of cells doesn't develop into a frog, dog or cow. What else is an abortion doing if not murdering a person?
Let's think about Horton and how hard he wanted to save the persons he knew existed even though they were so small he couldn't see them. It is no different today... for the world we live in doesn't see the tiniest persons of all, either. They are hidden in the wombs of women. They are tossed in the trash and pretended that they never existed. If only we could all believe like Horton does...because a person's a person, no matter how small.
