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Caylee Calls us to the Crossroads

Ron Coody - 7/13/2011

I've read a little bit in recent days about the case of the death of Caylee Anthony. It's tragic, unbelievably tragic. The court acquitted her mother of murder. What's so unbelievably frustrating and unjust in the matter is that a little girl died and was tossed out. The mother doesn't seem to care. Where is the desperate attempt to locate the person who put duct tape on Caylee's mouth and let her to decay in the woods? Where is the heart-wrenching sense of loss that a normal mother would feel at losing her child? All the mother seems to care about is having gotten off free.

Maybe this is a chance for public attitudes to change. Perhaps something good will come out of this. Something deeply inside of us is enraged at the thought of a mother who could fail to report a missing child. Something is deeply angered at the massive assault on justice that an innocent little girl could be treated as a piece of trash and the person who should love her the most--her mother--would seem so callous about it.

We grasp for answers to such a startling display of human depravity. We wonder how a person who has any remnant of human kindness and compassion left inside could seemingly turn off the parental instinct to protect their own precious helpless and weak daughter. We sense that something has gone wrong that such a thing could happen.

The frustration, the just anger, and the longing to see the weak protected can help us remember a certain group in society, the countless precious boys and girls aborted each year. Raising the subject of abortion takes our consciences painfully close to a question that looms like a dark specter. Is abortion the same as murder? What's the difference between the unborn baby and the born baby? The unborn depends entirely on the secure environment of its mother's body, while linked to mom through the umbilical cord. The born child depends on the secure environment of someone, usually the mother who can nurse the child. Both would die in a couple of days without adult assistance. The unborn, the born, the children.

I can't debate the question of abortion in this short space. But I can make a very deliberate suggestion. If the thought of a beautiful two-year-old child, neglected by its parents, mysteriously duct-taped and tossed out in the forest to decay makes you squeamish, or angry, or desperate to see justice, then try this. Do all in your power to protect the weak, speak up for those without a voice, defend every child conceived in this world. If a mother becomes pregnant and does not want to raise the child, she should offer it for adoption. Thousands of worthy childless American couples want to adopt, but often find themselves forced make expensive and sometimes fruitless trips to other countries in an attempt to adopt their own child. Give children life.

If Casey is guilty, justice will eventually be served, for what a person sows they will reap. And from a position of faith, one can add that where sin abounds, grace abounds more. This highly publicized case has brought the national conscience to a crossroad. We must choose, how valuable is human life? Whether a human child is four months old in the womb, or two years old after birth, or ten years old in school, each is an individual whose life we should do all we can as adults to protect. At the crossroads we stand, the path of respecting and preserving life is the just path, the right path...may God give us strength to choose well.