Earlier this month, I had the chance to pray with others before a gravesite at Fargo’s Holy Cross Cemetery North that holds the bodies of 100 North Dakotans.
Though tiny, they speak loudly of an atrocity most of us face reluctantly. The little ones laid within were lost through abortion.
My purpose isn’t to judge mothers in difficult situations; rather, I want to illuminate the lives of these children and what they might potentially teach us.
The remembrance ceremony Sept. 9 was the fifth annual of a national effort to recognize the value of children whose lives ended by abortion. The Monument to the Unborn, however, has been here since 1985, when our local pro-life community erected it as part of a trend to remember those little ones who’ve quietly, tragically slipped away, and provide a place for the bereaved to grieve.
On Oct. 2, 1988, 100 small bodies were laid to rest there. Who were these children? And where did they come from?
A brochure shared at the event explained they’d all died by abortion at the Fargo Women’s Health Organization, and, with hundreds of others, were discovered in a dumpster outside the Vital Medical Laboratory in Northbrook, Illinois.
Pro-life activist Dr. Monica Miller initiated the effort to return them to the cities where they’d been aborted, as detailed in her book, “Abandoned.” The babies identified as being from North Dakota were flown back home in a white casket.
Our nation hosts 51 such gravesites; North Dakota has three. Along with the Fargo site, 150 babies are buried in Jamestown, and 10 in Grand Forks.
At the Fargo memorial, Rev. Jayson Miller of Sts. Anne and Joachim Church sprinkled the grave with holy water. Songs were sung, and Scripture passages read, including Lamentations 3:22: “The favors of the Lord are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent; they are renewed each morning, so great is his faithfulness.”
In “Abandoned,” Miller wrote, “The Christian religion recognizes burial of the dead as the last of seven corporeal works of mercy. Burial of the dead is a sign that human beings are in relation to one another, tied together by more than just nominal relationships.”
She added, “Authentic human living requires a recognition that human beings are interrelated on a very personal level.” Of the children buried, she wrote, “We should give them the dignity in death they didn’t have in life.”
The gravesite can be visited by anyone suffering from the loss of an aborted child or wishing to honor them. Find other sites at www.abortionmemorials.com.
The 2017 40 Days for Life North Dakota campaign to pray for the end of abortion began September 27 and will end November 5.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Sept. 30, 2017.]
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