Naming 50 million aborted babies
Guest post by Charlotte Ostermann
50,000,000! When we reached that abortion toll, I woke up, in a way, to the horror of this ongoing holocaust. I wished then, before Internet, email, and computers in every home, there was a way to give names for all those babies. No way!
But the idea of 50millionnames.org was conceived.
A few years later, delivering my dead son Timothy, after a miscarriage, I held his teeny body and felt again the sadness for all the babies that had not even been named. I would hold him, by his name, in my heart forever, and would now and then do something special “for Timothy,” or “in his name.” But what about the unnamed children? The idea grew more insistent, but seemed as impossible as ever.
Fast forward to 2012 – a conversation among pro-life stalwarts about what in the world we should be doing “about abortion.” I’m so proud of those who are fighting this fight politically, but that’s not my way. I’ve prayed clinics closed and fasted for an end to abortion, and hope everyone who loves life will do the same.
But how can we create some sort of positive, beautiful, simple way to call attention to “the child” and not just to “abortion”? I remembered the idea of naming every precious one of those children, and put it out for discussion.
Now, we do have the means, the technology, the communication channels! Now, this is possible! Testing the idea with various people, I found myself reminding others that the babies would probably want us to pray for their relatives and abortionists. It’s hard to pray for an abstract, unknown person, but with a name God can link us to real, particular people! This naming is going to bring blessing and healing. We realized, as we planned the collection of names, that much, much more was happening here.
We began to see each child as a channel of God’s immense grace into the world. If he was meant to bless his family, but his life was brutally ended, was that the end of the story? No! Violence is not the end of the story! Not if we carry him in our hearts as a unique, specific, named person and pray for that grace to flow to all who are connected to him and live in the world today deeply wounded by his absence.
Some of those are the abortionists themselves. Surely God’s instructions to “pray for those who curse you” mean that we should pray for those who are intimately connected to each, specific child because of their own violence against him. So, we designed 50MillionNames.org to encourage these prayers for the unrepeatable, actual children to whom we give names. And then, it got even better!
In the name of each child, we had a kind of “excuse” to do something concrete, something others would notice and that would call attention to the humanity of unborn children without any argument or anger. “In honor of a child I named at 50MillionNames.org, I offer this donation…. I want to volunteer for two hours…. I am planting this tree…. I am writing this letter…. I have designed this work of art…. I wrote this poem….” Do you see? The gesture we offer for each child we name becomes another blessing!
On the night we launched the website, I cleaned up after the launch party, exhausted and happy. Someone asked if all that work I had done was worth it for the number of names we collected that night. I had to think about it for a moment. It had been a huge investment on a “per child” basis! And then I knew my answer: It was worth all that, and more, for just one child!
Please join us as we “Honor the Babies – Give them Names” at 50MillionNames.org.
Charlotte is the author of Souls at Rest: An Exploration of the Eucharistic Sabbath, and Souls at Work: An Invitation to Freedom. Her feature articles and poems have been published in Envoy, Canticle, Hereditas, Thessauri Ecclesiae, Mater et Magistra, St. Austin Review, and Gilbert magazines. Charlotte lives with her husband, Russ, and five of their eight children on a ‘farm wannabe’ north of Lawrence, Kansas. Charlotte has spoken for home educators, women’s retreats, moms groups, C.S. Lewis Conferences, and more. See CharlotteOstermann.com for more information.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I never expected to find a by-line mentioning Gilbert Magazine here on Jill’s blog!
Gilbert is a publication of the American Chesterton Society, and perhaps the finest magazine in the world. http://www.chesterton.org
Naming the children is a wonderful idea. I am so happy to see this idea in the light of GK Chesterton and his wife Frances. They loved children, although they were sadly unable to conceive any of their own. So they just adopted the whole neighborhood!
We have an opportunity to show the same generosity of spirit to those unknown and unnamed children in our own towns who were never allowed to breathe, or play, or hug a grandparent. We can name them and know them.
I will name a little girl “Leslie.”
Very powerful. Can’t wait to name some children (such a great privilege) and do something in their honor. They certainly deserve our effort and advocacy. Thank you.
On this note I will share a sweet story….well at least the end of it. A girl a few suburbs over named Jessica Coleman gave birth to a son stabbed him with scissors to make him stop crying. He died and she went to eat dinner. The next day 15 year old Coleman and her older boyfriend put the baby in a duffel bag weighted down with rocks. A diver found the baby and a male stranger adopted the boy and obtained permission to bury him as his own son. Coleman turned herself in at age 22 due to her guilt. She served 6 years in prison.
Sorry…dont type before coffee…a giirl named Jessica Coleman and Jessica threw the remains in a quarry. I believe the stranger named him baby boy Hope. Thank God for good hearted people left in this world.
Great idea…except that no one moderates the names, and they are then immediately live-tweeted.
So far, people have “named” babies: “Unwanted”, “This little c*** deserved it”, “I was dead before it was cool”, “Hitler 2.0”, “Your last album was an abortion”, “Failed presidential candidate”, “Osama Bin Laden”, “Durex Mishap”…and so on. Someone added the American Airlines hashtag and a bomb threat, which led to the 50MillionNames website being accused.
Right now, the site is down for “maintenance”, which I think might be due to the fact that of the 2000 names given so far, I’d reckon that less than a hundred were genuine.
So basically, all we’ve done here is confirm that people on the internet are sick.
The only way this could ever work would be if someone was there to moderate every single name. Perhaps, the makers of the site should ask for some volunteers. I’m sure a lot of pro-life people, myself included, would be happy to give up some of their time for this.
xxx
It’s unfortunate that people can’t be decent human beings anymore and allow others to grieve the deceased in their own way.
Including LisaC, whose tasteless comment was just deleted.
Kel im glad I missed it. That woman is so pro abortion she cant see straight.
Sorry to hear of people misusing that site. Charlotte is a good and wonderful woman – full of heart and insight. I am sure she will move the site to something more secure, and the idea of monitoring the names is a very good one.
Let’s hope that the haters learn to love and there is much healing awaiting those who need it.
Indeed pro aborts are rabid. They are so blind and hate filled.
Standing in front of the clinics is the worst. One day we were out with graphic signs as a carload of teens slowed down. They hit the brakes and all 5 of them ( boys and girls ) yelled out “WE LOVE ABORTION”!!! They began laughing and drove away.
Thanks to all for the positive comments! Just want to let you know we stopped the crazies very quickly, and won’t let them keep us from naming these babies. We know for sure that all names on the site are from real, well-meaning people who are praying for the children’s relatives and abortionists. The breach just made us stronger and actually helped get the word out further! I hope you’ll be blessed as you name babies, and as you offer concrete gestures to honor them. Thanks, Jill, for giving me this chance to let your readers know about the project!
Site isn’t working. I don’t know if anyone here could do anything about that, but could you at least message the administrator of the site or something? I am what I call a “post abortive sibling “, and I was depressed for months because of it. I wanted to name my sister to carry on her memory, like I promised to do, and now I can’t. :'(