I live in the woods, and I have generous cats. They frequently show their appreciation for all the great amenities I provide them by presenting me with gifts on the welcome mat. Because this behavior is high praise from a feline, I do my best to express pride and gratitude for their hunting prowess and dispose of the prey when they aren’t looking. Sometimes our little predators bring live game to the porch or even through the entry. I once opened the door for my black cat, Magic Tom, while talking on the phone, totally unaware of what he was bringing in with him. Chasing a mouse around the living room is entertaining, but not something I want to do very often. Another time he tried to bring in a live chipmunk and was traumatized when I slammed the door in his face at the last moment. Thankfully they do not often bring me birds. The capture of a bird makes me sad, but cats will be cats. And I’ve never been more impressed than the time they delivered an adult squirrel. My sweet Jack Russell terrier, part of the family for 19 years before she passed, would chase the squirrels with joy and abandon in her younger days, but she never caught one to my knowledge. There are just too many trees providing a quick escape route.
Now, I have to say that I do not like squirrels very much, for so many reasons. There are way too many of them surrounding my woodland home. They have invaded the space above our barn ceiling and are wreaking havoc on some very expensive foam insulation. They launch daily raids on my bird feeder and consume the lions’ share of sunflower seed which I have purchased at a premium, while the goldfinches and chickadees wait, intimidated, on nearby tree limbs. If they can’t have their way with a feeder, they destroy it and slink off into the forest laughing. Someone, my aunt I think, bought my mom the greatest t-shirt, featuring a beady-eyed squirrel in a prison line-up, holding a sign that said, “Wanted in three neighborhood yards for larceny and criminal mischief,” or something along those lines. It lasted much longer than her squirrel-proof bird feeder.
So I was surprised one early fall morning last year by the rush of sympathy that flooded over me when I opened the front door to discover a tiny naked creature lying exposed on the cold concrete step. It had been delivered free of any visible injury save one hairline scratch, a baby squirrel fallen from a nest, its eyes still unopened, shivering. It couldn’t have been three inches long, new born. I dashed inside to grab a shoe box and a towel before my fierce pets could return to play with their find.
Having rescued a brown bat in a similar situation during the summer (I know; who rescues a bat?), I remembered the wildlife expert advised me to place it out of reach from the ground in the spot closest to where it was discovered, and most likely the mother would return to collect her baby and protect it until she could return it to the nest. Not knowing where my cats discovered this pitiful creature, and having no idea how to nurture something that helpless, I tried placing the box in the island of shrubs and trees closest to the house. I watched from afar and checked several times, but it became clear that no mother was returning, at least not in time to prevent that tiny thing from dehydrating or suffering hypothermia.
I called a nearby state park to see if the naturalist there would take the squirrel, or knew someone who would. I was given several numbers including a local vet, but no one was available or had space for one more orphaned creature. I was advised not to try to give the baby squirrel cow’s milk or even water as that would probably kill it. A couple of years prior, my husband had tried to nurture two squirrel babies he’d found out of the nest. They were much better developed with thick fur, and actually looked like squirrels. But they didn’t make it. This unfortunate baby probably had zero chance. I gently heated one of those gel spa masks, wrapped it in a dish towel and put it into the box with my unlikely ward. I thought, if I can’t return it to its mother or even assuage its hunger, I can at least keep it warm and calm until it dies.
Luckily, the story had a happy ending. Late in the afternoon a wildlife rescue volunteer returned my call. She already had many animals in her care and really didn’t have room for another, but told me to bring it over anyway. I gathered up the baby in the box and drove over to a local fishing hole, where I was greeted by a lady whose specialty was squirrel rescue (!). It’s a girl, she tells me. It’s a good thing I kept her warm. She has a very good chance. She will be raised on goats’ milk and when she is ready, be released into the wild, which translated means she will live to terrorize someone else’s bird feeder. Would I like to name her?
Seeing how she survived a fall and two cats, I christened her Scrappy Squirrel, and I went away from there feeling like I’d done the right thing. After all, not a sparrow falls without God’s knowledge. Why shouldn’t this creature have at least a chance at life?
In further contemplating this seemingly run-of-the-mill incident, I was struck with a serious incongruity. What is it in the human heart that would lead someone who has no concern for squirrels in general, who would deny them bird feed if possible and trap or shoot them to prevent property damage; what is it that prompts a person to take time out of the day to show concern for and provide shelter to a pest that comes a dime a dozen in just about any locale? It seems more ridiculous than rational. But I would venture to say that most people would do exactly what I did. When a human heart sees design and a Designer in nature, remains close to the home fire of its own purpose, kindness follows. God wired us to be compassionate, to nurture the helpless, stand for the innocent, to feel empathy for others' suffering and to value the beauty and mystery of life. Given a chance, that little squirrel would grow into a rodent that gnaws apart a bird feeder, destroys attic insulation, becomes food for a fox or coyote, but also may, through its instincts and simple self preservation, plant a mighty oak that gives shade and replicates that one lost acorn to sustain other creatures.
Therefore it is hard for me to comprehend that these same people, who like me would try to save that helpless displaced squirrel which in no way could be viable on its own, could also be convinced to condone the practice of reaching into a woman's womb and literally ripping apart a living, moving, feeling human infant. I feel sure that
if there were an enterprise whereby politicians controlled a population and doctors became wealthy tearing preborn puppies, kittens and baby seals in pieces from their mothers, or burning them to death in saline solution, there would be an outcry, because only a sick depraved soul would do something like that to an innocent animal. But proponents of the abortion industry sell this practice to our nation with lies that too many people are too willing to accept, that this is not a person, that the baby doesn’t feel pain, that it’s about a woman’s choices over her own body. Except in cases of rape, don’t we women make that choice when we decide to have sex? Oh yes, but what about cases of rape and incest? They argue. Rape is certainly a disgusting crime and my heart breaks for its victims. According to the National Library of Medicine, “the national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year.”₁ This is a tragic statistic, though I still gather from it that 95% of rape victims do not experience a related pregnancy. I bet we could find a way to reduce rape with stronger penalties for those convicted. Any cases of rape are too many, but I wanted to understand how it relates to pregnancy in the U.S. I retrieved the following information from the CDC’s abortion surveillance data. In 2016, there were 623,471 legal abortions reported to the CDC, a ratio of 186 abortions per 1,000 live births. ₂ So, just anecdotally, if I do the math, 591,370 of the abortions that were reported in 2016 were performed presumably for some other reason than rape. Well, what about when the life of the mother is threatened? The Guttmacher Institute, the reproduction research center named after Alan Guttmacher, an early Reproductive Rights proponent and a founder of Planned Parenthood, did not have any statistics on abortions that had been performed solely to protect the life of the mother during a medical crisis. But I did find a statistic from the American Pregnancy Association stating that about 64,000 women per year had experienced ectopic pregnancies, a dangerous condition where fetal development takes place outside the uterus.₃ Usually these babies do not survive this type of pregnancy, though there are intervention procedures where babies can be transplanted from the fallopian tubes into the womb. There is a body of medical opinion that with today’s advances, very few pregnancies need threaten a mother’s life.
I found this interesting quote attributed to the aforementioned Alan Guttmacher, who died in 1974.
“Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal disease such as cancer or leukemia, and if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save the life of the mother.” ₄ Oops. I guess he couldn’t foresee what a smoke screen the “life of the mother” would become for the population control agenda. But let’s give abortionists that point for now.
Doing some more math, let’s round 64,000 to 70,000 to account for other threatening medical conditions like preeclampsia, then subtract those 70,000 abortions which we rationalize are necessary from our 591,370 in a given year. If we could agree with these two talking points of the radical left and compromise with killing babies that are the result of rape or that threaten the mother’s life, that leaves about 521,370 lives that are being snuffed out either because they are an unwanted surprise that has occurred in spite of birth control use, or because someone was too lazy or cheap to use actual birth control methods that are readily available and actually prevent conception. So it appears in the majority of cases CHOICE was not denied, it was exercised without consideration of the high probability of natural consequences. Once a baby is growing, a mother is making choices for her body and someone else’s, someone who is completely helpless and cannot speak for himself or herself, other than trying desperately to avoid the abortionist's instruments of torture. So we can either keep repeating the lies that this is not a person in its own right, or admit that the emperor is completely without covering and that most abortions are murder for convenience. We must apologize to every driver ever convicted of vehicular feticide, because it is absolutely ridiculous to assert that an unborn baby killed in an auto accident is more important than one killed in a doctor’s office. Let’s be honest and admit that the only difference is whether the child is wanted by his or her birth parent, and that is a completely different moral question, whether a child that is unwanted at a specific time by a specific person deserves to die.
What happens in the human heart? It can be honest and compassionate, and it can be deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. If in our humanity we can be touched by an animal in distress, feel its suffering and know its intrinsic value, then maybe we are not too far gone to hear the whisper of truth from our hearts in spite of the lies being shouted at us.
“For you created my inmost being, You knit me together in my mother’s womb, My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.” Psalm 139:13-15
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart…” Jeremiah 1:5
“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Luke 1:41-44
NOTES
₁ retrieved online from the National Library of Medicine at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8765248/
₃FactCheck.org at https://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/the-life-of-the-mother
₄retrieved 10/21/2020 from ALL.org at https://www.all.org/learn/abortion/abortion-exceptions/common-abortion-exceptions-the-mothers-life/
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