Today I walked through a strategic graveyard of pristine white crosses jutting out of the soft ground. I saw young budding university students giggling and posing for pictures as they happily hammered them into the earth. I was forced to see judgment masquerading itself as a cause and I saw people feeling gratified by the pain of others. Shaking with anger and sadness I turned to my friend and saw that her mouth hung open in surprise. I wanted to run up to those students and ask them, “Why? Why are you doing this? What satisfaction can you gain from this gesture? How can you so blatantly permeate this message of hatred and ignorance?”
Today, safety was stolen from our school. I mourn for the young women who are forced to mask their faces as they walk past this unavoidable, crude graveyard—the women who have made a choice and are unable to go back. I struggle to wrap my mind around the deliberate lack of compassion that I witnessed. Has a graveyard of murdered babies become a symbol of love and acceptance? Is that the new way of doing things here at Trinity- by rubbing dirt into the wounds of someone’s decisions? In the past, white crosses were used to represent memorials, and now they are being used to broadcast a message of blame and prosecution. As people searching for morality in a world of confusion and darkness, we should not be allowing such disrespect to be broadcasted at this school. I had hoped that TWU would strive to be a sanctuary- a place of acceptance and a place of love. But now fear, regret and judgment have crept in. Now there is no compassion, there is no understanding, and there is no point. I find it interesting that in a place abundant with so-called Christian women that there is such a lack of empathy and consideration.
Here’s my message to those who felt that this act was necessary: by all means feel free to take a vow of silence or fast and mourn for the cause that you subscribe to, but I beg you to refrain from forcing your opinions on others without considering the consequences. I can understand that you believed that by putting those crosses in the ground you were acting on grounds of compassion for the “murdered” fetuses of the world, but in the process you deeply wounded the women who might have actually been affected by this issue. Christ’s love does not extend only to “innocent unborn children,” but also to the women who are forced to endure pain because they made a choice. We cannot hope to change this world for the better, for darkness has swallowed us whole. But we can hold onto love and embrace our sisters rather than throwing them to the dogs? It makes me wonder: if Christ were on Earth today, would he spend his time parading anti-abortion posters and nailing miniature crosses into the unforgiving dirt?
- Erin Mahoney
