Abandoned-Orphaned

Broken Heart

It was a million dollar view. The wooded property on a hillside overlooks Guatemala City. Volcanoes dot the horizon and add further majesty to the scene. One would expect the rich of society to be dwelling on such a plot. A mansion could have suitably left its footprint on the land, nestled in comfort and grandiosity. Grecian columns would have matched the noble girth of trees. Rock gardens and ponds would have complimented natural terraces of foliage and sloping outcroppings. It would have been a fine estate, one of enduring legacy, one fit for a national leader or captain of industry.

Instead, a stark and underfunded Catholic orphanage sits on the land. Manicured lawns have given way to bare dirt. Grand vistas and pools of leisure have given way to makeshift playground equipment of old tires, splintered wood and rusty rebar.

The children, covered in dirt and dust, looked every bit the orphan, although they were officially part of the rescued statistics. Scabs and sores bore further evidence to ongoing lack and need.

And then there was the little boy, the one without a name.

He was purple. He has a heart problem that prevents his extremities from getting adequate oxygenation. Is he still alive even today, a week after our visit? He’s just another boy in institutional care with an issue that his caretakers are poorly equipped or resourced to solve.

The thing that struck me is that this boy, discarded for being damaged or incomplete, is worth much more than any regal manor or stately home. The things of greatest value are already occupying this prime piece of property. They are the land’s greatest heritage, its greatest legacy.

Instead of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop the property with an architectural statement for the generations, isn’t it worth a couple of thousand dollars to leave a more lasting generational impact...to fix one little boy’s heart?

The Chain (part two)

Jullio was brought to his current home by a woman claiming to be his mother. She signed a document asserting that she was abandoning him to their care due to extreme poverty and an inability to care for an impaired child. The home soon figured out that the woman was not who she claimed to be and that Julio was, in effect, dumped into their care as a result of a trafficking deal gone bad.

Born for cash, Julio now inhabits this world as a child struggling for identity and answers. This apparently triggers anger to well up in him, causing difficulty for the home and for the other children who are now part of his family. Those children receive less attention and care as the family devotes additional time and energy to address Julio’s special needs.

It is indeed a chain – a wicked one where every link tugs and pulls at others. Despite much love and counseling Julio may never feel whole. And the home’s other children, rightly or wrongly, may never feel that they got the attention they deserved because of his presence.

Lives are not things to be tinkered with. And they’re certainly not to be initiated for trade. Perhaps Julio’s mother rationalized her actions by believing that he would be raised in a wealthy American home. Maybe she figured that he would cast an unseen legacy, as a child that would find knowledge and prosperity that greatly surpasses her own.

She got it wrong...to a degree.

If not for the church, Julio might have been sold as a slave laborer or, far worse, as a sex toy for a rich Guatemalan pedophile. He could have just as easily been left on the pavement, like other children we have encountered throughout Central America. As a street child with a disability, Julio would have left a far worse legacy that his mother could have ever imagined. Her baby boy, the fruit of her womb, would have suffered abuse upon abuse...while the money in her pocket had long since vanished.

Child Soldier (Abandoned to the Army)

The story that follows is a compilation that was crafted using the real lives and circumstances of children rescued by our partner who visited us last week. The individual story details are merged together in order to protect the identities and lives of the children involved, but the compilation is an accurate representation of real world scenarios involving non-combatant child soldiers in Southeast Asia:

Abandoned to the Army

When I was six my parents gave me to the army. Early in the morning my father pulled me out of sleep. It was still dark. He packed me on his back down the mountain trail from the village. His long black hair tickled my nose all the way. After we came to the main road I had to walk. We walked most of the day. I had no water and my throat was chalky dry because it was the time of no rain. We walked between the rocks in the red powder of the earth as the red sun beat upon my head.

Finally we came to a cluster of houses. At the side of the road was a tin roofed lean-to. Men with guns sat in the shade of the slanted roof and also some stood in the shadow of a great tree that spread its frog-like limb’s over the road. They looked mean and I was scared but my father walked over to them. He left me near the base of the tree and went to talk with some of the men near a truck. I played with a dung beetle in the dirt.

Father turned away from the men and began walking down the road. He never even looked at me. I thought he had forgotten me. I cried out, "Papa," but he did not turn back. I began to run after him but one of the men in green caught me by the arm and cuffed me. "You stay here," he slurred at me. I was shocked. I tried to lunge away but he struck me again.

That evening they threw me on the supplies that awkwardly filled the truck and told me to hold on or die. We drove all night till my arms ached and my skin stung sore from the dust and wind. In the morning we arrived at a town and drove up to a cement and metal fence. This was to be my prison. I did not know what a prison was. I did not even know what an army was. But now I know because I have lived in this place of no escape. I later found out my parents had offered me for nothing, I was not even worth a few coins!

Some of my friends came here because they were orphans. Some of them were conscripted. Others were abandoned. I was one of the most unfortunate –so I thought. My parents disowned me. I don’t know why. Maybe, as I learn more about my world, I will figure it out. I think there was not enough food and my mother’s stomach was taut with a coming child. Another still nursed at her breast. My two brothers, both older than me, worked hard on the farm. They could help father better than I could –I heard them say it.

To be continued...

All is Not What it Seems

There is nearly unanimous agreement that China’s opening ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games was a masterpiece. However, as we’ve learned over the past few days, all is not what it seems.

Stories hit the media earlier this week that part of the fireworks display was faked - a computer-generated animation prepared months ago and fed out by Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, the entity that controls and provides the primary video feeds of all Olympics events to other broadcasters.

Now, today, it has come to light that the precious little girl who sang "Ode to the Motherland" during the opening ceremony was, in fact, lip-synching to another child's voice.

The musical director for the event, Chen Qigang, admitted that, "After several tests, we decided to put Lin Miaoke on the live picture, while using Yang Peiyi's voice. The reason for this is that we must put our country's interest first. The girl appearing on the picture must be flawless in terms of her facial expression and the great feeling she can give to people."

The New York Times reported, "Under pressure from the highest levels of the ruling Communist Party to find the perfect face and voice, the ceremony’s production team concluded the only solution was to use two girls instead of one. Miaoke, a third grader, was judged cute and appealing but "not suitable" as a singer. Another girl, Yang Peiyi, 7, was judged the best singer but not as cute. So when Miaoke opened her mouth to sing, the voice that was actually heard was a recording of Peiyi."

My heart crumbles for little Peiyi who lost her opportunity to sing, in person, for a billion people because the country that devalues girls so much deemed her as not cute enough.

Near the end of the opening ceremony, we saw thousands of pictures of little children held up by the performers. The images were also repeated on the fringe screens that wrap the whole stadium – a plethora of bright, smiling children.

Too bad that China’s one child policy, the desire for perfection, the devaluation of the female child, and the preference for a "lucky" male heir, means that thousands (by some estimates, millions) of children - mainly little girls like Miaoke and Peiyi - are presently languishing in Chinese orphanages.

Look past the façade, folks. I’m a father with a Chinese daughter. I used to work with and in Chinese orphanages. I’ve seen the reality of bleak holding cells filled with the children that the Chinese government now wants you to believe are cherished and valued.

The dying rooms still exist. Abandonment occurs in record numbers as precious little infants and pig-tailed girls are discarded, victims of a system that places very little value on human life.

Continuum of Care (enablement/intake)

Let’s face the facts. Many orphanages have been started with children that have existing or remaining family.

Part of a dinnertime conversation here in Burundi concerned this reality.

In Africa, there is a broad cultural acceptance of having other people raise your children for you. It’s not uncommon for a parent to ask a more well-to-do friend to take in their child so that child might have better opportunities in life. Some of this is related to the "it takes a village to raise a child" mindset and part of it is just based on pure economics, especially in situations of polygamous marriages where dozens of children are involved.

One of the organizational workers that joined us for dinner explained how a friend of hers was brought up in an orphanage. Family and extended family were either nowhere to be found or inadequate attempts were made to find them. The child was alone and subsequently raised by the institution. She beat the odds and ended up doing quite well for herself. She became a nurse. She married a doctor.

It was at that point that family came out of the woodwork and introduced themselves to her. Her new-found professional and economic success was, no doubt, a significant draw.

It was evident that she was being watched from afar. Family that didn’t want the responsibility of raising her were tracking her life’s developments, perhaps out of curiosity and love, perhaps for opportunities of future personal gain.

Yes, this child was indeed unwanted and abandoned for whatever reason. But could there have been better intake procedures to identify her true origins and the existence of family? Could there have been ministry opportunities into that shallow or overburdened family that could have changed the whole dynamic and situational analysis?

A major ministry once established and ran multiple orphanages in East Asia. The president of this ministry recently shared with us how they eventually had to make the decision to shut down the orphanages and follow a new ministry model that was not based on institutionalization. On the day the facilities were being closed, relatives literally lined up to pick up the children, pick up the ‘orphans.’

In India, we have visited many orphan homes where there were a large number of ‘needy’ children being housed with the orphans. Well, as you can imagine, many, if not most of the children of India could be classified as disadvantaged or needy. Where does one draw the line?

The line should be drawn at orphaned or endangerment status. Period.

Any type of group residential care program, regardless of whether it is an institutional orphanage or family-style home, should never, never, never (did I emphasize that enough?) enable families to give up their children for others to care for. That is simply unacceptable. The child needs to be with their family, even if that family is struggling greatly.

As with most things there are exceptions, of course. If the family is truly abandoning the child, selling the child, abusing the child, or planning to kill the child...those situations take special consideration. The child needs to be removed while that family is being ministered to. The goal would ultimately be reconciliation and reunification, brought about through the Gospel and much counseling.

But if the family just wants to have others take the burden of raising the child, or feels that others could do it better, that is simply not acceptable under any circumstance. That family should also be ministered to and supported. But their child should always remain with them.

Institutional orphanages are indeed part of the problem and actually help to perpetuate the problem. The very existence of an institution in a community can create orphans, create abandoned children. It’s too big of a temptation. It becomes an easy ‘drop-off’ point for families that are struggling to raise their children or want better opportunities for them. In addition, as those children grow up without healthy family role models, they end up abandoning their own children. Orphanages can create, perpetuate and increase the numbers of abandoned children over generations. They can destroy communities and nations.

Residential care should never enable abandonment!

Related to this, where there is a need for residential care, there’s usually gross problems regarding intake procedures.

Churches know the families and kids in their communities. They are much better positioned and equipped than the government, NGO’s, or established institutional orphanages to assess the needs of children and to know the specific situations concerning their status, abuse or abandonment. They know who the true orphans are. They minister to the dying families and know the children before they hit the streets. They know if extended family options exist or not. Their very work and involvement in the surrounding community is the intake assessment procedure!

Since the funding of institutional orphanages is often based on the number of children they care for, there is an inherent conflict of interest involved. Even above-the-board orphanage directors are less than motivated to make sure a child is a true orphan, and they are certainly not inclined to try to keep children in families or return the children to them. They need to keep the child numbers up in order to keep income up.

Yes, churches can abuse the system also, most notably when they receive funding for children from the West. Narrowly-focused, poorly-run child sponsorship programs create these potential problems where funding is directly related to the number of children involved. Such sponsorship programs should be left to the experts (i.e. Compassion International and other dedicated sponsorship ministries) who have significant, multi-tiered, in-field accountability structures.

Provided that poor sponsorship programs aren’t in the mix, the church is clearly the better assessment and intake mechanism because they are involved in activities spanning the full continuum of care, most notably orphaning prevention and delay programs. In addition, their heart is for the community they serve, not for filling up buildings with children. They take a more integrated approach that involves multiple options.

They don’t enable abandonment.

Continuum of Care (introduction)

I wrote the following entry, and a few that follow, at 4:00 AM as a storm rained down on a tin roof overlooking a courtyard in Bujumbura, Burundi last year. I’m not sure why it took me so long to post them, perhaps because they fall more into a ministry philosophy category than one of in-field reporting. Regardless, we have developed this model considerably further since I penned these initial thoughts based on our discussions. I look forward to sharing more with you on that later...

Continuum of Care (introduction)

True holistic or ‘whole’ ministry not only means providing for all the functional needs of the individual, but possessing all the potential solutions available for that individual. It entails having all the options at your disposal to meet the needs according to a ‘continuum of care.’ Where an individual’s needs and circumstances fall on that spectrum dictates the prospective approaches and solutions. For the potential orphan, it involves first trying to prevent orphaning, second, rescuing the child after orphaning.

More specifically, the rescue and care of abandoned and orphaned children should follow a progressive continuum of options that all involve the coordination and direct involvement of the local indigenous church located in the community.

PREVENTION/DELAY

Prevention involvement should primarily focus on keeping dying families or guardians alive for as long as possible, or by supporting high-risk struggling, impoverished, or single-parent families. In other words, the goal should be to avert orphaning and abandonment, or to at least significantly delay it.

Indigenous churches, as they engage their communities, conduct home care visits and provide much-needed medicines, food and other assistance for this purpose. Naturally, they also have significant additional ministry opportunities into these families as a result.

TRANSITION/RESIDENTIAL PLACEMENT

If orphaning is still imminent, the church already has a history with and familiarity of these children due to its prevention and delay involvement. Requisite trust has been built with the families and the kids. The church prepares the family for death through counsel and practical programs that help to safeguard memories, family heritage and continuity. Meanwhile, the church looks to see what extended family options currently exist or helps to convince and support otherwise uncommitted relatives to step up and take in these children. Again, this provides further inlets for the church to reach and minister to families. The church is given witnessing avenues beyond just the interest in the children.

If these first two options don’t exist or have failed, then the church turns to its own congregation – first to see if church members can raise and care for the children as their own (adoption) or as an intermediate step until another family is found (foster care). The church therefore serves as an integral community-based solution.

If the church’s capacity has already reached its upper limits, then a church-based residential care solution is needed in order to keeps kids off of the streets, herded into institutions, preyed upon by traffickers, or being exploited as domestic slaves in other community homes.

Group residential care, however, still has to be designed to provide a family environment, albeit a large one of fifteen children or so. Church families, that may have existing kids of their own, are recruited to care for these additional children in church-based homes with full funding provided for food, clothing, education and other critical needs. It’s a long-term obligation - a lifelong commitment - to what, in essence, equates to a group adoption.

In these large family settings, widows can complement the live-in care provision. Formerly disenfranchised and ostracized, many of these ladies need a home themselves and a renewed sense of purpose and belonging. They know loss and pain and are therefore uniquely qualified to counsel and comfort children who have lost their parents.

Volunteers from the church body are also on hand to provide assistance, mentoring, and skills development for the children in the group home.

RESCUE

There exist many young children already struggling on the streets and in garbage dumps and brothels. The indigenous church still goes through the necessary steps to find and support extended families for their rescue. But, absent that, these children also need to be incorporated into families within homes overseen and run by the church.

TRANSITION/REHABILITATION

Many orphan care ministries speak in terms of ‘transition’ or ‘reintegration’ concerning children that age-out of the system. For the children in World Orphans’ church-based homes, these words carry less meaning. Under our current ministry model, our children remain fully integrated in their communities and daily experience what healthy families look like. There is no big disconnection between the environment of their upbringing and the next season of life in the ‘real world,’ only the normal anxieties typically associated with making it on your own.

What’s more, these children never graduate from a home, much like we would never graduate from our own families. The families are told that their care for the children is not a 5, 10 or 15-year commitment. It’s a 65-year commitment! These kids are now part of families, families that they will still visit; families that they will celebrate life’s achievements and milestones with; families that will gather together for reunions and holidays.

There are children we serve, however, that can be deemed as in need of transition. These are children in countries that raise their orphans in state institutions, or in countries where circumstances placed them into large privately-run orphanages. They also include latter-stage children that have been on the streets or rescued from other dire circumstances. These kids need comprehensive help through well-designed intervention programs that prepare them for the next stage of life.

In many cases, these children are immediately placed at the mercy of evil forces that prey upon them as soon as they are released from institutional care. If the church doesn’t step in at that point, the kids are soon immersed into a world of drugs, prostitution, slavery, or forced military conscription. Their lives are typically harsh...and short.

To avoid this highly-vulnerable period following institutional release, World Orphans is establishing transition homes, again owned and run by indigenous churches, that take in children before malevolent parties have a chance to grab them. This residential care format provides the necessary training (including social and skills development) to allow the children to better integrate into broader society at a later date.

SELF-SUSTAINABILITY

Whether it’s a child leaving a primary or transitional home, or directly aging out of an institutional orphanage, there is a further opportunity and responsibility for an indigenous church. Much like we would help our own children with ‘next steps’ resourcing and care, so is it with children from any type of residential care program. They need assistance to take the first strides of self sufficiency. That may come in the form of additional training or higher education, but can often mean a simple micro-loan to establish them in a trade, small business, or other income-generating scenario.

Why go this extra mile?

Because it could mean the difference between stopping or perpetuating the vicious cycle of orphaning and abandonment. It’s not just the specific child (now young adult) in question, but also their future offspring. The child needs to have every chance to be successful and self supporting so that they don’t, in turn, abandon children or fall to the ills that take and destroy lives after children are born.

Would You Press the Button? (part five)

Competition. It’s the American way, right?

Position pitted against position. People pitted against people. Nation pitted against nation.

Liberals versus conservatives. Right versus left. Protestants versus Catholics. Bloods versus Crips. Yankees versus Red Sox. Coke versus Pepsi. America versus China. It goes on and on and on. We’re bombarded by it from every angle.

It rears its head in all circles – individual, group, community, ethnic, and national. It’s endemic in every type of venture and activity – corporate, social, and athletic. It infects every part of being – physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

Almost everything is turned into a battle for supremacy, a winner/loser scenario. Every traffic light becomes a herald of the race. Every minor disagreement becomes a last stand.

Some contests are healthy. A little rivalry or struggle helps to temper and test us, sometimes entertain us. Without experience with challenge, we are inept in the greater battles.

But we often forget that each victory gained has a necessary opposite outcome: persons who summarily experience failure and the ramifications of defeat.

It’s evident even in the seemingly mundane. When one advertising agency wins a major account from another, people are fired. People lose their homes. Marriages fail.

Yes, everything has its consequences. The pursuit of personal or corporate triumph means that the button is pushed continually.

And as we unfairly use snap decisions and opinions to polarize things, put people and positions into "us versus them" settings, we use such grounds to rationalize such competition. After all, it’s just "the Chinese" or "the liberals" we are competing against, right? By generalizing and sub-humanizing, we feel better about pushing the button.

"Gotta stop those darn Indians and Southeast Asians from taking our jobs and profits!"

As we protect American jobs from going overseas, an unemployed Thai worker makes the excruciating decision to sell his eldest daughter into the sex trade. To not do so would mean that his other three daughters would perish from starvation.

As we place high tariffs on agricultural products from India, a farmer outside of New Delhi cannot meet his obligations to his finance company. Broken and out of options, he and his whole family drink poison.

As we stigmatize those who don’t "buy American," we lessen the ability for the laborer in China to feed his family on $2 per day. He abandons his child at the local orphanage.

We’re one of the richest nations on the planet. We compete to get the newer car and bigger home while people living in cardboard boxes die. We have surplus in excessive abundance. We don’t need to win every economic global battle.

Folks, it’s not supposed to be this way. Don’t buy into the lie. Jesus taught against such thinking.

We have to embrace a more global philanthropic perspective, a more neighborly perspective.

After all, the whole world is simply that...a collection of neighbors.

"The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself." (Galatians 5:14)

To be continued...

Abandoned & Adored

We found her abandoned on our doorstep on a cold, wintry day. Perfect features. Round blue eyes and a pert little nose set in the midst of a healthy complexion. Tiny fingers clutching a small baby bottle brimming with a milky-white liquid. A petite head devoid of baby hair.

Dressed in a pink onesie and matching bonnet, she was lying in a blanket-lined basket.

She was a newborn baby girl seemingly in need of our love and nurture…

...except for the fact that she was made of plastic at a toy factory in China.

I thought that maybe it was a joke, somebody leaving an unwanted infant on the threshold of the orphan-ministry family with the adopted Chinese daughter.

We made the rounds to try to ascertain whether somebody had thought it to be Hannah’s toy baby, returning it to us after finding it left in the cul-de-sac.

Nope.

We then tried to discover if somebody had simply left the baby for Hannah, to be the next child to own and play with her.

Nope.

A mystery.

Hannah has indeed adopted this abandoned baby as her own. For a two year-old, she certainly makes a great mother...pampering ‘baby’ constantly, sleeping with her, and reaching for her as the first waking activity each morning.

Unwanted by one.

Adored by another.

Hope Restored

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the new life and hope that is within us. Jesus’ victory becomes ours and, as we interact with the world around us, we are to be carriers, displayers and tellers of the promise that is found only in Him.

I find it very fitting, then, to receive this e-mail today from an orphan caregiver in Thailand concerning children lost – now found – and the process of seeing hope restored; restored through a faithful servant who understands the amazing power of love.

............................................................................................

Dear Paul...

Wow. I just read through a good bit of your blog..."happened" upon it. Wow.

It really touched my heart, my heart that is so bent towards orphans and those abandoned. I work in Thailand at an orphanage for kids with HIV; 70 kids. Most are healthy as they are on the ARV drugs, and you would never guess that they were HIV by looking at them...well, most of them. Some are symptomatic, but all are able to attend school.

It's what you can't see that breaks my heart. The look in their eyes, the odd behavior, the restlessness. The knowledge that they were sent away, pushed away, given away just because they are HIV. This is what they really have to live with every day. And as they are living longer and getting older, it gets harder and harder. They are able to voice themselves with more clarity and express their emotions with more fire. And as a caregiver, it is hard to know how to deal with some things and I am never able to separate the fact that these kids are hurting deep into their soul. They weren't wanted.

I do many things at the orphanage, but the thing I see myself doing most is just loving the kids. Taking them into my arms and giving them mom love, even when they smell so badly of infection or are covered with scabs. I feel like I have to fill in the gaps, to make up for something lacking, to pour out and out and out. My husband and I are even in the process of adopting an HIV positive orphan boy. His name is Bu and he is 5. He is lovely and I can't wait until he lives with us.

On our campus, we also have housing for "abandoned women"....wives and sisters and mothers who have been rejected by their families and left at the hospital, never to be picked up again. Last Sunday, one woman died, leaving behind her 8 year old son for us to care for, for us to mother in her stead. Somehow, it ended up being me that brought the boy, Boonyarit, back to see his dead mother, her body all shrouded and tied up. As we sat next to her, laying on a mat on the floor, I untied her face. She had just turned 31. But she looked 90. And she weighed about 50 lbs. But Boonyarit and I sat there and talked about her and what she was like and how she loved him and how he made her so happy.

I am no grief counselor or any kind of professional, but I am a mommy. And I thought about this, "if that were me and Boon was one of my boys, what would I want said about me?" So we talked about how she is singing with the angels and dancing with Jesus, because she loved Him. We talked about how glad she was that Boon was with us at the Agape Home now. And then I said, "let's kiss her one more time." So we both did and I tied the white sheet around her face again. He waved bye-bye, Paul. And he smiled at her, his eyes as sparkling as his mom's ever were. And I bit my lip and took a deep breath and I said bye-bye, too. We walked out and the men came in to put her in her coffin, which was just there inside the room.

Things die and things are left behind. Dreams die. Mommies die. Hope dies. The will to live dies....but this is not the end of the story. Dreams can come alive again, I can be a mommy. Hope can be restored. And the desire to live life to the fullest can spark again.

God cares about lost things. And He cares about children who have been lost...lost in a political system, lost in the shuffle, lost to someone's memory.

Thank you, Paul, for being a finder.

Ellen C.

Visible Evidence

Tiny fingers curled up into a bony claw. Emaciated legs the girth of a quarter. Heads flattened and swollen. Lungs laboring to take in breath. Eyes crying out in silent pain.

The appearance of these severely-disabled orphans is deceptive.

They look broken, and indeed they are, but their value far outweighs what society would place upon them. They are each more precious than anything this world has to offer, more significant than the wealth of the nations. After all, each eternal soul is a cherished prize that outlasts the materials and treasures of this temporal world.

But each of these children also reminds us of the corruption of the creation, brought about by man’s revolt against God. There is nothing that these children had done that brought such disfigurement or incapacity. They are the ‘innocent’ victims, visible in waves of severity: Physically immobilized. Mentally stunted. Emotionally tormented. Consciousness trapped inside unresponsive prisons.

Abandoned.

To be a child of such condition and circumstance is to be the living embodiment of the effects of our corporal sin, powerfully-visible evidence of the fall.

In the mind’s eye of God, he crafted and pictured these children as perfect. His creation was good. Our choice blunted and bruised them at the genetic level. We, ourselves, took the form and distorted it. We grabbed limbs and minds and twisted them into something barely recognizable.

Some would say that these children now have no purpose; that they are just living units without contribution.

Not true.

This is where we have the opportunity to fight against our own rebellion, to show that we are indeed creatures of compassionate choice. To stroke the hand of a child that can never hold one this side of eternity. To brush the knotted hair of a young soul that will dance with flowing locks in the new creation. To smile and kiss the forehead of the abandoned child that will never be adored by an earthly father.

It is in these moments that we understand the immeasurable value of these precious souls...and the worth of our own.