Can’t wait to read this book!! Great article, Maya!

MrsMidnight,

Your comment made me very sad. Your last sentence especially.

You see, in my family, I gained a beautiful baby brother when I was a kid because his mother, a 16 year old girl who made a poor choice, DID have options. She didn’t take the easy route. She chose the brave route, and the “option” she chose was adoption. In my estimation, girls like her are some of the bravest in the world, because if I had been walking in her shoes I’m not sure I’d have had the courage to give my baby away. I always admired her for that.

I now have a daughter near the age of that young mother, and while it would be very disappointing to me if she were to come home with the news that she, too, had made some poor choices, I can tell you with 1000% certainty that my advice to her would NOT be to get to the nearest abortion clinic or to run down to CVS so we can hurry and pop a pill. I would advise her to choose life, and accept the consequences of the choices she made. The poor choice of one human being doesn’t make it right to take the life of another—the other being, at any stage of gestation, an innocent little baby.

I prefer—rather than being the advisor to a child who is sexually active—to teach my daughter that she doesn’t need to sleep with a boy to be loved, or to be accepted. I prefer to teach her to act like a lady, that her body belongs to her Creator, and that waiting until marriage to give herself to the one she truly loves is more worth the wait than I could ever adequately explain. I’m certainly not perfect, and I make an abundance of parenting mistakes every day, but teaching the method—abstinence—that works EVERY single time it’s tried—is the method my husband and I have chosen.

My daughter goes to a private school where I know and trust the teachers, so thank God I wouldn’t have cause for as much concern…regardless, we cannot be too careful in today’s world. I do exactly what you’re doing, I volunteer as much as I’m able.

My first reaction? EWWWWW. Utterly disgusting…how can I UNsee this now? We live in a seriously messed up world.

My daughter teaches me lessons seemingly every day, and is one of the greatest gifts of my life (second only to her father ;). Being mom isn’t always easy, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Nice to “meet” you, Monica!! Thanks for your service…glad you are doing something safer now. ;) Thank you for sharing with us!

Well said, Maya. Well said.

I do also agree that putting him to death would give the media permission to cease coverage, and like Maya said, with the short attention span of the American public, we’d allow it. If we punished people in a way that benefited us more than them in terms of consequences, I’d much rather him rot in a jail cell—most criminals don’t look kindly on those who have harmed children, so life wouldn’t be simple for him in the slammer. However, if he gets what he deserves, he will pay with his life. It will be up to us to not let this story die—it’s the least we can do to honor the memory of those precious, forgotten little ones who suffered so.

very. slippery. slope. Michelle raises an excellent point.

I’ll stay out of Chicago, thank you very much! Thanks for a fantastic article, Nicole!