Monday, February 19, 2007

Amy Carmichael and India's Infanticide

My heart broke today as I read the reports from India on the 390 body parts of newborn and unborn babies in a mass grave behind a hospital. The United Kingdom newspaper, Times Online (I would post the link to the article, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet) reported that, according to UNICEF, 50 million girls are missing from Indian society, and 10 million baby girls have been aborted since the ultrasound technology was first used 20 years ago.

The fact that this incident happened in India caused me to reflect on one of my heroes, Amy Carmichael. Carmichael was a missionary to India who devoted her life to rescuing children from moral danger. She began by saving young girls from the horrors of temple prostitution, and inaugurated a children’s home that still stands to this day. She would march into temples, often times at great peril, and would demand for the little girls to be released to her.

Amy Carmichael did for India what the pro-choice movement never will be able to do. She gave young girls back their dignity, and told them that their life was significant to God, even if society told them they were expendable. In our society’s quest to preserve the “rights of women” we are actually annihilating our own gender. And worst of all, we are destroying human beings made in the image of God simply because they were born female.

Where are the Amy Carmichael’s of today? The women who give their lives to rescue the little ones from the snares of death and sin. My heart cries for these little ones who were never given the opportunity to see life, to be adopted into a home, to be held by a mother who loves them. May God be pleased to raise up a generation of committed followers of Christ who stand in the face of infanticide and say that life is valuable and that all babies are a gift from God.

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