Be the Peace you long to see

Why we need Heroes, where to find truth, and how to forge path to peace.

 March 14, 2022

Dear Representatives Till and Squirrel, my fellow Vermont community, and my friends,

I am writing because I see an urgent need for us to step forward and speak up against war, for peace, and for the dignity of human life. I ask that you would recognize that we are all responsible for the decisions we make, whether for or against life.

I see horrifying images of bombs hitting maternity hospitals, and pregnant women on stretchers blood-soaked mattresses haunt my dreams. We hear how civilians are murdered as they flee Ukraine to safety. We see a tyrant who is waging a genocidal attack on an entire nation. This is not from my WWII history notes, this is from today’s newsreel. Our family has been praying daily for a friend who runs an orphanage in the Ukraine. We received from him pictures of children—images of Vlad, Albina, Danik, Vica, and others scroll across my iPhone as my husband and three children huddle around the images and pray as they flee their home. We wait each day to hear news of their safe arrival in Poland. Nickolai, an orphanage worker with three children like me, stays behind to help other fleeing refugees get to safety while his wife and kids evacuate. I ask my husband “what would we do in this situation?” The honest answer is- I don’t know.  We rejoiced the next day in hearing that the children made it to safety, but continue to pray, knowing their battle for life will be a long, arduous journey. Devastating news reached us this morning—that Nickolai was killed by a Russian attack. We lost a hero today.

In times like these, when it seems like our world has lost its way with horrific violence, we ask why? We ask, “What can I do?” Now more than ever, we need to remember who we are. We are beloved human beings, we were made for good. We need heroes who remind us of this truth, who proclaim to us the value of human life, and who forge a path through darkness into light, life, freedom, and true peace. I may not be able to  stop the war on the Ukraine alone, but I can help us remember heroes who have walked the path to peace and who show us the way.

Mother Teresa is such a hero. At the National Prayer Breakfast  in 1997, Mother Teresa proclaimed the true path to peace and illuminated a light through the darkness with no room for misunderstanding. The Clintons, along with 3,000 others listened to this message:

 “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because Jesus said, "If you receive a little child, you receive me. So, every abortion is the denial of receiving Jesus -- is the neglect of receiving Jesus.

It is really a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts.

Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion should be helped to love -- that is, to give until it hurts her plans, her free time, to respect the life of her child. For the child is the greatest gift of God to the family because they have been created to love and be loved.

The father of that child, however, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. So that father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Her words ring true. On January 11, 1995, I met Mother Teresa, my hero.  I literally sat at her feet on the cool concrete of her Sisters of Charity center in Calcutta. I was close enough that if I were tired, I could rest my head on her lap. As I listened, I gazed at  her gnarled hands, wondering how many lives they had touched, healed, rescued? How many lives were held as they died? What would it take to have hands like those? As she spoke, I cupped my ears to hear her clear and wise voice over the cacophony the open windows let in from the Calcutta streets. Whatever she was led to share in that moment, I’d better hear it— these could be the wisest words I’d ever hear spoken by a living person. Her message and her life’s work remained consistent.  She said:

“You Americans, you kill your unborn babies. Every life in the womb is precious, every life is made in the image of God. If you can’t raise your children, bring them to me and I will raise them. Choose adoption. Don’t abort your babies.” She then quoted scripture that says, “Whoever receives a little child in my name will receive me.”

Mother Teresa unswervingly lived the message she spoke. There is no room for doubt about its truth, and as saw and heard myself, her message is unchanged. So, what keeps us from the truth?

It is ignorance that keeps us for knowing and living the truth.

Before meeting Mother Teresa I was ambivalent about abortion. I thought it was a necessary evil for mothers did not choose motherhood when they became pregnant through unprotected sex or rape, whose lives were in danger because of the pregnancy, or because the baby’s life wasn’t compatible with life outside the womb. Mother Teresa’s consistent voice against abortion, her writings, and her life lived in service have convinced me otherwise.

Mother Teresa and other Indian Christian workers sparked a fire in my heart for service overseas. Upon graduation from college in 2001, I moved to Tianjin, China, to work as an art teacher at an international school. I was confronted with the horrifying truth of abortion while I lived and worked in China over a period of 14 years. During this time, the One Child policy was alive and well, and abortion was one of the primary forms of birth control. Mother Teresa’s words rang in my heart, “do not hinder the children, let them come to me” and “choose adoption”. I volunteered at orphanages filled with healthy baby girls and others with cleft lips or other physical deformities. These babies were left at the orphanage by mothers desperate to give their children a chance at life. I once comforted a friend who returned from bringing her friend to an abortion clinic and was traumatized by what she witnessed. She recalled what she saw in the abortion clinic- messy procedure where a mutilated baby was pulled from the mother’s womb and discarded in a bucket along with hundreds of other babies. The scene was horrible —buckets filled with small dead babies, mutilated human flesh headed to the landfill. Trying to escape from the horror of these images, she ran away, and vomited. She could not unsee the realities of abortion. 

I was ignorant about abortion until I was in my teens and twenties. I was ignorant about eugenics until the summer of 2020.

My own ignorance of America’s history of racism and the history of the eugenics movement in Vermont blinded me from truth, humility, and strained my friendships. I joined a book club about racial justice in the summer of 2020, thinking it would be a great place to start "exploring issues.” I wanted to understand a path forward from the racially charged anger exploding across America. While I blundered my way around racial issues, someone asked, “Is Vermont complicit in racism?” And a friend spoke of something I had no idea about—Vermont’s deeply unfortunate history in the Eugenics Movement. I learned this:

University of Vermont's Professor Henry Perkins “lobbied the state legislature in 1927 and 1931 to enact a sterilization law and expand programs for segregation of the "feebleminded." In his speeches and publications, Perkins appealed to state, town, and family pride one hand, while stoking local prejudice, fear, and economic worries on the other. The goal was to foster an appreciation for "blood and breeding" among Vermonters. 1 

I learned that Eugenics means that one group of people determine whether another group of people is worthy of life. Sterilization and abortion are used to prevent certain gene pools from propagating. I learned that America’s eugenics movement, embraced at UVM, inspired Hitler’s Nazi regime. This is not the legacy we want to embrace, yet we do so by supporting abortion!

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was rooted in the very same principles that guided the eugenics movement. In 1925, the New York Times reported “Mrs. Margaret Sanger, founder of the American Birth Control League, said that the league was ready to unite with the eugenic movement whenever the eugenists were able to present a definite program of standards for parenthood on a eugenic basis rather than a eugenic ideal.”

How do we move forward when our past is so fraught with deception and truth is so muddled? 

First, we admit ignorance, and embrace truth with humility and move toward repentance, reconciliation, and healing. I am glad that Vermonters are eager right the wrongs of our eugenics past. UVM president Tom Sullivan apologized for former president Guy Bailey’s support for the Vermont Eugenics Survey (1925-1936), saying “We recognize and deeply regret this profoundly sad chapter in Vermont and UVM’s history". Also, this past year, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a woman connected to the eugenics movement whose name was honored in literary awards, was removed from those accolades. Though we have made strides forward by admitting that it was wrong to wipe out indigenous and French-Canadian populations, we hold on to our own blind spots and persist in supporting the eugenics movement’s longest lasting legacy: abortion. Even though Planned Parenthood has removed Sanger’s name from its headquarters, this terrible practice lives on. Every day in the US, 2,363 children are killed in utero because someone else decides they are not worthy to live. If we are going to move away from eugenics, we must move toward the freedom for the unborn to be born and to have the chance to live.

What do we do now? 

We should look to heroes who show us the way forward though these terrifying situations. 

Contemporary life in the US is fraught with discord and many confusing voices. I am grateful that I have meaningful relationships with those from other countries who have paved a path of peace though the horrors of war. I hold on to Mother Teresa’s mandates for a path of peace— end abortion and welcome adoption. My friend Yiwa, from China, inspires me with her own personal story. Yiwa grew up in Xian in the early 1990’s, the daughter of a visiting scholar to the US who later returned to become a Chinese house church pastor. Through the efforts of her community, the church was able to empty the local orphanage by adopting these children into new homes and futures. 

Stop doing damage to humans by our implicit messages and legislation. 

We do have other options.

Instead of supporting a bill like Proposal 5 that makes abortion easier and sends the implicit message that babies lives don’t matter, we need to speak out against the life-long detrimental effects of abortion on mothers, fathers, and children. We need to learn from our terrible eugenics history and not practice the very act that it supports! We need to celebrate life and take seriously the dignity of the human body from conception onward. 

We should be supporting pro-life pregnancy centers with legislation that benefits, and not hinders, their work. Instead of creating hurdles for mobile crisis pregnancy mobile clinics to operate (as H. 481 does by not allowing any mobile advertising), we must be allied with those supporting women through crisis pregnancies. We can support groups like the Aspire Together, The Lund Center, Spectrum, Howard Center, and ANEW Place with legislation and grants to help them with their care for mothers and children, and those at the edge of society. We need to step up and be the families for the orphans, inviting foster children and orphans into our own homes. We can work to further support and facilitate adoption. 

Ask hard questions and discover real answers.

Are there grave circumstances that justify abortion? By legislatively giving women the “choice” to abort their babies before and after 22 weeks in certain circumstances, Vermont’s Proposition 5 assumes there are situations when abortion is necessary. 

What about Rape? Liveaction.org gives hope here:

 

“A woman who has survived sexual assault has suffered a horrific violence and injustice, and she is deserving of support, help, healing, and advocacy. The guilty party in a sexual assault case is the rapist, who should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. However, even in states that allow the death penalty, the crime of rape or sexual assault does not carry such a penalty. Why then should innocent children receive the death penalty for the crimes of their guilty fathers? Since it is unfair to hold a born child responsible for the crime of her father, so it is with a preborn child.”

Is abortion justifiable if the mother’s life is in danger? 

After 22 weeks, the life of an unborn child is viable outside the womb. Why not choose to deliver these babies, rather than aborting them, as a way to save the mother’s life. The testimony of former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino sheds light:

“I was faculty at the hospital for nine years, and I saw hundreds of cases of really severe pregnancy complications — cancers, heart disease, intractable diabetes out of control, toxemia of pregnancy out of control. And I saved — in those nine years — I saved hundreds of women from life-threatening pregnancies. And I did that by delivering them — by ending their pregnancy by delivery, either induction of labor or caesarean section. Delivering the baby. And I always tell people: in all those years, the number of babies that I had to — that I was obligated to deliberately kill in the process — was zero. None”

What if the baby has a genetic disorder incompatible with life?

A former professor of mine, Dr. Sarah Williams, shares the story of carrying her daughter Cerian to term in her memoir Perfectly Human. After a hospital scan reveals a lethal skeletal dysplasia that insures birth will be fatal, Sarah and husband Paul decided to carry their daughter to term.

She writes:

Cerian is not a strong religious principle or a rule that compels me to make hard and fast ethical decisions. She is a beautiful person who is teaching me to love the vulnerable, treasure the unlovely, and face fear with dignity and hope.

The overriding memory of my time with Cerian, the one I will carry with me for the rest of my life, was the glimpse I had, during the moments of her death, of the love and glory of God. That memory causes all the other recollections, good and bad, to pale in comparison. God the creator came in his love to take a vulnerable human being home to be with him. This encounter changed my life. Quite simply, it showed me that there is another way to be in the world.

There is another way to carry a child who cannot survive outside the womb, and that is to save the life within the womb. When the time comes for the baby to die naturally, the mother has had the gift of knowing she carried her child for the entirety of that child’s life.

Be Brave

The time for life-saving action is now. When we see the horrors of the war in the Ukraine, our heart longs for peace. Like Nickolai, we must courageously be the people of peace our world so desperately needs. We must follow the example of Mother Teresa and trust that fighting abortion with our votes and legislation, and especially our lives is the number one way to end war. We can admit our ignorance and confront the heart-rending truth of our relationship to eugenics and the pro-abortion past. Only then can we begin to heal our towns, state, and nation by being the change we long to see. We should create legislation that supports the most vulnerable human lives, values our children, mothers, fathers, and families. Finally, when we face the end of our lives, we can know with assurance that what we did made a difference for good. Let us be the peace we long to see.

Sincerely,

Katie Coons

Jericho, VT

Sources

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Carole Novielli | October 28. (2021, October 27). An average of 2,363 babies are aborted daily, with hundreds killed later in pregnancy. Live Action News. Retrieved March 12, 2022, from https://www.liveaction.org/news/average-2363-babies-aborted-daily-later-pregnancy/ 

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