Is this really "Blue Monday"?

Marking an unhappy anniversary

This is an actual ultrasound photo of my grandson, Payton, expected to be born February 14th. He has been a very loved and very real baby since the earliest news of his inception

Is today really the most depressing day of the year?

Well, definitely not if you're a Chicago Bears fan, still basking in yesterday's win. Time enough to get nervous about the Super Bowl game against the Indianapolis Colts; today is a day to savor.

Yet today can really get blue if you happen to be pro-life. That's because today is the 34th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. The mind boggles when one stops to think about just how many babies have been aborted since that decision.

This from an article by Marybeth T. Hagan: "Based on Guttmacher Institute and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures dating through 2005, the National Right to Life Committee counts 47,282,923 abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion in 1973. At the current rate of nearly 1.3 million abortions per year, legal abortions in our country soon will reach the 50 million mark. There will be no body count."

Let me point you to some great posts on the issue today:

With her customary courage and succinctness, La Shawn Barber isn't mincing words.

Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost says the continuation of abortions means we're living in "a culture of me."

If you're blogging pro-life today, please be sure and leave your link in my comments section.

And if I may re-offer a post of my own I've run for the last few years:

January 22nd: A Day to Mourn
originally posted January 22nd, 2004

When I was a junior in high school, I was delighted to hear that my older sister was pregnant with her third child. I adored my nieces, Shelly and Stephanie, and was looking forward to another little niece or nephew.

My sister gave birth that January to a beautiful little baby girl, and named her Deborah Leigh. But as perfect as Deborah looked, it quickly became obvious that something was wrong. Deborah's little heart was incomplete, and she died within a week of her birth.

I will never forget the car trip from East Texas to West Texas for the funeral of a baby girl. I will never forget seeing that beautiful little girl in the dainty little dress her father had bought for her to wear home from the hospital. I will never forget hearing my brother-in-law cry in the middle of the night for a daughter that would never grow up, or hearing my sister sob for her baby.

Time does heal, and less than a year after Deborah's death, my sister was blessed with another little girl. My niece Cynthia Anne is grown up now, married and has her own babies.

But every year around this time, my sister experiences a season of sadness as she mourns the baby that never grew up.

We were talking about it just the other day. "It's hard to believe it's been 31 years now," Beverly said softly. "She died on January 22nd, 1973."

"January 22, 1973? Beverly...that's the day the Supreme Court Roe versus Wade decision legalized abortion!"

My sister had never connected the two events. We were both struck with the irony. She still grieves the death of a baby on that day...the day that paved the way for millions of mothers to end the lives of their babies voluntarily.

Ironic, indeed.--originally posted January 22nd, 2004