The cry of a child about to be incinerated

On 22nd May 1969, various British newspapers reported on the case of an aborted baby that, on its way to the incinerator, cried out.

There is nothing new in the shocking story currently circulating about miscarried foetuses (and, presumably, aborted babies) being incinerated.

What is really shocking is the fact that we have allowed this barbaric practice to proceed uninterrupted for so long.

We have become complacent and, perhaps, not supported the pro life organisations as much as we could have done, but the bishops also have not been at the forefront of bringing the issue of the sanctity of human life to the attention of those medics and nurses who, 45 years into the baby incineration process, have now completely lost sight of their actions; to them they are disposing of clinical waste.

Back in 1969 my eldest brother John, RIP, wrote a poem expressing the horror of this practice.

It is abhorrent, in the extreme to think of an aborted child crying out but many do, on mortuary slabs and, I am sure, on the way to the incinerator.

Hear me O God.  Hear.

From the depths of my condemned cell I cry.
None will hear me but You because You see,
I have no vote.
I did not murder nor did I steal or wound.
Yet I am held here helpless before the sterile steel.
Or the poisoned needle.
A death too brutal for murderers is a death
reserved for me.
No comforting breast nor loving Mother's arms await me.
My body will be given to be burned.
What have I done? I have not earned
this sordid unlamented end.
In sin was I conceived. Unwanted I die
before I shall be born.
O when the metal enters my brain,
when I shall kick my last convulsive agony,
take me, take me to Your arms.
None will console me, none cherish me.
None hear my last suffocated
shriek from the traitorous womb.
Save You, save only You.
O love me God.

John Francis Collins RIP