Stilling the cries of grief
by Paul deParrie

Years ago I heard about the Japanese Shinto sect devoted to helping women who had aborted their babies to keep the babies' ghosts from haunting them. Just the other day, a New York Times article, appearing in the Sunday, January 28, 1996 edition of The Oregonian, detailed the story of the mizuko jizo —small idols in a Shinto temple which these women purchase, dress up, and regularly visit which represent those murdered children.

When I first heard the story, I thought, "What a racket!" These women kill their babies, then someone profits from them forever by selling them an idol and having them pay a monthly stipend for prayers to keep the child's spirit away from them.

In a nation that has never had any religious qualms about abortion, the women still pay dearly for their "freedom."

But this exploitation is chicken feed compared to Planned Parenthood. This bunch started by offering "sex education" that was designed to produce more and more out-of-wedlock pregnancies, followed by being the largest abortion referral agency and the largest abortion provider in the nation. More recently, Planned Parenthood has acknowledged that some women suffer emotional distress after killing their child (as any murderer with a conscience would). PP has purposed to develop a post-abortion counseling service.

Up until now, the U.S. version of the Shinto priests were psychiatrists and psychologists who kept women coming back forever to "keep the ghosts away."

But now, Planned Parenthood, having made a great profit in sex education, abortion referral, and abortion, would soak up the final dollars by offering counseling to "help" women overcome what they did following their sex education and abortion counseling in the first place.

What a racket!

Leave it to the world' s leading abortion promoter, America, and the world' s premiere business leader, America, to come up with yet another way to profit off the bodies of the murdered unborn.

But, back to the mizuko jizo.

How do the American church and the women therein expiate for their abortions? The misery of the Japanese women—who have no moral teaching against abortion—is palpable.

"I have done something bad enough to be cursed," said Yuka Sugimoto, a woman visiting her mizuko jizo in Kamakura, Japan.

A man quoted in the article welled up with tears as he spoke of his girlfriend and the murder that they both participated in.

This, in a country that has no anti-abortion activism, no national debate on abortion, no politicians taking this or that position on abortion. (Who says that the guilt all comes from moralists imposing their values on others?)

It doesn't even require a particularly astute listener to hear the wailing of grief-stricken mothers in Japan.

Here in America, we have our annual Washington, D.C. march, many local activist groups, politicians who cannot run for dog-catcher without stating their position on the issue, newspaper articles, editorials, and letters to the editor which pound this issue to death—and we have no real concerted cry of grief heard throughout the land.

These are women—even members of our churches—who have murdered their own infants and we hear nothing of it save an occasional muffled noise out From under the misnomer of "victim of abortion."

Little comes from the Church on this matter. Pastors are afraid of offending a murderous mom for fear she will leave instead of speaking out for fear of being accountable for her blood. Even when a woman does repent, often she is treated as a victim instead of a perpetrator. "They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly saying, 'Peace, peace' when there is no peace." (Jeremiah 6: 14)

I suspect that deeper down, the reason there is no confrontation of this sin is that there remains so much of it still in the camp. After all, we can't have little Suzy embarrass her father the pastor or elder by being pregnant outside of wedlock. And we just can't have another child—that would be bad stewardship !

Going to the Church on this is like the woman with marital problems going to her divorced friend for advice.

So, we stifle the cries of grief by refusing to address them or by casting the killer as victim. Lord help us to break past this blindness!

Japan is so much better off. In this, they are like the publican praying and smiting his breast hoping for forgiveness; America is like the Pharisee who prayed to himself saying, "Thank you that I am not like this heathen."



© 1997 Advocates for Life Ministries