Inspired by University of Chicago Professor Rachel Fulton Brown’s “Writing Christian Poetry” class, I wrote a poem to address what I believe to be the civil rights battle of our time. Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, over 62.4 million abortions have been performed in the United States. The plight of aborted children is painfully relevant in our country and also our campus. At UChicago, our annual (mandatory) student life fees are still being used to fund abortions.
Told in the voice of the unborn, here is “The Unborn’s Complaint,” based on William Cowper’s 1788 poem, “The Negro’s Complaint.”
FORCED to prove my human value
in court supreme alone I stood.
(Black-robed judges here endow you
constituted personhood.)
I’ll make my case, though disenchanted
that we must again define
what in past was took for granted:
humans make more of their kind.
Still in voice as frail as ever,
What are women’s rights, I pray,
me in womb here to dismember,
me to torture, me to slay?
My dependence on my mother
cannot forfeit nature’s claim;
life and happiness to nurture
is the born’s and unborn’s aim.
Though our bodies now are fragile,
though we need our mothers’ care,
though our minds are not yet agile,
we are human persons there.
Forms the instant of gestation
a unique genetic code.
Though attached, a new creation
dwells in this matern’l abode.
Is there, as your fathers told you,
is there One who reigns on high?
Has He bid you kill and sell us,
speaking from His throne, the sky?
Has not He condemned all other
killings vile in every land?
Am I not a man and brother
that you bypass His command?
Ask Him if heart-stopping toxins,
chemic pills to starve to death,
sopher clamps to crush our skulls in,
catheters to do the rest,
are the modes of human genius
God above has authorized
or else tools of base convenience
to avoid unwanted childs.
By our blood in clinics wasted
in the name of women’s choice;
by the miseries that we tasted,
being robbed of legal voice;
by our sufferings, sorely brought us
as our bodies tear apart;
by the fright, as suction caught us,
ripping out our beating heart:
Deem us “clumps of cells” no longer,
till some reason you can find
worthier of regard and stronger
than the smallness of our kind.
Slaves you freed because those dealings
tarnished all your boasted powers;
prove once more your human feelings,
ere you proudly question ours!
For more on my poem, watch below!
*The views expressed in this article solely represent the views of the author, not the views of the Chicago Thinker.
Wow! How powerfully expressed! It makes one wonder why all the protesting and violence for the privilege to kill the unborn.
Dear Ana,
Thank you for composing this. It is extremely moving and poetically captures the horror of the inhumanity of our age that most of our society tries to ignore. Modeling it on William Cowper was brilliant.
And thank you Professor Brown for teaching such a great class.
Thank you for the sensible critique. Me and my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research on this. We got a grab a book from our area library but I think I learned more from this post. I’m very glad to see such fantastic information being shared freely out there.