By Susan Ciancio
Over the weekend, we read the sad news that a deceased late-term abortionist from South Bend, Indiana, had kept the remains of 2,246 aborted babies preserved in his home.
Ulrich Klopfer died on September 3. Nine days later, the attorney who represents Klopfer’s family contacted the police to tell them about the babies.
Let that number sink in: 2,246.
Two thousand, two hundred, forty-six dead babies.
Sadly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for a man who made a living killing babies. Those are just the ones that, for some sick reason, he kept in his home. We will never know why he kept them or how long they were there.
We can only pray for the babies who learned violence before they were even born.
Somewhere out there, those 2,246 babies had mothers and fathers. We must pray for them too. Somewhere those 2,246 babies had grandparents as well. Maybe they even have siblings who will never know the blessings of having a brother or sister.
We mourn for them all. We weep for them all. And not just those 2,246 babies, but all of the babies who die each and every day at the hands of an abortionist, all so that a woman can have “reproductive freedom” and “choice.”
We see these stories, and we can’t help but feel disgusted and sad. But we must have that same disgust and sadness for every baby killed. And those feelings must spur us on to teach the next generation that every human being—from the moment he is created until the day he dies—is a valued child of God.
This mentality and our culture will not change unless we change it. And that change begins in our own homes, in our Catholic schools, and in our religious education programs. It’s time we take action and impress upon our children that the 5th Commandment—“You shall not kill”—includes preborn babies, not just those of us who are born.
A baby just created, a 15-week-old preborn baby, a 30-week-old preborn baby, a newborn, a toddler, you, and me: We all have one thing in common. We are all human beings created by God, with souls, who deserve dignity, respect, and a chance at life.
We must take responsibility and teach this to our children so that the next generation grows up hating abortion and loving babies. The Culture of Life Studies Program has a beautiful lesson entitled Defend Life: The Beauty of the Developing Human Being that explores the science of the earliest moments of a baby’s life and that teaches our inherent dignity. It is a great resource to help your children understand that preborn babies are not just a “blob of tissue.”
When we take it upon ourselves to effect change in our society, we will be doing as instructed in Proverbs 22: 6: “Train the young in the way they should go; even when old, they will not swerve from it.”
Change begins in our homes. Change begins with us.
Pray for those 2,246 babies and for their parents, who likely don’t even know their precious children were treated like a science experiment. It is a horrible injustice and a tragic way to die.
And pray for the soul of Ulrich Klopfer.