Compassion For Our Children
The shocking deaths last year of three particular Australian children have again highlighted the crisis affecting children and our urgent responsibility to be relentless advocates for them, both at home and abroad.
Shellay Ward, Dean Shillingsworth, and an unnamed baby joined the 10.2 million children (under five) in the developing world who died from preventable causes along with 40 million children who were aborted last year. One hundred thousand of these abortions were performed in Australia, some of them paid for by our national health system.
The estimated number of legal and illegal abortions and their sum, the estimated total number of abortions worldwide, all have margin of error of a few million. Much of the possible error in the worldwide number of legal abortions comes from the need to estimate the level of underreporting in four large areas – China, India, Japan, and the former Soviet bloc states. The increased estimate of the number of clandestine or illegal abortions comes from World Health Organization estimates. The largest charge occurred in Africa, where WHO estimated that 3.7 million ‘unsafe’ abortions were performed in 1990 and 5 million in 1995.
The developing areas of the world, where 79% of the world’s people live, account for 64% of legal and 95% of illegal abortions. When both legal and illegal abortions are considered, the abortion rate is 39 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in developed countries and 34 per 1,000 in developing countries. Asia, the most populous region of the world, has the largest total number of abortions (17 million legal and 10 million illegal), followed by Europe with 8 million (most of them in Eastern Europe), Africa (5 million), Latin America (4 million), Northern America (1.5 million), and Oceania (0.1 million). Asia accounts for 59% of the world’s abortions, and Northern America only 3%.
Shellay Ward was seven years old but weighed just nine kilograms when she died, not in Honduras but in Hawks Nest, a seaside town in Newcastle. Her parents have been charged with causing her death through neglect. Dean Shillingsworth was the two-year –old whose was stuffed inside a suitcase and thrown into a dam. His mother has been charged with his murder. Two weeks before Christmas last year, police found the body of a nameless, newborn baby dumped in a plastic bag on a vacant block in suburban Newcastle.
These three children died the same year our former federal government sent the police and army into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to deal with the claims of extensive sexual abuse and neglect of children. They died the same year Australian police uncovered an international internet paedophile ring whose members molested children in real time, customers even paying to have the children dressed in specific clothing while being raped.
Jesus said it would be better to be drowned than “cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin” (Matthew 18: 6). Such is God’s love for children that a few verses later (vv 12-14), He illustrates by saying how He leaves the 99 to find the one hurting child.
Proverbs 31:8-9 says we are to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” The compassion of Jesus requires us to be so moved by the needs of children that we act.
We must be advocates for all children; those in our own families, churches, communities, nation, and the world. Pity and sorrow alone never change people’s circumstances. Here are some practical ways to encourage compassion for our children:
Praying for children,
Encouraging every child with whom we come in contact,
Sponsor a child or at least remaining committed prayerfully, financially, and relationally the children in your family,
Starting or serving in church community ministries to children and their families,
Serving in the church crèche or children’s ministry,
Fostering children,
Supporting your local schools,
Teaching scripture in schools,
Coaching or teaching children,
Supporting Christian organisations that assist women coping with unplanned pregnancies,
Protect children from violence and pornography on the Internet and television,
Speaking up or writing to appropriate agencies in response to inappropriate programs, advertisement and products,
Becoming educated about issues affecting children,
Befriending and influencing neighbours with children,
Join the Micah Challenge (www.micahchallenge.org.au) whose goal is to pressure our government to fulfil its commitment to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to halve poverty, and
Support Compassion Day on Thursday 15 May 2008 (www.compassionday.com.au)
References:
Henshaw, S., Singh, S., and Haas, T., The incidence of abortion worldwide, International Family Planning Perspectives, 1999, 25, pp. 30-38.
O’Rourke, P., End of the innocents, Compassion Magazine, Autumn 2008, p.3
