Abortion and Children's Book

 

Children’s Book, “Sister Apple, Sister Pig” Attempts to Rationalize Abortion

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By Gary Cangemi
Children have a natural curiosity about life in the womb. When the mother of a young child becomes pregnant, her born child is full of questions and wonder about the life growing within her.  It would never occur to a child that his mother was growing a lifeless blob of tissue inside of her that doesn’t become a living person until AFTER it is born.
Ironically, a recently released e-book entitled “Sister Apple, Sister Pig,” a children’s book by Mary Walling Blackburn, in which a father attempts to explain abortion to a young child, makes no such claim. Rather, it uses narrative and photographs to justify an abortion after admitting that the child growing in the womb is a living person.

In this story, a young boy (or perhaps girl, it’s supposed to be ambiguous) named Lee is aware that he had a sister who was aborted after his parents decided it was not economically feasible to have a second child. Lee wants to know where his sister is now. He attempts to imagine that his sister is now an apple growing on a tree in the orchard or perhaps one of the pigs in the family sty. But he dismisses these possibilities after his father suggests that both would eventually be eaten.

“Well, she used to live in Mama and doesn’t anymore. She doesn’t live with us,” Lee explains to Papa. “That’s right,” Papa softly affirms, “she briefly lived in Mama.”
Here the author freely admits that the unborn sister was a living person but is no longer alive.
Lee has more to say: “She lived before me, but Mama couldn’t keep her. Mama says she is a ghost.”
Lee tells Papa: “I’m not sad that my sister is a ghost! If you kept my sister, you would be tired, and sad, and mad!” 

“Why?” wondered Papa.
 “Because we would be wild and loud and sometimes we would fight. Mama might be scared that she could not buy enough food for us. Mama might not have enough time to read to me, to paint with me, to play with me, to talk with me….”

Thus the bewildered child attempts to make sense of why his sister was not permitted to be born. Obviously, these are things his parents at some point had told the boy to deal with his questions and concerns. Sensing his child’s confusion, Lee’s father tries to clarify things:

“Lee, you have some good reasons to not have a sister right here right now. Maybe you will have another sister when there is more time, and there is more money.” 

Later in the story the child admits to his uncle that his sister is a ghost because “Mama had an abortion.” The uncle adds to the conspiracy of rationalization by assuring Lee that his sister is a “happy ghost.”
The macabre tale concludes with Lee, dressed as a superhero, confiding to a friend that he can conjure his dead sister whenever he needs her.
In the book’s acknowledgements, Walling Blackburn thanks her own “ghost sister” and warns “Masochists, look elsewhere,” because, “between these pages you will not find the ‘luxury of grief,’ culpability’s sharp sting or salty guilt.”

The book’s author is an assistant professor of art at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts. On her faculty biography page, the author calls herself an “artist, activist, teacher, writer, and feminist.” The book is an e-book, or electronic book, offered free of charge on the internet.

An appalled Glenn Beck read excerpts from the book on his radio program and expressed his outrage over the desensitization of children toward abortion.
“I’ve not seen something this evil since Nazi propaganda and what they were doing with children,” he exclaimed.
By referring to the aborted child as a ‘happy ghost” the author seems to be implying resignation and acceptance of the unfortunate sibling’s fate by her disembodied spirit in an apparent effort to allay children’s natural fears and concerns on the subject of abortion, inoculating them from the horrors of this tragic industry.

Editor’s note. This first appeared in The Pro-Life Reporter and is reprinted with the author’s permission.

Source: NRLC News