Life is Precious

By Connie Lynne Carrillo
©Catholic Online 2005

My hometown has endured a gaping, open wound for over four years. Our local tragedy became a national tragedy when the death of a beautiful three year old girl made national headlines.

Her death was shocking, heinous and despicable. We were mortified, humiliated and embarrassed that something so savage could take place in our hometown. She had been decapitated, stripped naked and abandoned in a wooded area near a residential street. Thrown away like a piece of garbage.

Kansas City woke up to the news and we were outraged, shamed and determined to bring her murderer to justice.

Four years slid by. Artists drew her picture and forensic sculptors created the sweetest face anyone would ever hope to gaze upon. Press coverage was massive and the country was blanketed with flyers bearing her likeness. Her story appeared numerous times in the national and international news and on America's Most Wanted. No stone was left unturned in the hunt for her killer.

Kansas City fell in love with the face of an angel and so we adopted this homeless, motherless child and named her Precious Doe. A child so precious no one could imagine how anyone could murder, mutilate, defile and abandon her.

A makeshift memorial quickly materialized as locals brought flowers, candles, baby dolls and stuffed animals to the place where she had lain. They would not let her memory be thrown away like garbage. And so we remembered. Eventually, we buried her and gave her a permanent headstone which reads: "Precious Doe. Found April 28th, 2001. Please help keep Precious Doe's memory alive." And so we have.

Today we know at last who she is and how she died, through the tireless efforts of local citizens and police officers who would not let this go. This precious little girl is Erica Michelle Maria Green. A beautiful name for a beautiful child; murdered in cold blood by those entrusted with her care; beheaded and thrown away. And now we will get justice for our adopted daughter.

Her life was precious. She did not die in vain. She changed a city. She made us more aware of just how precious children are, or should be, to us. She made us hold our babies a little bit tighter. She turned us into a family with a common cause that crossed the great racial divide in a racially divided city and united us in a way this city has never been united.

Her message to our country is that our children and the lives they lead are indeed precious. They should be loved, protected, nurtured and cared for. The safest place for them should be in their mother's womb or in their mother's arms. But these sanctuaries are now no longer safe. For many, these are the most dangerous places in their world.

What kinds of people destroy their own offspring and throw them away like trash? How low can humanity sink? Millions of other Precious Does are thrown into the garbage every day at abortion clinics. Children are lost forever in our foster care systems, never to be seen or heard from again. Children are starved, neglected, abused and abandoned.

In America children are no longer sacred. They are in the way. They are inconvenient. They are destroyed by the millions through abortion, neglect and abandonment. They are abused sexually, emotionally and physically. America has become a very dangerous place to be a child, born or unborn.

Abortion does not spare the unwanted and the inconvenient from the terror of this world. It brings the horror and terror of this world into their sanctuary of the womb and kills them and maims them sooner. But they are killed and maimed just the same.

The treatment of our children carries over to our abuse and neglect of disabled adults and the elderly. We starve and dehydrate them to death if they become helpless. We abandon them in nursing homes, homeless shelters and on the streets.

America should learn a much needed lesson from the life and death of Precious Doe. She did not die in vain. She will never be forgotten. Not in this town.

____________________

Connie Lynne Carrillo is a freelance writer and an award-winning columnist from Kansas City, Mo. Reach her at: connielynne@worldnet.att.net

Contact

Carrillo Features
MO, US
Connie Lynne Carrillo - freelance writer,

Email

connielynne@worldnet.att.net

Keywords

child abuse abortion

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