Since experiencing the 2019 film Unplanned about the life and conversion of former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson, I've been unable to get the five-pound baby girl found in a Little Rock ditch on April 28, 1983, out of my mind.
She had been aborted in some manner then tossed into a drainage ditch beside the road, cast off like so much garbage by a desperate woman who had obviously convinced herself for whatever reason that the precious life she'd carried for 28 weeks wasn't worthy of living in this world.
The piece I wrote about that perfectly developed infant with auburn locks and brown eyes noted that her body had been autopsied by the medical examiner at the state Crime Laboratory. There, he determined that, at seven months, she could easily have survived (and even might have) for a short time.
The story understandably touched hearts and consciences across our state. Well, I'll qualify that. It affected much of the common-sense caring adult population devoted to the sanctity of human life. The child's death was the kind of horror story that couldn't help but touch every parent and grandparent.
The North Pulaski Right to Life chapter of Arkansas Right to Life in Little Rock decided to give this infant a name: Mary Rose Doe. It also arranged for a cemetery plot and funeral. As many as 200 attended her Christian burial. Afterwards, the group established an awards program honoring her briefer than brief existence and memory.
More than anything, Mary Rose Doe symbolized the reality of what was happening when we choose to abort forming offspring in the name of convenience or perceived necessity. The beautiful little girl could have been easily adopted into a loving family and grown to adulthood, perhaps with children of her own one day.
Instead, it was much like the horror that Unplanned's Abby Johnson witnessed on an ultrasound screen as a suction tube methodically ripped apart a forming baby as it struggled in vain to avoid the killing instrument, all as unapologetically shown in the film.
The shocking moment when the nation's then-youngest Planned Parenthood clinic director viewed the dismemberment and evacuation of a forming human being into a jar of, well, red mush prompted her resignation and membership in Coalition for Life, a group that picketed daily outside her clinic.
I especially appreciated this compelling film and her story because it ripped away the cloak too often used by the abortion industry that these "procedures" are just disposing of inert tissue. It weighed heavily on Johnson that she had used that same spiel to persuade many expectant mothers to have abortions.
Talking about taking a forming human life, or certainly one like Mary Rose Doe who was fully developed, and actually witnessing the horrific reality and results are two radically different, life-altering experiences. Johnson says she retreated to a clinic bathroom and cried, becoming sick at her stomach at what she'd just seen.
As this film demonstrates, a rapidly forming innocent human created in the image of its maker being dismembered and disposed of like his or her life and beautiful potential didn't matter is among the most soul-ravaging acts I can imagine.
Seeing the hideous result of what happened to Mary Rose Doe solidified my own feelings about the reality of aborting our unborn. The Right to Life members put it this way: "Mary Rose has touched our hearts ... A perfect little bud--clipped before she blossomed."
Yes, I have heard for years and understand the rationale applied to justifying abortion. But for me, most such arguments fall far short of the grisly and gruesome horror of what happens.
To preserve Mary Rose Doe's memory and as a tribute to her, Arkansas Right to Life established an annual recognition known as the Mary Rose Doe Award.
The organization regularly has presented its honor to an individual they believe had "gone that extra mile" in their efforts on behalf of the unborn. "It is a small way of the Right to Life movement telling Mary that we love her and that we will always remember her, and that her brief little life was not in vain," the group writes.
Since the first recognition in 1985, more than two dozen people have received the Mary Rose Doe Award, including Governors Mike Huckabee and Asa Hutchinson, the late Dr. Fay Boozman, Paul Greenberg and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge.
If you have yet to see Unplanned and aren't afraid to face the unvarnished truth about a mother aborting her infant, I can't recommend the film strongly enough.
A brief Internet search found in 2015, more than 630,000 reported abortions were performed across the United States--roughly the population of Northwest Arkansas. Worldometers reports there are an estimated 40 to 50 million abortions annually on our planet, which translates to some 125,000 daily.
RIP and Godspeed, the little Mary Rose Doe we never knew and the more than 50 million unborn humans who have joined you since our Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
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Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 05/07/2019