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Because She Was a Girl

Because She Was a Girl
By Hannah Harrison

I spend a lot of time combing through stories and headlines filled with harsh and saddening news in my profession. But every so often, a headline or two, in particular, catches my eye, and I wrestle with its darkness all day long. Recently, a Christian Post (CP) article titled: “Indian woman beaten for giving birth to girl as ‘son preference’ leads to 60% drop in female births.”

Those words left me pondering one question…what is a girl worth?

That conglomeration of a headline left me heartbroken for the women and girls of India. In this article, the woman was disowned and attacked by her husband and in-laws after giving birth to a daughter.

Wait, what? Because she was a woman who had a daughter…she was attacked? Certainty not!

Unfortunately, in India and other eastern parts of the world, women have never been viewed as equal, and having daughters rather than sons is considered a curse. In recent years, sex-selective abortions have raged as Indian women choose abortion over having their daughters subjected to such torment and danger. Due to this, in recent decades, there has been a 60% increase in “vanishing girls.”

Again, what is a girl worth?

When I was in high school, I read about a missionary couple serving in an eastern country. One day, they were in town and met a couple with several boys and a little girl. After spending more time with them, they realized that the young girl was very sickly and needed medical attention. After urging the parents and seeing no drive to care for the child, the missionary couple took the child until she was nursed back to health.

But shortly after, they noticed the child was evener sicker, and malnourished. Now, loving the child as their own, the couple took and cared for her until she was well. Months passed again before they saw the family, and when they did, they noticed the daughter was no longer with them. Heartbroken, they asked what had happened. The family, without remorse, explained that the daughter had passed away, more than likely from malnourishment. Unable to speak and grasp what this family had done, the missionaries asked why they hadn’t cared for the girl as they did the boys in the family.

“If we were in your country, we would have just killed her before she left the womb. How is this any different?” was their response.

While abortion is more rampant globally than it was during my high school days, that story always gave me chills. It was that story that made abortion real. It’s murder, no matter how you slice or dice it.

In America, we look at those parents and think, “You murdered your daughter? Starving her to death? How cruel!” In India, just because she was born a girl, she was considered worthless.

But again, in America, we see nothing wrong with abortion on demand. So, what is a girl worth In America or India? At a minimum, she’s worth a chance, but to the Maker of the universe, she is worth dying for.

We have deteriorated into a world that doesn’t see the value of life. And oh, how sickening is the thought of the world losing ten little toes, tiny ears, a drooling mouth, or a soul that could someday change the world…just because she’s a girl.

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” – (Psalm 139:13-16).

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