“And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.”

Sometimes the worst headlines aren’t the ones that poorly describe a news story but the ones that plainly describe it. Consider this headline coming out of Greenville, S.C., last Saturday: “Newborn baby found in Bi-Lo Center toilet.”

It’s a terrible headline to absorb because it describes a terrible horror: A pregnant mother walks into an arena bathroom during a performance of Ringling Bros. Circus on a Friday night, delivers a 6-pound baby boy into a toilet, and leaves him to choke and freeze in the cold, dirty water.

Amazingly, a cleaning crew found the baby alive but suffering from hypothermia. The workers administered life-saving aid until paramedics arrived, and doctors upgraded the newborn’s condition from critical to good within five days.

The boy’s mother surrendered to police: Jessica Blackham, 24, is a married mother of a 4-year-old child… charged…with two counts of felony child abuse and one count of unlawful neglect toward a child…

The story evokes gut-wrenching questions…

Now a deeper question: Why should every man, woman, and child identify with this abandoned baby boy? I spent days trying to avoid the mental image of a shivering infant gasping for breath and wallowing in blood, utterly abandoned and helpless. It was too horrible to contemplate—until I realized that I was just like him.

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