Do they have value?

I was stopped in my tracks by the term “unwanted children” used by both David Henderson and Beverly Jacobs in their recent letters. In a society that laments school shootings, children at the southern border being kept in “cages” as well as children in Ukraine being left homeless (or worse), are we really comfortable classifying a group of children as unwanted?

Is it because children are disposable before they are born? They have no intrinsic value or human dignity? Their value only lies in being “wanted” by some qualified adult?

The fact that we casually throw around that term should make us all uncomfortable. Our lives each began at conception and, because we were allowed to grow and thrive in the womb, we are here today able to cast judgment regarding the value of other human beings.

Our federal, state and local governments spend billions of dollars each year attempting to care for people on the fringes of society, yet we cast out certain children as being unwanted.

I for one am not prepared to look a child in the face and tell him or her that he or she is not wanted. I suppose that puts me in the group that should be, according to Mr. Henderson, required to “raise unwanted children into adulthood,” applauded by Ms. Jacobs as a refreshing and unique suggestion about what can be done to “contribute to the health and well-being of the citizens of our country.”

Am I to assume that at adulthood these unwanted children suddenly have value? Perhaps the cruelest thing is to tell someone is that he or she isn’t wanted or has no value to society or doesn’t belong. How much mental illness stems from this message? How many suicides and drug overdoses? How can our hearts accept this without us all being permanently scarred and our society left in shreds?

SHANNON CALLAHAN

Little Rock