"Approximately 50 slaves..."

Standing about this time last year on a grassy corner of a cemetery, I read a recently placed marker

"Here lie approximately 50 slaves, names known only to God..."

Next to it broken and time-moldered stones covered the graves of the slave owners. The master died (cause unwritten) in the first year of the Civil War. His widow died 12 years later at an old age. Trying to wrap my mind around these few facts oppressed my spirit as much and more than the high temperature and humidity of that day stressed my body. Enslaved people had worked the surrounding hills and fields in the same blistering heat and sudden storms we were experiencing. That day I could choose to push a lawnmower in the relative cool of the evening...or put the task off.

Growing up two states north, I had only known black people who were free: our family's dentist, the State Representative who had sponsored me as a House page, my first college roommate, others in the dorm, co-workers, numerous friends then (and now). My parents respected all people. The racial meanness and violence I saw in the '60's was on black and white television screens. Fast forward...

I had hoped with the election of President Obama that we are finally "post-racial" in the United States. Was I mistaken? Apparently.... For "sins of our fathers" and sins of our own, for past and present exploitations, some call for "restorative justice" and forms of reparations.

Here is my question. If there's hell to pay for slavery and injustice, what is to be our national retribution for accepting abortion as a means of birth control? For locating abortion clinics conveniently in poorer, ethnic neighborhoods? Can it really be true that there are 1,786 abortions on black women daily? (The number was cited by Dr. Stephen Meyer on "Prime Time America" recently.) What if the very same generation that excused, advocated, and celebrated abortion-rights -- my generation -- is euthanised in old age whenever we have become too troublesome or too expensive to bear by the younger?

This is not written in personal fear today, but in sincere sorrow at the past and present inhumanities of people to other people who -- I am instructed by my Judeo-Christian faith -- all bear the image of their Creator.