by Betty Baker Bailey

Where were you when the judges decreed

Little lives like mine were not life in deed?

Were you at work? Or out in the yard?

When life for me fell to such disregard?

Were you the one who put up a fight?

Who argued with eloquence life was my right?

Or were you the one who bended your knee

To beg mercy for little ones like me?

Did you go to a church to ask them to pray?

Did you offer your help to my mother that day?

Did you speak to a lawyer, a pastor or friend;

Discussing a way this nightmare to end?

And did you stay faithful as time passed on by?

Or were you able to drown out my cry?

Did you search out the truth of the horror I see?

Did you tell any others that it really is Me?

Did you write any letters to persons of state?

Did you try to help moms at hell's legal gates?

Did you offer my pictures as proof of my death?

Did you argue not everyone draws air for breath?

And where have you been in the years since my fate

Was decided by lies based on nothing but hate?

Do you still think of me with each rising sun?

Are you trying to finish that battle once begun?

Or do you rest all secure that you're heavenward bound

While thousands like me rot in the ground?

Do you think that this battle is not yours to fight?

Do you think God applauds your sense of what's right?

Have you helped to build churches with gleaming white towers?

Saved the trees, the whales or created new flowers?

Do you think giving them freely your money and time

Makes what's done to me any less a great crime?

Where are those Christians who rescued the children

Left in the dumps in the time of the Roman?

Where is the proof that Jesus is Love

For children, like me, who cry out to above

Where are you now with the cut of the knife?

Do you no longer care that it cuts out my life?

Do you not feel my pain? Do you not hear my cry?

Do you really believe my life is a lie?

I ask you one question. One question, ask I.

Think hard on your answer, the truth don't deny.

If judges decreed your life could be taken

Since one of your kin your presence'd forsaken,

How would you feel if I were to say

My duty to you is only to pray?

©2004