When an NFL player (or his family) make the news, it’s usually because something went wrong (this something could range from steroids to murder — but if the story is about off-the-field behavior — you can bet it’s negative.)
Too often, the heartwarming stories that might inspire us don’t get equal time. Such is the case for Redskins defensive end Stephen Bowen and his wife Tiffany, who have sought to turn a devastating event into an opportunity to help others. They probably deserve more attention.
The story begins with a tragedy. As Washingtonian recently noted, two years ago Tiffany Bowen
“delivered two boys, Skyler and Stephen, each weighing only a pound and a half. The next few weeks were spent in crisis, a period in which Stephen underwent open-heart surgery and Skyler struggled with an infection that ultimately claimed his life. The Bowens’ despair was intense, almost crippling for Tiffany, but it made her aware of the issue of how jurisdictions deal with premature babies who die—including some, she says, that treat the bodies as medical waste—and it moved Bowen and her husband to do something about it. They started a foundation, named Skyler’s Gift after their son, to provide help and support to others who find themselves in similar situations.
‘Skyler’s Gift was started because while in the hospital I met people who also lost a baby, and some of them could not afford a funeral,’ Bowen said during a Thursday luncheon at Cafe Milano. ‘Depending on what state you are in, if you have a baby that passes away in prematurity the baby is considered medical waste. You cannot pick up the baby and give the baby a proper funeral. Some places will do a mass cremation.’ Bowen says when she learned of these policies she was perplexed. ‘How is this happening in this country? How can we have mothers walking away from the hospital with nothing?'” (Bold mine.)
While this has nothing specifically to do with abortion, it has everything to do with the dignity of human life. Whether they realize it or not, the Bowens are now at odds with a modern culture which says the inconvenient or uncomfortable shall be quickly and quietly discarded — not solemnized.
The fact that hospitals would treat a premature baby as “medical waste” is indicative of a larger weltanschauung that undergirds the pro-abortion ideology.
The pro-life community should embrace and financially support causes like this — not to politicize them — but because it is utterly consistent with a worldview that respects innocent human life.