Missing Persons

by John Comer

Genealogy is about people. Generations of people: parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, aunts and uncles, all the kin who might be expected to gather around the Thanksgiving dinner table, or be present for birthdays and anniversary celebrations. In Job’s earlier, happier days, his sons would take turns hosting feasts, and the family would come together to eat, drink, and visit. Most families have variations on this theme.

But most families are scattered about the country, or even the world, these days. It’s probably a rare Christmas when at least part of your family isn’t missing from your holiday gathering, and when this happens, you’re keenly aware of it. You phone them. They ask you what you had for Christmas dinner. (They already knew. You have the same thing every Christmas.) You talk about how much nicer the day would be if they were there with you. The point is, they’re not just absent. They’re missed. Every single individual is missed, and his or her name will be mentioned during the day.

We have about 36 million people missing from families in the United States. Their names will never be called, because they were never given names. Legally, they were never people. They will never be included in anybody’s genealogy. They had parents and grandparents, but they themselves were never allowed to be sons, daughters, or grandchildren. These 36 million missing persons represent about twice the number of people who live in New York state. They almost equal in number the entire population of our West Coast, the combined states of California, Oregon, and Washington. How can they be missing, yet never missed?

These lines are being written on the 25th anniversary of “Roe vs. Wade,” the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legally determined when a person is not a person, and may be disposed of as a non-person. In 1973 when Justice Harry Blackmun delivered the opinion of the court, he noted, “One’s . . . religious training, one’s attitudes toward life, and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one’s thinking and conclusions about abortion.” Approximately 36 million “non-parent” couples seem to have worked this out to their own satisfaction.

In the past 25 years we have generated 36 million people, who, like the Unknown Soldier, are “Known But To God.” He created their inmost being and knit them together in their mother’s womb ( Psalm 119:13).