A hashtag has been trending on Twitter today, and at this moment has something like 17,300 18,100  22,300 hits:  #anotherboy

What this means, in brief, is that the word/phrase/topic of “another boy” has been cited over 22,000 times today.  It ranks as one of the top 10 hashtags.

What does “another boy” refer to?  In the fourth undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress, the buyers are shown the organs of a recently aborted fetus.  A doctor and a medical assistant isolate and identify the organs, when the doctor asks, “Did you see any legs?”

The assistant casts about, then drags a longer piece toward the front of the petri dish.  They doctor notes it with some satisfaction, then says, “And another boy.”*

As I’ve recently become familiar with Twitter, this hashtag – and all the signification and context – this first-world, destined to become a relic of the early 21st century electronic media linguistic cue – this #anotherboy –

Well, it was devastating.

Start here:  In an environment which could not be more pro-choice, which could not be more conditioned to seeing a fetus as subhuman, this medical doctor actually says, “It’s a baby,” and later effuses, “And another boy.”

Look, no one knows what you’re thinking.  No one is going to harangue you, right now, for giving this a try.

Just let that settle in.  Somehow, this abortionist doctor looks at a petri dish of “the products of conception” and sees a baby boy.

I have more to say – in fact, I would suggest our doctor has more to say, though she did not intend to.

That is – this is another boy.  Another funny, physical, messy, sweet, troublesome, fearful, courageous, clumsy, beautiful boy, who we have let be reduced to a pile of his physical parts.  How many boys have we lost this way?  How many girls?**

Finally, there is the meaning which she did not intend (by her tone), but could not have been more clear about (by her actions):  This was “just” another boy.  As if it didn’t matter the slightest bit, as if human potential were negligible.

Again, you’re reading this alone.  What about you and your human potential?  What about the people you love and admire?  Might we throw them away so easily, and would you remain silent?

Friend, I’m another boy.  I was conceived unexpectedly, in a country where taking my life in the first several months was legal, for any reason at all.  I was all kinds of inconvenient, a cause for deep anxiety, and I hear that my mother would have been perfectly justified, in this culture, to end my life.

Fortunately, hers is a greater dignity than any set of rights could bestow on her.  And her grandchildren will thank her for that.

*I’m being deliberately understated here.  It would not strain any disinterested person to think this phrase was actually “exclaimed” and deserves an explanation point in the retelling.

**75,000 – Today.