Pastor's Article Jan. 23, 2022

Weekly Article
The star 22-year-old running back at the University of Georgia the #1 ranked college football team in the nation has an incredible life story. To look at Zamir White now, at six feet tall and weighing 225 pounds, you’d never know, while six months pregnant with him, his 14-year-old mother Shanee White was urged to consider abortion because her son was measuring small for his gestational age. Fortunately, the boy’s great-grandmother intervened and saved him.
In an interview with ESPN, Shanee remembered that her grandmother Nancy White told her at the time, “We’re not going to terminate the pregnancy. No matter what’s wrong with him, he’s going to be born.” A frightened and overwhelmed Shanee told her grandmother that they should listen to the doctor since he was an authority figure. But Nancy responded, “The doctor is not God, so he doesn’t have the last say. If he takes one breath, he’s going to take it.” Zamir spent three months in the hospital before being discharged home with his mom and great-grandmother, who fed him with a medicine dropper to accommodate his lip and palate. When  six months old, he had the first of two surgeries to address the cleft lip and palate, and at 15 months for kidney problems. A fourth surgery corrected a hernia, and  a fifth surgery years later further improved his lip and palate.
The family suffered the loss of their earthly belongings in a fire when Zamir was four years old. His father was not in his life, in part because he went to prison not long after Zamir was born. Growing up in Laurinburg, the fourth poorest city in North Carolina, many of Zamir’s peers “fell victim to the streets,” according to Shanee, who is now a corrections officer.
From an outsider’s perspective, the odds were clearly stacked against Zamir’s success in multiple ways. Zamir’s story is a case study in many of the so-called justifications for legal abortion. Born to a single mother and with an absentee father in prison, early medical issues, surrounded by poverty if given a predictive vision, many would have judged Zamir’s life not worthy of living. But the crucible of early suffering has tempered Zamir instead of breaking him, and his experiences have inspired many others to live courageously, whatever their circumstances.
His mother told ESPN, “I’m just glad I listened to my grandma. I didn’t want to have a child in high school. It wasn’t something that was planned, but it happened and he’s here, and I love him to death.”  By Anne Marie Williams, RN, BSN
This story reminds us of how many great people have been lost to the tragedy of abortion, remember that every human life is sacred.   Rev. Wayne Marcus