Afganistan's news has brought back a memory from a few months back. The prompting visual is of an Afganistan parent passing a baby over a wall at the Kabul airport to a Marine who accepted the child. No clue what happened after, and that's the triggering part.
The conversation in memory harkens back to our southern border, another news shot of a couple of young children being dropped over the wall onto American soil. The woman I was speaking to saw it as a horrible thing to do, proof of the lack of caring by the parent(s) of the children, proof that these were people whom we didn't want to have in our country.
After reflecting for a minute, not having formed an opinion yet, I came at it another way. Parents pretty universally do love their children and want what is best for them. I recognized how traumatizing the event could be for the children, being separated from family that way. But I suggested that the woman I was speaking with, while fully recognizing the tragedy of that act, try to imagine how awful their lives must be in order for that to seem like a good idea. Not knowing what's happening to your young children is terrible. What in their lives is so much worse that this is better? What would it take for her to resort to the same action?
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