One of the most inspiring pro-life stories ever told

A dying Chinese woman is finally gaining recognition as her work to save children has come to public light. Lou Xiaoying, 88, has apparently rescued and raised no less than 30 children, rescued from trash bins around her neighborhood. 

JINHUA, CHINA (Catholic Online) - Now suffering from kidney failure, Lou Xiaoying has saved her last child. She found each of the children in trash bins while earning a meager living recycling garbage. Some of the children she kept and raised herself, others were passed to relatives and friends who accepted them. 

Xiaoying saved her last baby seven years ago, when she was already 82. In a report to the Daily Mail, she said "Even though I was already getting old I could not simply ignore the baby and leave him to die in the trash. He looked so sweet and so needy. I had to take him home with me."

She added, "I realized if we had strength enough to collect garbage how could we not recycle something as important as human lives. These children need love and care. They are all precious human lives. I do not understand how people can leave such a vulnerable baby on the streets."

Child abandonment is an all too common practice in China where abortion is not only widespread, but also mandated by the state. However, the country's one-child-policy, much maligned for its forced abortion procedures, is only the latest in a widespread disregard for human life. The practice of abandonment, especially of girls, has been common since ancient times, since the culture greatly prefers boys. 

The Chinese people, for centuries, have also had to deal with the tremendous pressures of overpopulation and resource management. Yet, despite their dangerously intuitive allure, hard-line anti-life policies are not the solution to the country's problems, and never have been. 

Those policies have been recently met with growing criticism from the Chinese people themselves who are repeatedly horrified with the details of forced abortions and severe punishments for women who become pregnant in violation of the one-child policy. 

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this story is the fact that one woman, in a single neighborhood, uncovered more than 30 children in trash bins over the course of her life. That suggests this is a far more common problem that presently understood. It is horrifying to think that at any given moment, babies are being discarded as trash. 

Can there be any wonder why China has problems in so many other areas? Certainly, the country has been successful economically, but at what price? The people cannot be happy, and the economic boom fueled in part by a systematic disregard for human life and dignity, appears on the verge of collapse. 
A country that throws its children into garbage heaps cannot stand long in the eyes of God. It may prosper for a short while, but inevitably, the sins of its past will haunt the entire nation and a day of reckoning will arrive. On that day, woe to the mothers who threw away their children when they were most vulnerable. And blessings upon those who saved all the innocents they could. 

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One unnamed fan told the Daily Mail this, "She is shaming to governments, schools and people who stand by and do nothing. She has no money or power but she saved children from death or worse." 

The rest of the world can only aspire to her level of humble greatness.

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