And it will tell the story of an even greater number of little children who have not yet crossed that ocean.
Today, there will be a newborn baby abandoned at a hospital because his mother is not married. A brother and sister will go to an orphanage because their father can not find a job. A Chinese infant will be left in a train station simply because she is a girl in a country where families can only have one child and where boys bring more honor to the family. A six-year-old boy will try to speak through a crudely repaired cleft lip. A baby will lie on her back in a crib with her head flattened from many days of lying there just like this, staring out of a far-away window and developing rickets because there is no sunshine. An African child will lose a limb in a battle against druglords that will also take his parents.
Today, an orphanage worker in Ukraine will hand wash a load of disposable diapers so that they can be used again, tied to a baby with twine now that the tape is long gone. A developmentally delayed four year old in Russia will be given a diagnosis that sends her to an institution for the mentally retarded, to live out the rest of her short life. A Haitian woman will be told that there's not enough room in the orphanage for her starving son. She will be told that she can bring him back when a family is found. If he lives that long.
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