The Voice We Never Heard - by Samuel Falana

They never saw the sun rise.They never touched grass.They never cried in a mother’s arms, or took their first breath in a world too busy to notice their silence.And yet, they are with us. In our conscience, in our headlines, in our fears.They are the children who never made it. The lives that flickered out before they could even begin.Some were lost in operating rooms, labeled “choice” or “accident.” Some were torn from wombs not because they were unwanted, but because the world was unready. Some never had names. Just due dates that never came.Others were lost in the streets, hands raised in surrender, faces down on pavement, caught in the crossfire of a system too blind or too broken to protect innocence. They were unarmed, unseen, unspoken for.And some, millions, were taken in silence, swallowed by genocides, famine, war. Ethnic cleansing. Political rage. Collateral damage in a power game they never understood.We scroll past their stories every day.A trending hashtag.A moment of outrage.Then silence again.But their absence lingers.It’s in the emptiness of classrooms never filled.In the lullabies never sung.In the arms of mothers who still feel phantom kicks, and fathers who stare at sonograms of dreams denied.We are a generation obsessed with presence; posting, sharing, streaming—yet haunted by absence.The silence of the unborn.The stillness of a child stilled too soon.The image of a life lost with hands reaching upward, begging for mercy that never came.What if we listened?What if we heard their cries through the silence?They are not just statistics.Not just tragic backstories or political talking points.They are the could-have-beens—the doctors, the dancers, the poets, the peacemakers.They are the revolutions we’ll never witness.The songs we’ll never hear.And maybe that’s why it hurts. Because we know, deep down, that a society that loses its children is a society losing its soul.It’s not just about laws. It’s not just about blame. It’s about value.When did life become so disposable?When did we trade humanity for convenience, for power, for silence?This isn’t about judgment; it’s about remembrance.It’s about saying: you mattered.Even if you never spoke.Even if we never met.You mattered.And to every person walking around with quiet grief; for the child they aborted, the sibling they never met, the victim they watched die on a screen; this is for you too.We carry them in our chests.In every fight for justice.In every whisper of hope.In every candle lit for lives gone too soon.So today, let us write; not just for the living, but for the lives denied.Let our pens be their heartbeat.Let our words be the cradle.Let this generation be the one that finally listens to the silence.That finally feels the weight of what’s been lost; and chooses to do better. Because even if they never saw the light; They can still light the way.#CalamausDei

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