Even two weeks after he died not many people recognize the name Cannon Hinnant. A week after George Floyd died, just about everybody knew his name. George Floyd died of a drug overdose. Cannon Hinnant was actually murdered. Floyd’s death was used to start an insurrection in this country. Cannon Hinnant’s death might truly ignite a conversation about the value of life.
The facts are not in dispute. Five year old Cannon was playing outside in the street at about 5:30 PM on Sunday, August 9th. Multiple eye witnesses said that 25-year-old Darius Sessoms came out of his house. He walked up to Cannon and fired a gun at Cannon’s head from point blank range as Cannon’s two older sisters, 7 and 8 years old, watched. When police arrived, they found Cannon suffering from a gunshot wound. Officers and emergency medical services personnel tried to save Cannon’s life before he was taken to the nearby Wilson Medical Center, but he did not survive his injuries. This is the most appalling child murder in modern history in this country
The motive for the killing is less clear. Cannon’s father said “I have no idea why he would kill my son in front of his two sisters and cousins. There was never anything between me and him, any bad blood whatsoever for him to have a reason to do this.” Some have said that Cannon may have ridden his bike on Sessoms’ lawn. Regardless of the reason, this is an unspeakably evil act. Sessoms has been arrested and charged with 1st degree murder.
Although Sessoms is black and Cannon was white, the family has repeatedly emphasized that the killing was not racially motivated. So, the obvious question is what was the motive? How could someone take the life of an innocent five-year-old? Has life become worth so little that taking a life is no big thing?
Regardless of what motive surfaces from this horrendous incident, what is clear is that some people have little regard for human life. How has America reached this point? Where does this devaluing of human life begin?
Without a doubt the large-scale devaluing of human life in America began with the horrendously wrong-headed decision by the Supreme Court in Roe vs Wade in 1973. In the future Americans will look back and wonder how people could be so callous about the lives of unborn children. Since 1973 tens of millions of children have been killed. This is a much larger Holocaust than ever occurred in Nazi Germany. Planned Parenthood has led the charge by defining children as “inconvenient,” “unnecessary,” etc. They have targeted black neighborhoods in particular in their quest to destroy life. Many women have been left devastated by the experience.
Something that was supposed to be “safe but rare” is neither. More black children are aborted in NYC than are born. Because of issues resulting from an abortion, many women find they can no longer conceive children. Other women experience severe problems with depression and other mental health issues. Once Planned Parenthood receives their blood money, they wash their hands of any downstream problems resulting from the killing of an unborn child.
This attitude about “inconvenience” of children has led to some horrifying results in surveys done on college campuses. Some pro-abortion students think it’s morally acceptable to kill a child after birth up to the age of five, according to a Christian group that that does pro-life counseling on college campuses.
“I would say we run into at least one [at] every campus that we go to, and we go to approximately four campuses, or we do four days of college outreach a week,” said Kristina Garza, director of campus outreach for the California-based Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust.
“And I would say at least one, sometimes more than one student per campus will admit that they think it’s okay to kill a child after they’ve been born.”
“They say that this child can’t fend for itself, or the child’s not self-aware, therefore it’s not fully human. Or they’ll say it’s human, but the child is not a person because it’s not self-aware or can’t survive on its own. They use arbitrary characteristics to discredit the humanity of the child before birth, and then use those same characteristics to discredit the humanity of the child after birth.”
This is a logical extension of abortion on demand. A young child, born or unborn, is not seen as a human being. There is little valuing of its life. Therefore, the child can be discarded if that suits those who are responsible for its conception. Even the Chinese are not this callous. In China once a child is born, it receives the full protection of the state.
Garza went on to say,
“But I think as well, students are seeing that our society, or at least part of our society, is telling them that abortion on demand for any reason is a woman’s right. And so they get this idea that a woman’s right and a choice are more valuable than anything.”
“And if you have a choice to have an abortion up to nine months [that] is ethical, then of course having an abortion after nine months’ gestation must be ethical because a person should have the choice to do whatever they want. So I think it’s an over-generalization of the abortion-on-demand-without-apology mentality.”
The idea that killing an unborn child is no big deal is grotesque. It is at odds with the idea that all life is valuable. That there is responsibility for decisions made and actions entered into. The Left feels that whatever they do is okay regardless of the obvious moral turpitude at work.
The Democrats give unequivocal support to this idea that killing an unborn child is a right. Tom Perez, DNC chairman, has stated that one cannot be a Democrat if one is pro-life. So we have one political party in this country that believes an unborn child has no right to life. How does this play into the mentality of some people when they look at children?
We may never know what the motivations of this 25-year-old man were when he committed this obscene act of depravity. As a country, we must return to the idea that the life of all human beings is valuable. Abortion, except to save the life of the mother, must be defined as the heinous act that it is.