29/08/2024
On the green lawn of Resurrection Cemetery in Madison, Wisconsin, surrounded by gravestones, stands a breathtaking sculpture. It depicts a translucent, ethereal little girl of perhaps four years old walking, arms outstretched, towards a man and a woman. They are on their knees; the womanâs head is bowed, and her hand clutches her face. The man has one arm around her and reaches longingly towards the little girl with the other, his face gaunt, haunted, and stricken with grief. Created by Slovakian sculptor Martin HudĂĄÄek and placed in the graveyard in 2020, it is called âThe Memorial of Unborn Children IIâ and was created as a place for parents who have had abortions to come and mourn and remember. The statue, funded by donors, is a part of a series created by HudĂĄÄek to visualize post-abortion syndrome. He began his first sculpture on the subject a decade earlier. âI wanted to make a monument for unborn children,â HudĂĄÄek said. âI was praying, and many people came to me and said I need a picture of forgiveness.â Finally, he could visualize his creation: âIt looked like a crying mother and a child who forgives her.â His first âMemorial for Unborn Children,â located in Slovakia, shows a mother on her knees, one hand clasped to her chest, the other holding her face. A small and almost transparent girl stands in front of her, reaching towards her face, hesitantly, not quite touching her. It is not only a scene from an artistâs imagination; many post-abortive mothers describe their children coming to them, years later, through the veil of dreams.
