[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
Bible Study Title: Military Abortions: Pro-life Christians at the Crossroads At 2 a.m. on Christmas morning in 1976, we were awakened by a mad pounding and screeching at our front door. I went downstairs to determine what was going on. Since I could not see who was on the other side, I tried to ask a few questions through the door. All I received for an answer was more pounding and screeching. But amidst the cacophony I heard the words, "I'm hurt!" So, I opened the door. As soon as I did, a man lunged through, looked wildly around, vomited and collapsed at the bottom of the stairs where my wife, who was pregnant, and my seven children were standing. I called an ambulance and it came, with an uncalled police car right behind it. The man was drunk and had smashed his car into a tree. By the time the medics and police finally left it was 4:30 Christmas morning. The possibility of the children going back to sleep at that point was "zero!" About 4:30 that Christmas afternoon my wife, Mary, told me there was "bleeding." Before Christmas Day was over a miscarriage had taken place. The doctor called it a "natural abortion." One week earlier, he had said, "Everything is just fine." The cause of the Christmas loss he said was probably the trauma and severe tension coupled with the fatigue of the day. 1991: Abortions to Save Oil Fields In the very first news program I saw on TV after the start of the 1991 war between the U.S. and Iraq, an American pilot was being interviewed. He said he experienced no interference in dropping his bombs and that when he left Baghdad, "It was lit up like a Christmas tree!" For reasons probably related to Christmas Day 1976, the immediate thought that came to my mind was, "Imagine all the abortions that are going to take place in Baghdad over the next weeks." As I read the triumphant headlines in the newspapers day after day - "U.S. Pounds Iraq from Air"-and saw the pictures of missiles streaking into Iraq, I could not help but hear the silent screams of all the little Iraqi children in utero who were having their lives ripped from them. The lucky ones were the ones who took a direct hit. The ones, who were aborted because of percussion, vibration or because of the terror, trauma, malnourishment and/or exhaustion visited upon their mothers by war, would probably have suffered less agonizing deaths at the wrong end of a suction machine in an abortion clinic. Yet the silence on this matter in Church pro-life circles was thunderous. It was as if abortion for saving a person's reputation was absolutely evil; abortion for saving a family's economic life was absolutely evil; abortion for saving a person's job was absolutely evil; abortion for saving a person from what he or she perceived to be an intolerable personal future was absolutely evil, but abortion to save oil fields for the present and future control of American and British oil interests and to preserve the political status quo was morally permissible! It was as if patriotic earplugs were discreetly employed by pro-lifers in order to not hear what they had been telling others to listen to for twenty years -- the silent screams. Fallacious Argumentation & Military Abortion It does no good to slickly try to argue that when Baghdad is bombed it is not the primary intention of the bombing to induce abortions, but rather the primary intention of the bombing is to save Kuwait or save oil wells or to save our country's standard of living. These kinds of arguments are nothing more than the pro-choice arguments wrapped in a flag. No one ever chooses abortion just for the fun of aborting. Abortion is always chosen in order to save something that is considered of more value than the child in the womb or in order to be preserved from some evil that is considered greater than the evil of abortion. This is what the pro-choice philosophy is all about - abortion as the lesser evil. Instant Aushwitz Modern industrial war, once unleashed, produces an instant Auschwitz for the unborn- that's fact, not conjecture. Mass abortions are the necessary and one hundred per cent inevitable consequence of modern war. Morally, that which a person is certain will occur if he or she makes a particular choice represents a choice for which he or she is responsible before God. A person cannot morally claim he or she does not intend abortions that are certain to take place, by claiming he or she only intends to improve the mother's bodily health or the health of the body politic. So, where is the pro-life voice today for the voiceless children in the womb in Iraq, who [have been] chopped to pieces by military abortion, if Gulf War II starts? Or, is abortion by war the great exception to the absolute right to life of the innocent child in utero? If so, how many abortions is a desert oil field worth in the eyes of God? If not, where is the pro-life protest of industrial high-tech war on the unborn? Available Now It has always been the pro-choice understanding that the pro-life movement would come to the pro-choice position when a serious interest of its own or its members was attacked in a way that required the pro-life movement to see the "complexity" of the issue and the naïveté of its absolutist prohibition against destroying children in utero. Is preserving borderline neo-fascist Muslim dictatorships (Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia, etc.) or control over oil fields or the vain posturings of patriotism just the "complexity" the pro-life movement needs to find the exception to its total rejection of in utero homicide? Deafening Silence of the Prolife Groups If not, why was the Church's pro-life movement not being a microphone for those screaming in silence in the wombs of Iraqi mothers as thousands of abortions took place due to the US-UN embargo of Iraq? If not, why is the pro-life movement not now the lone voice in the world pleading for the lives of those Iraqi children presently in the womb who are about to be torn limb from limb by the dogs of war? Both Old and New Testament are clear: Where more is expected silence is sinful. Christmas tree lights are a symbol of new life in the baby Jesus-the Prince of Peace-who has just been allowed to complete His nine months in the womb of His mother. To analogize a Baghdad of a thousand horror-filled infernos to a "lit Christmas tree" is a grotesque misrepresentation of the event that is taking place. However, it is an accurate representation of a human mind and heart drugged into a moral stupor by the propaganda of erotic nationalism. Now let us pause here a moment and think: Is it not the flagrant misnaming of reality that is the foundation for all pro-abortion philosophies and politics. Is it not the obstinate refusal to call murder by its correct name, murder, that is at the heart of the pro-choice position? Is not the misnaming of murder as just another "medical operation" the hook on which all pro-choice propaganda hangs? Time for the Prolife Movement To Plead for All the Preborn The time has come for a clear, unambiguous position statement and for political action by the Christian pro-life movement on behalf of the unborn children of Iraq and by extension on behalf of the unborn children of all countries in all wars. I believe God could be trying to raise the value and significance of the Christian pro-life movement in His salvific designs, but to do this, the movement must have the courage to say an unequivocal "No" to a misguided patriotism that ignores or justifies abortions as just "military operations." If, however, the pro-life movement now succumbs to the temptation to start "hair-splitting" or cleverly "side-stepping" its uncompromising and vigorous defense of ALL the unborn, it is finished as a moral force for it will have become the embodiment of the untruth it opposes: "I am against abortion, but?" So to be clear, the Church is now being called to pass through the fire of Her own teaching. The integrity of Her response today will be the measure of the power of Her proclamation tomorrow. Murder does not become anything less than murder because it is mass murder. Logical pettifogging and rhetorical chicanery are what the pro-choice movement practices in order to justify abortion. These deceitful mind games must not become what the Christian pro-life movement practices in order to justify mass abortions - even if the Church's good and profitable relationship with the nation-state is jeopardized. I hope and pray that I am dead wrong but, because of its witness up to this moment in time, I am deeply concerned that the Christian pro-life movement will in the end turn a deaf ear to the silent screams of thousands of pre-born Iraqi children and instead see only Baghdad "lit up like a Christmas tree." God's anawim of the womb deserve so, so much more than this from those who have been given "eyes to see and ears to hear". Fr. Emmanuel McCarthy is a Byzantine Rite Catholic priest in the Boston area. As a priest, he does not tell people which political party or candidate to vote for. ~~~ Cardinal Ratzinger on Voting and Communion "A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia," Cardinal Ratzinger wrote. "When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons," he said. (July 2004, emphasis ours) ---Cardinal Ratzinger, former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is now Pope Benedict XVI
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
|
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|