Burying Ashes and Truths

In a story from the Associated Press posted at Beliefnet, in Boulder, Colorado,

A Roman Catholic church plans to bury the ashes of up to 1,000 aborted fetuses Sunday to mark the 32nd anniversary of the court ruling that legalized abortion in the United States, prompting scathing criticism from family planning groups.

Boulder Abortion Clinic director Dr. Warren Hern, who had no idea the mortuary working with his clinic had been sending ashes to Sacred Heart of Mary Church, said the decision was “a cynical exploitation of private grief for political purposes.” 

Chuck Myers, the director of Crist Mortuary, has an agreement with the clinic to collect and cremate tissue and had been giving the ashes to the church since 2001.

The burial is not without controversy:

Kate Horle, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said most of Hern’s patients have fetuses with fatal anomalies. His clinic specializes in “late abortion for fetal disorders,” according to its Web site.

“These women are devastated,” Horle said. “To discover that an entity is essentially taking it upon themselves to create a religious service that may not be acceptable to the family is probably really painful.”

I am sure it may be distressing, for a number of reasons. But to many supporters of the original Roe v. Wade decision, particularly those who for years have called unborn children “tissue,” I would ask why would they be upset at some religious group conducting a ceremony in which the group thinks of the “medical waste” (or “uterine content” as Consumer Reports so nicely put it recently [see yesterday’s blog]) or “tissue” as something more than that. In these particular cases, one assumes that the mothers were fine with the clinic treating the remains as they do other “tissue.” But the Church ceremony of respect devastates them?

Why get upset? True, it’s weird to bury mere medical waste with ceremony, but it should only show more enlightened folks how misguided these Catholics are, with all their religious hocus-pocus and medieval views about “sanctity” and such things. It’s akin to the question I have for atheists upset at watching stupid superstitious religious people put nativity scenes in a park, something about a god come to earth. Since they know it’s all stupid and there are no gods, why get offended? It’s like getting offended by kids talking about Santa Claus when you know there isn’t one.

I believe the answer to both of these questions is the same: no one likes to be reminded of something that they have tried hard to deny and forget. Anytime the notion (the reality of the unborn child, the presence of a Creator) is taken seriously, by the actions of others, it hurts.