Bloody Three

What honor should be given to those who advance the abortion holocaust? A Planned Parenthood award, three of them to be exact, were to be given last night to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), and Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). According to LifeSite:

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a self-professed devout Catholic, will receive an award from abortion giant Planned Parenthood at a reception Thursday evening. The award will be given in recognition of her efforts in passing the federal health care legislation, and, in particular, for her help in ensuring that the Stupak abortion funding ban was not inserted in the bill.

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood confirmed with LifeSiteNews.com that Pelosi would be receiving the Champion for Women's Health award, which recognizes "efforts to support women and their reproductive health."

Would the destruction (by saline, suction, or whatever) of a baby seal in the womb of its mother be described by any sane person as "support for the reproductive health of female seals"? This is the lying madness of Moloch and the demons in high places.

Comments

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

So much has been said about abortion, and still those who support it are (with some honorable exceptions) unwilling to view it through any lens that does not tightly focus on themselves and their own desires. What can break through to someone who does not see -- becasue they WILL not see -- that they are swimming in oceans of blood, indeed, drowning in it.

God have mercy on them for what they do and/or consent to. God have mercy on us for not having found some way to stop it that comports with God's love and not vengeance, which is His alone. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.

[Hoarfrost]

Does the Church accept her (Pelosi) as a communicant?

[Christopher Hathaway]

It seems to me that the Catholic church will have a credibility gap if it does not publicly excommunicate those of its congregation who are public and notorious, as well as arrogantly unrepentant, sinners. Pelosi and her ilk proclaim their rejection of Christian morality from the ramparts and are hailed for their evil. The church must respond in kind if it is going to have a witness to the world.

[Gian]

Cathars were stopped with a violent crusade, were they not?

CS Lewis too says that a problem with modern believers is that they do not riot (Reflections on Psalms).

In Third World countries, traditional norms are enforced by riots i.e. in India objectionable movies are handled by attacks on theaters, objectionable hoardings are liable to be destroyed.

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

Gian, you are right that some things need to be opposed with force. Christianity is a religion of peace, not of pacifism, and just wars are both possible and sometimes necessary. Defense of the weak, even by force, is also a Christian necessity, so that if we see someone threatening to shoot an innocent person, the attacker may be shot himself, if necessary to forestall his assault.

Nevertheless, violence on the scale that would be required to halt abortion would also be violence on a scale that would forever alter the nature of communal life in the United States. The premise of the pro-life movement is that God does not desire the death of sinners but their repentance, and if democratic government is to survive, the answer to this atrocity still must be found within the realms of persuasion and moral argument, not via a gun to the head. As long as the possibility of peaceful change exists, that is the means the pro-life movement is committed to.

What happens if the possibility of peaceful change is foreclosed (and how that would happen in a democracy in which even the founding documents can be altered by citizen action) is beyond my ability to speculate at this time.

[Robert Espe]

Mr. Harmon's argument is quite common, although I've often wondered if it is not evidence that we are guilty of applying the same double standard of person-hood as our opponents. After all, we have responded before to a holocaust of big people, but we do not respond the same way to one of little people, probably because we know that those who oppose us would not understand, and we would become the bad guys. Whether becoming the bad guys gives us pause because of pride, or a concern for our ability to witness to those who would label us, or simple confusion/apathy I'm not sure.

[Ian]

I think it’s time for the Christian community in this country to check its rhetoric against its supposed convictions. Persons who employ the language of ‘murder’ and ‘holocaust’ to describe abortion but refrain from taking the same vigorous action they would presumably take if the murder of an adult were being perpetrated in front of them, only grant to their opponents that abortion does, in fact, occupy a gray area of some sort. Deacon Harmon wins points, in my book, for being more humane and realistic; but Gian and Mr Espe (unfortunately) win points for consistency.

[Gian]

Surely a large ground exists between large-scale violence and passivity and waiting for SC judges?. Thus the rioting.

I suppose rioting is more relevant to pornography. I am a non-American and have often wondered why the American Christians tear off and destroy pornographic hoardings at least.

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

The pro-life movement is scored for inconsistency for using the language of murder and holocaust and yet not acting consistently with the concepts. It's a fair criticism. So, let's look at how history records what it took to end equivalent evils -- slavery and the (uppercase) Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of people died in America's bloodiest war to end the former, and the same was true (70 million worldwide casualties in all nations) in the war that was not fought specifically to end the latter, but saw it as a beneficial consequence anyway.

Abortion is murder, and it is (a) holocaust. Is the pro-life movement wrong not to want civil war to end it, and add to the death toll now produced by scalpels with deaths produced by bullets and bombs?

It may be a form of hypocrisy to call abortion murder and not act to protect the murdered. The movement is indeed guilty of failing to use nonviolent means (the "middle ground"?) more effectively, but I talked to Randall Terry once about RICO suits, and how many of us want our families' futures ruined by our actions? The government does not take lightly actions that actually do affect abortionists' profits. So, call me a coward for acting for my family's sake, and, ashamed of my cowardice, I will agree with you. Say I am afraid of the results of violent action (abortion clinics have been blown up, and abortionists themselves murdered) and I will note how counterproductive (and, of course, criminal and sinful) those actions were.

Admittedly, those judgments are subject to the Lord's correction. For now, by the light I have been given to this point, I guess I will settle for being called a hypocrite by murderers and those who give their consent to murder, and see how things get sorted out before the judgment seat of God. In the meantime, I can pray for the babies, and work to educate and persuade those around me. I am not so cowardly as to shun being known as pro-life, and to aid those who work with mothers to save their babies. It is always possible to contribute to and work with baby-saving centers in our communities.

And, as my communion's patriarch noted about pro-life actions, "Prayer is not preparation for the battle. It is the battle." With Thomas Jefferson, "I tremble for my country when I consider that God is just."

[Ian]

Thank you, Deacon Michael, for your response. I think your position is perfectly understandable, of course, and I don’t mean to pick on you (or other commenters) personally. Between your two posts here I think you do a good job of summarizing the basic arguments against violent opposition to abortion:

1 – Violent opposition would harm the social fabric of the nation
2 – Violent opposition may possibly involve the deaths of thousands
3 – Violent opposition would compromise the welfare of my family

The question, of course, is whether or not the social harmony of the nation, the lives of thousands, and the welfare of individual families outweigh the holocaust of millions upon millions of innocents. Aren’t these roughly the same objections that kept a good number of possibly well-intentioned German citizens quiet during the murder of 6 million Jews? At the risk of repeating myself, it seems to me that Christian foes of abortion who employ the language of murder and holocaust simply put themselves in an equivalent position. If they’re content to do that, then fine. Otherwise, I suggest they look at what their actions (or, in my opinion, admirable lack thereof) communicate: that there are, in fact, gray areas, and that there may be room for a more nuanced discussion on the place of abortion in American civil society.

[TimC]

Ian,

If abortion is indeed murder of an innocent human person possessing the full rights of every other human then there is no gray area as to whether abortion is right or wrong. Abortion is wrong, and it behooves those of us who know this to work to eliminate it. The "gray area" requiring "nuance" is how to prudently go about eliminating it. And here reasonable people may disagree.

You take it as self-evident that each German person living at the time was culpable for not resisting the Jewish holocaust violently. Therefore abortion opponents are similarly culpable. I am not convinced in either case. It is not at all clear to me that any single person is responsible for resorting to all possible means to prevent an evil from happening. What moral reasoning can you use to defend that position, and can it be consistently applied to every evil action?

[Ian]

In response to your first paragraph, TimC, I would only say that plenty of things which are generally acknowledged to be wrong are nonetheless legal. I'm sure you can supply your own examples. I don't appreciate the extremely broad access to abortion services which seems to be the rule in this country - even most European countries have more restricted access to abortion. One can limit (while not, perhaps, outright abolishing) legal avenues to abortion while providing ancillary services to those in need and, by doing so, possibly be more effective in limiting the total number of abortions performed. That's all I meant to suggest.

"You take it as self-evident that each German person living at the time was culpable for not resisting the Jewish holocaust violently. Therefore abortion opponents are similarly culpable."

Of course I don't. Not every German citizen was informed on the holocaust, I'm sure, but those who were may have offered similar objections to those offered by non-violent abortion opponents today. In either case there may have been a sense among those in question that there are sufficient numbers in their own situation to spread the blame to a relatively palatable thinness.

Nor do I personally believe that abortion opponents are, in actuality, "similarly culpable." It only seems to me that, by the rule of their own rhetoric, they *ought* to feel similarly culpable.

[Bob Srigley]

When Christians give voice to their conviction that an eternal soul is engendered at conception this will resonate in the hearts of all whose consciences are not completely seared. Natural law is still operative in most of the citizens of this nation. The current situation did not come about through the democratic process but was imposed through a tyrannical judiciary.

We will always oppose abortion as murder because we know it is murder both according to our innate understanding of natural law and because of the revelaton of scripture. But we may also oppose it as responsible citizens of a democratic republic because the decisions which imposed abortion upon our society were a perversion of the democratic process.

There seem to be hopeful signs that the tide is turning, that a majority now consider themselves to be pro-life. Even Hollywood finds it much easier (and profitable) to make a pro-life movie like JUNO than a movie that puts a positive spin on abortion. True Christians will always be a minority in our land, but that doesn't mean that we cannot inspire the majority to follow our lead when their own consciences confirm our stand.

[Gian]

Regarding slavery, I would note that it took a Civil War to end it, it is a parochial American view. In countries like India and China slavery had been extinct for centuries already.

I have found the chapter on Connivance in CS Lewis' Reflections on Psalms provocative. He says that rascallity (the quality of being a rascal) is not punished socially in Modern times, even by Christians. Do we see pro-abortion politicians/advocates/doctors being subject to social disparagement even by ardent anti-abortion people?

[TimC]

Ian,

I suspect that we may be agreeing more than we realize. For example, I think you would be hard-pressed to find many people who are working hard to make abortion illegal who are not also working to eliminate abortions by other methods, such as support of crisis pregnancy centers. Maybe you know someone who thinks that changing the law is the only way to reduce abortion, but I don't. Nevertheless, a truly just society does not murder innocent persons. It is therefore a prerogative for all who seek justice to see that it is applied in the legal realm to all persons, including the unborn. This may be done gradually, as you suggest, but it must be done eventually.

I do continue to assert that you are wrong that abortion opponents must necessarily feel shame for not using violence to achieve its end. Would you likewise suggest that opponents of capital punishment violently oppose executions? Would you say that those who disagree with the engagement of the military in a particular conflict ought to violently oppose the military? Are organizations like ALF truly justified in destroying property and threatening lives because they believe that animals warrant legal protection on the level of people?

Violence is not the only moral way to oppose an evil, even a grave evil such as murder.

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

Gian: As a footnote, I was only speaking of slavery in America. Regardless of your statement that slavery had been ended previously in India and China, it continues today (primarily for sexual services) and victimizes millions of all ages in many nations. Other countries are not necessarily more "enlightened" than America simply because their histories are somewhat different. Man's fallen nature is ubiquitous.

[Ian]

"When Christians give voice to their conviction that an eternal soul is engendered at conception this will resonate in the hearts of all whose consciences are not completely seared."

With all due respect, Mr Srigley, Christian have been giving voice to this conviction for thirty five years to rather little effect, and I don't share your hope of any very significant turning tide on this issue.

"..we know it is murder both according to our innate understanding of natural law and because of the revelaton of scripture."

Neither of which will bear much weight in argument with secularists and non-believers, especially when a basic reproductive science course will inform you how relatively common it is for a fertilized egg, for various reasons, to fail to attach to the wall of the uterus and end up unknowingly flushed down the toilet. -Which would constitute what? Involuntary manslaughter?

[TimC]

"With all due respect, Mr Srigley, Christian have been giving voice to this conviction for thirty five years to rather little effect, and I don't share your hope of any very significant turning tide on this issue."

And Christ walked on earth for less than 35 years to gain a handful of converts. What of it? Is one to cease to work for justice simply because it seems to be a losing battle for a time? How long did segregation last? Slavery?

And, anyway, the pro-life movement is gaining mindshare and political momentum. It is slow, and it is measured by generations not years. But I am hopeful, not least because my hope is in Christ, who said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

[Bob Srigley]

" ....especially when a basic reproductive science course will inform you how relatively common it is for a fertilized egg, for various reasons, to fail to attach to the wall of the uterus and end up unknowingly flushed down the toilet. -Which would constitute what? Involuntary manslaughter?"

Ian, I appreciate your response, but want to know just where you would draw the line? If a human life with an eternal soul is not created at conception, then when? Attachment to the uterine wall seems arbitrary; or is it when the heart starts to beat, or when brain waves begin? Perhaps sometime in the third trimester, or in the case of a partial birth abortion only if the head emerges from the birth canal whole and uncrushed?

I admit, I had never really thought about the little fertilized eggs flushed down the toilet, but once I did, it seemed quite marvelous to imagine encountering in heaven among the multitudes that no man can number, many fully mature and developed men and women whose entire mortal span consisted in the brief journey you describe.

To bear witness to an unbelieving world and an apostate church will mean receiving some ridicule to be sure, but better to meet it head-on at the outset than having been drawn aside, to have to struggle to regain a credible witness.

[Gian]

It is a very stupid argument that people make about fertilized eggs miscarrying. It is no bearing on what a person wills.

People die all the time. An embryo miscarrying is no different than people dying in an earthquake.