11/29/2004

There are currently approximately 46 million abortions performed worldwide each year... very rare event, need to pay close attention to actually spot one.  That's 126,000 per day, 5,250 per hour, 87 per minute, almost 1.5 per second.  By the time you finish reading this paragraph, assuming you are a relatively fast reader, 20 more babies have been aborted.

Clearly an emotionally charged issue.  I offer some thoughts and some facts that may help you to understand how far to the extreme we have gone to "protect a woman's right to choose" while, at the same time, trying to fool ourselves into believing that we are justified because:

1. We say we believe abortions should be rare

2. We say we believe that abortions should not be used as a form of birth control

3. We justify even late-term abortions because we believe we are not killing babies, just aborting something called a fetus; nothing more than a cluster of cells that has the potential to be a baby

Some news items and my thoughts:

June 1, 2004

In a ruling with coast-to-coast effect, a federal judge declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Tuesday, saying it infringes on a woman's right to choose.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton agreed with abortion rights activists that a woman's right to choose is paramount, and that it is therefore "irrelevant" whether a fetus suffers pain, as abortion foes contend.

So what's the difference between infanticide and a partial-birth abortion?  I'm guessing about 30 seconds.... the "fetus" is killed just before he or she takes his or her first breath.... therefore, it is convenient to define the baby as not being human or having any rights.  We already know that the procedure fails sometimes... wonder what the ruling would be if the partial-birth abortion failed and then they killed the baby out of the womb.  Is that OK because it is merely the continuation of an act in progress?  Sounds insane?  Think it would never happen? I wonder....

The judge is clearly a nutcase, based upon her assertion that pain experienced while the baby is being dismembered is "irrelevant". 

May 24, 2004:  Moral equivalency...

From Yahoo! News - Kennedy's wife slams church moves against pro-choice Catholics (link no longer exists at Yahoo)

"The pro-choice position recognizes that the United States is a diverse, pluralistic society where a woman has the constitutional right to make a decision based upon her own conscience, religious beliefs and medical needs," wrote Kennedy, whose husband is the senior US senator from Massachusetts and one of Kerry's chief backers for the US presidency.

She decried what she said was a double standard in church hierarchy views on abortion and the death penalty.

"There has been no talk of withholding communion from pro-death-penalty Catholics," wrote Kennedy, an attorney who works on social justice issues.

"Where is the logic or moral justice in punishing those who allow a person to make a private moral decision, while remaining silent about those who authorize the government to take a life and thereby deprive a human being of his God-given right of salvation?"

My thoughts....

1. Abortion is both a government (state) and moral (church) issue.  Everything about the Church's decision to withhold Communion from those who support abortion rights is strictly a "Church" issue.  When we are considering the separation of church and state, receiving Communion is strictly an issue to be decided by the Church and is none of the government's business (or is separation of church and state only for the convenience of the "state").
    

2. To draw a moral equivalency between aborting (i.e.: killing) an unborn child and the punishment (i.e.: killing) of a murderer convicted of such a heinous act that he has earned the death penalty under the laws of the state is unconscionable.
    

3. There is no highly public active debate where politicians are pushing for more death penalty rights for the state.  Unfortunately, the same can not be said for pro-abortion politicians.  As such, pro-abortion Catholic politicians have either publicly set aside their own beliefs or have turned their back on Church teachings.  As such, the Church has the right to withhold Communion and politicians ought not to try to tell the Church what it can and can not do.
    

4. Differences in volume alone makes this a ludicrous comparison.  Here's an article from 1999: Highest number of US executions in 45 years.  It states that from 1976 to 1999 there were a total of 576 criminals executed in the US; convicted by a jury and following all appeals processes available to them in most cases I'm sure.  Since the unborn child does not get a trial, does not get the benefit of a jury and has no appeal process, not to mention the fact that the unborn child is innocent of all crimes, it is amazing that more people are not protesting even one abortion the way they protest one execution.  Yet, there have been a few more than 576 abortions since 1976.  The current national average is 1,370,000 abortions per year. Trying to verify my source, but here's the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data from 1996 Abortion Surveillance -- United States, 1996:

In 1996, a total of 1,221,585 legal abortions were reported to CDC, representing a 0.9% increase from the number reported for 1995.
The abortion ratio was 314 legal induced abortions per 1,000 live births...

Wow!  I never thought of it this way.  For every 1,000 births, their are 314 abortions!

Yeah.. a real moral equivalency here....

The justification for each and every abortion is based upon the choice between the rights of the woman and the rights  (or lack thereof) of the unborn child.  Some abortions are medically necessary, some (a small percentage I think) are performed to terminate pregnancies due to rape or incest, but many are exactly what they are advertised to be, a choice. 

A choice because the time is just not right...

A choice because it's just inconvenient right now...

A choice because the biological father is no where to be found...

A choice because two people made a bad decision at a bad time and got pregnant...

A choice because birth control was too restrictive...

A choice ...

Yet, how far removed are we from making these choices after the baby is born?  How much different from killing a baby is it when we destroy a "fetus" late in a pregnancy?  What moral compass prevents us from killing another adult or a child but allows us to abort a "fetus"?  If I am just not ready to deal with teenage kids, should I have a choice to abort them?

When did we become a society that is comfortable with the notion that destroying a viable fetus, with not only the potential to be a baby, but in actuality destined to be a baby, is OK simply because we choose to do so?