Posted by
Russell Neglia on Monday, March 10, 2008 12:00:00 AM
Several years ago I gave a
pro-life presentation to a group of friends that meets on a monthly basis to
discuss spiritual matters. I
prepared the talk and gave it based on an outline of the important issues that
we deal with everyday with abortion and the dignity of the unborn. Since I knew all of these people, I
felt comfortable giving the presentation.
Little did I know, however, of the very negative reaction I would get
from most of my listeners. One
person (a close friend) had a look on her face that is still seared in my
mind. The look plainly meant: “I
do not want to hear this message. Why are you forcing me to hear it?”
Of the 12 people in this group,
only three of us were clearly pro-life and the rest clearly pro-choice after
this discussion. What was most
heartbreaking was not the negative reaction that I got, but the fact that these
nine people, who were clearly pro-choice, were committed Catholics who
regularly attend church. Catholic
Social Teaching clearly teaches that life begins at conception and the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that abortion is an evil that merits
excommunication from the Church.
This, apparently, means nothing to these people.
The dominant reason for being
pro-choice for these people was an economic reason. Most opined that they felt that if a person was not in an
economic position to have a baby, then it was acceptable to have an abortion. I argued the scientific basis for the
humanity for the unborn but no one heard it nor did they consider it – the
economic reason seemed to be the over-riding reason why an abortion would be
considered acceptable.
Is economics a good reason to kill
a human life? Well, I’ve never
heard anyone say that we could kill living human beings if we cannot afford
them.
In my own family, my mother had
seven children. We lived in Sicily
in the mid 1940s immediately after World War II. My hometown was perhaps the poorest town in all of Sicily. Everyone lived on a day-to-day
basis. No one had a paycheck. All
lived as subsistence farmers. No
one had any possessions to speak of such as a radio, a car, a TV, a telephone,
a bicycle or anything we now think of everyday possessions. None of us children ever saw, let
alone, have a toy. When my parents
got married in 1938 they could not afford to have any children because they had
no resources to support them. The
same could be said of every other inhabitant of this little town of about 3,000
people. No one could afford a
child, not even one, yet the average family had five to seven
children. To make the case even
more compelling was the fact that there was no government help of any
kind. No welfare, no food stamps –
nothing. Everyone made it on their own. No one ever went hungry; no one starved or died of
starvation. The town did not even
have a doctor, a clinic or a hospital.
These statements are not made to
impress anybody, but to make a point:
Economics has nothing to do with the value of a human life. Yet, our
modern American culture has adopted this falsehood as one “reason” to destroy
an innocent unborn human life.
This is one of the most pernicious lies that the pro-choice side promotes
shamelessly.
The pro-choice side promotes this
type of reasoning like it makes sense.
Even if you can’t afford a baby, is killing it the only solution or
choice? In California today, you
can drop off an “un-wanted baby” in any fire station with no questions
asked. You can give the baby up
for adoption. The current hit
movie “Juno” is about a young woman who gives up her baby for adoption. Why
would you even consider killing an unborn baby because you cannot afford it? Where is the logic?
Here are some of the most
contradictory positions that pro-choice people stand for:
- Abortion
is a private matter or a “choice.”
- It
is up to the pregnant woman if the baby lives or dies
- No
one has the right to tell a woman what to do with her baby
- Church
teaching can be ignored at will
- An
unborn child can be aborted up to delivery - legally
- An
unborn is not a person
- The
unborn has no legal rights
- The
unborn is not a separate individual but part of the woman’s body
- The
unborn is not a baby until sometime after birth, as Senator Barbara Boxer,
stated in a famous exchange with Senator Rick Santorum a few years ago.
You have to read this to believe it.
Click on the hyperlink just noted.