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Abortion Thinking Is Upside Down
By Fr. Frank Pavone
HERALD Columnist
If anyone tells you the baby in the womb is not a baby, that person may as well tell you the earth is flat.
Pro-lifers have heard the out-of-date, unscientific assertion, "It's not a baby," for many years. People who say this ought to be asked when are they going to catch up with the times. These are the days of fetoscopy and fetal surgery. Of course we know when life begins. And we know that the earth is not flat.
But now those who promote abortion say something
even worse than, "The earth is flat." They now essentially say, "The earth
is flat if you think it's flat, and it's round if you think it's round.
Decide for
yourself." Whether the baby in the womb is
a baby or not really doesn't matter to them, because its fate will depend
on the mother's choice. Period.
This is the mentality we are dealing with.
It was clearly expressed to me one day by a man holding a sign that said,
"Keep Baby-Killing Legal." He told me that he supports abortion and wants
to be
honest about what he is supporting. The value
of the baby depends on the mother's choice.
Pro-lifers need to understand that this is how a growing number of pro-abortion people think. In dealing with this attitude, we need to point out several things.
1. People's decisions don't determine reality. I cannot even decide the weather. It should be even clearer that the moral value of a life cannot depend on my choice.
2. If the value of others' lives does depend on my choice, then all people are not equal. But our country was founded on the teaching that all people are equal, and that the weak should be protected from the strong.
3. If the value of a life depends on my choice, then so does the value of a lot of other things. If a mother can decide to kill her own child, then she can also decide to beat her own child, or cut off the child's hand, or torture the child. If, furthermore, a child's life depends on choice, then so does a house, a car, and a bank account. If baby-killing can be legal, why not car theft and bank robbery?
"But those things are illegal," someone will say. So what? If the value of a life depends on my choice, so does the value of a law. The law has value if I say it does. Abortion is OK if I say it is. The earth is flat if I say it is.
It should be clear from this line of reasoning
that the pro-abortion mentality turns civilization upside down, and produces
a chaos that the pro-abortion people themselves will not want. The difference
between them and us, of course, is that we
see that more chaos necessarily follows in the wake of abortion. They say
it follows only if they think it does.
Father Pavone is the International Director of Priests for Life
and an official at the Vatican’s Council for the Family.
Contact Priests for Life at P.O. Box 141172, Staten Island, N.Y. 10314, Tel. 888 1PFL-3448, fax 718-980-6515, email pfl@priestsforlife.org, web site http://www.priestsforlife.org/.
Copyright ©1998 Arlington Catholic Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article was published in the Arlington
Catholic Herald,
200 N. Glebe Rd., Suite 607, Arlington, VA 22203; Vol 23, No 42,
dated Oct 22, 1998, on page 5.
.
E-mail:
letters@catholicherald.com
Fax: 703/524-2782;
Editorial: 703/841-2590;
Advertising: 703/841-2594;
Circulation: 703/841-2565
A note from the Web Master:
It is noteworthy and honorable that some folks are willing to stand up for a ban on Partial-Birth Abortion. Let us not forget that Abortion is also murder. We must understand that murder is still murder no matter the method. Because one method of abortion seems to be horrifying does not justify the other less repugnant methods. We should be sickened by any Abortion regardless of the method. The Fifth Commandment spells it out clearly: "Thou shalt not kill." A fetus is a person, a human being with a God given soul. Imagine the pain the Lord must feel when any Abortion occurs. Please, please, please contact your Senators and Congressman, via letter or phone, to let him/her know how upset you are that Abortions are legal and to pass and support legislation to stop Partial-Birth Abortions and all other Abortions as soon as possible.
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