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February 3, 2013The Biggest Human Rights Protest Goes Virtually Unreported in the Media. If between 500,000 and 650,000 people assembled on your front lawn, it seems to follow that you would take notice of them. But did we? That’s what happened on our “nation’s front lawn” last week—more than half-a-million American citizens marched on Washington, D.C. to protest the more than 54 million abortions performed in our nation since the 1973 US Supreme Court decision—Roe v. Wade—legalizing an individual’s right to terminate human life in the womb. And hardly a peep was mentioned in the national or local media—neither in newspapers nor on the nightly news (ABC, NBC and CBS did not men-tion it; the New York Times ran an article, beneath the fold) meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s new eye glasses made the news). The world’s largest human rights rally went virtually unreported. Media bias? I think so.
In the 40 years since Roe V. Wade was issued by the Court, it is unimaginable to consider that 54 million American lives—54 million opportunities to possibly cure cancer or develop an alternative fuel—have been “lost,” and that is putting it pleasantly. In reality, that number means 54 million deaths. Just think if that were the number of American teenagers killed by drunk drivers. Alcohol would be illegal, bars would be nonexistent. And what if 54 million people were killed in skiing accidents. Skis would be illegal and mountains would be leveled. But abortions continue and sadly today this surgical procedure that takes a life has been redefined as “preventative healthcare” while pregnancy is now considered a “disease” by the new Affordable Health Care Act. Times they are a changing.
In fact, there is so little positive coverage of the good trends in the national Pro-Life movement that: Few people realize that today there are more pregnancy centers in the United States than abortion clinics. Groups like St. Gerard Center for Life and St. Agnes Home work tirelessly to assist pregnant women to bring their unborn children to full term and to then help them either be parents or offer their children up for adoption. In addition, these groups and the Church offer compassion to those who suffer through an abortion. Few people recognize that more Americans are self-identified as pro-life (50%) than are pro-abortion (41%) (Gallop 2012). The national media also fails to report that for the first time ever, we have a younger generation that is more committed to being Pro-Life, than pro-death. We are in fact working towards a culture of life in our society.
Faith and Reason—are dance partners, not opponents. Many abortion proponents portray faith and reason (science, the intellect) as being at-odds. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, in the 40 years since Roe v. Wade, science has led us closer to the truth that life begins at conception. In1973 many people were content to consider the that early child in the womb as just a “collection of fetal tissue.” Today, science clearly illustrates that in the earliest stage of life we are talking about a human being evidenced by in vitro surgeries (at 17 weeks at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, FL) and the designation of the fetus as an “in-womb patient.” If science seeks the truth, and if God is the Truth, than science will lead us to God.
In the Gospel of Luke, when we hear of Mary’s visitation with Elizabeth and of John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice (at about 16-18 weeks)—God illustrated what science now confirms: that the child is human and aware of its outside environment—science now tells us that at 16 weeks the infant can distinguish voices outside it mother’s womb and begins to move about within the womb. The questions before us as a society are many indeed: Can we consider ourselves a compassionate and caring society if we allow, without honest public discourse, the taking of innocent human life to continue? And if we turn our heads to the issue of abortion—the termination of innocent human life—how can we not expect the issue of assisted-suicide for the elderly or the frail to become “the law of the land next?” Are we are not self-destructing at both ends of the continuum of life?
