Monday, January 24, 2011

Babies are...

So, if babies are not the enemy, why does the United States abort minimally 846,181 pregnancies (In 2006, 846,181 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). I chose this statistic because I am sure it minimizes the impact of abortion so I could not be accused of bias) a year? What are the causes for so many abortions- many sources putting the abortion number at 1.5 million per year. If babies are not the enemy, what is?
  • poverty
  • a promiscuous society and
  • general dehumanization are a few reasons why abortions are so common.
Although women can and must always choose good over evil, staring at an empty cupboard must make it more difficult to choose life. Living in a society where there are very few good jobs which don't require higher education (an education that is financially out of reach for much of the U.S. population) also contributes to this poverty. Times have changed. When I was a young child, there were four kids, only my dad worked (at a job which did not require a college degree), and we had a house and a half acre to play around in. Now, living in the same area, my four kids have a townhouse with a cement patio even though they have a mom with a Master's degree who works part-time and a dad with two Master's who has a good full-time job. We are by no means poor, but it seems to be harder to earn a good living nowadays.

I was picking up my big girls from choir when there was a debate over music perferences. My girls said they enjoy classical music along with Elton John and the Beach Boys. A few of the kids made fun of them; I tried to be a cool mom and suggested to them that they go to youtube and find the 'backing up song.' Basically, it shows how talking can be turned into a pop song with a computer and autotune. A cute little boy- the one who still sings the soprano parts- mentioned that Katy Perry uses auto-tune more than Lady Gaga. Says he: Gaga is the true artist whose meat dress will soon be in a museum. It is a promiscuous society that allows an eight-year old boy to listen to and watch the videos of these two so-called artists. When a good boy with an intact family finds their music and videos to be acceptable, we are setting ourselves up for acceptance of evil- one of those evils being abortion.

A 6-pound baby was found in the garbage today, just another news item on the radio. My last baby was 4 pounds, and her neighbor in the NICU was born just under 2 pounds. So, this is personal; I admit it. When a society condones the dehumanization of the smallest, weakest and oldest, it is a sick society. Yes, the ancient Spartans would expose an imperfect child to the elements, but aren't we supposed to be better than that now? For believers, we are all sanctified by Christ. We are made in God's image, so all life is sacred. For others, science shows us that humans develop from a fertilized egg and are always human. The fetus, no matter how small, never was something other than human. But in the early months, the baby looks strange, so we can destroy the life? Analyze a two-year old's face. His proportions are different than a teenager's. Then, compare the teenager with a middle-aged adult. They will also look different from each other, but they look the way they do because of the stage of development they are in.

My theme needs to be developed much more- Red Cardigan's blog is a good pro-life blog to peruse. I just find it sad and ironic every year that Roe v Wade and Martin Luther King Day are so close to one another. Would Dr King be pleased (as Obama celebrated Roe V Wade so his daughters will have choices) that so many African-Americans, a disproportionate number, do not exist because of abortion? He had to know the work of Margaret Sanger, founder of the eugenic Birth Control League, later named Planned Parenthood. King's niece now makes it her life's mission to speak out against abortion, perhaps to heal from the pain of having had two abortions herself. The mercy of God is so great! One last thing...

"There are currently 15,000 mentions of Jared Loughner [shot down 6 in Arizona 2 weeks ago] in the news recently, according to Google. But as of Sunday night there are less than 1,400 mentions of Dr. Kermit Gosnell [soon to be on trial for the murder of two women and for murdering seven babies who survived abortions]. That’s 10 percent. Truly, silence is the deadliest bias." (
Creative Minority Report)

update: OK- Fr Barron says it best again.

8 comments:

  1. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It all weighs heavy on my heart. Keep speaking the truth.

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  2. Times have changed. When I was a young child, there were four kids, only my dad worked (at a job which did not require a college degree)

    Amen, sister.

    The lack of stable, good-paying union jobs with insurance and a pension are the root of so many of our social problems. The deindustrialization of our country that took place in the 1980s has wreaked many a family.

    I am all for giving every kid who would benefit from it a college education. But the 3/4th of Americans without a BA still need and deserve decent paying jobs and productive work.

    St. Joseph, patron of the working class, pray for us!

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  3. Yes, Dr King was very familiar with Planned Parenthood, receiving an honorary award from them in 1966. His wife read his acceptance speech, but it was written by Dr King and he was an admirer of Margaret Sanger.

    http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/reverend-martin-luther-king-jr-4728.htm

    "Like all poor, Negro and white, they have many unwanted children. This is a cruel evil they urgently need to control."

    I did not know this connection for quite awhile and was shocked to learn of it. We cannot know whether Dr King would have slid down that slippery slope from family planning to abortion, but Mrs King accepted it. This is also puzzling to me because when a Planned Parenthood location went in recently in a neighborhood that is predominantly black, and my family and I were out on the street protesting, the black passersby were overwhelmingly supportive of our position. This is a complex issue, but I think that the three items that you have identified are dead on.

    It is amazing to me also that amongst the Catholic, homeschooling families that I know
    (most of them for years), there is suddenly much more leeway in the dress and conduct of the teens. Older children from the same family
    would have been much more reserved, but now at all homeschooling functions I am seeing a great deal of "pairing off", and the more seductive styles of flirting. I think that it is due to the movies and music that is being produced these days.

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  4. This is such a great post. Thank you for sharing.
    I loved what you said about the way a child or teenager or adult looks. Just the other day, my five year old son was looking at a very early picture of a fetus and he said that it looks like a dinosaur :) I explained that it was a baby would who grow, and that make enough sense to him. He didn't even question it. So why are adults, who have so much more knowledge than a five year old, questioning whether or not a fetus is a human? It is mind boggling.

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  5. May the Holy Innocents, the first martyrs for Christ, intercede & pray for us!

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  6. In the brief video below, Michael Voris (The Vortex, Real Catholic TV) gets to the point about the contraceptive mentality & the undeniable link between contraceptives & abortion. Unless the pro-life movement ultimately addresses this, I don't think we are going to get very far.

    In 1970, Malcolm Potts, a former medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said, "Abortion and contraception are inextricably intertwined in their use. As the idea of family planning spreads through a community there appears to be a rise in the incidence of induced abortion at the point where the community begins to initiate the use of contraceptives."

    http://www.realcatholictv.com/forwards/m4l2011.php

    Food for thought.

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  7. This is my first time visiting your blog -- I very much enjoyed your thoughts on this issue, which is near and dear to my heart. God bless you and keep speaking out for those who have been silenced.

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