1-24-11 <\/p>\n
January 23 is this year\u2019s Sanctity of Life Sunday. <\/p>\n
So as not to compartmentalize the observance, opponents of abortion point out that the date, each year, is the Sunday that falls closest to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe vs Wade<\/em>. Therefore an extra reminder is provided of the unsettled, and unsettling, issue in the midst of our body politic: legalized, and frequently taxpayer-subsidized, abortion-on-demand.<\/p>\n It was my privilege, several years ago, to manage an interview with Norma McCorvey, the \u201cRoe\u201d of Roe vs Wade<\/em>. She is now a born-again Christian, deeply repentant of her role in a major American paradigm shift. She knows at least \u2013 let me say \u201cshe knows at most,\u201d for God\u2019s grace is the major factor in all we do \u2013 that she is forgiven. <\/p>\n We all can be forgiven of all things, and we all should always remember that. In the \u201cabortion debate,\u201d one of the things less useful than a spirit of judgment is a rush to judgment, by proponents of any viewpoint. Something that is admitted by most couples who agree to, or women who undergo, abortions, is that there is no such thing as the absence of guilt. But we should never believe, nor never counsel anyone, that there is no possibility of forgiveness by our own Heavenly Father. And therefore none of us, His children, should withhold mercy to repentant hearts. <\/p>\n So my thoughts are not \u201cholier than thou,\u201d as the saying goes. In fact, I am probably “less holier than thou.\u201d Which is another way of saying that we all fall short of the glory of God. My opinions and convictions, as with so many things where the Holy Spirit has needed to drag me, have changed over the years. Thank God He never gives up on us.<\/p>\n Those who fall least<\/em> short of His glory, however, are the unborn. Defenseless, unoffending, not able to speak for themselves \u2013 but occasionally able to cry before their lives are terminated \u2013 babies are sacrificed, not to assorted pagan gods as in ancient cultures, unless those gods are named convenience, avoidance, confusion, selfishness, numbed conscience. The culture and, God help us, the State, call them not human beings, but fetuses, blobs, tissue, and choices. The inherent contradiction is evident when we realize that schools don\u2019t teach \u201cblob control\u201d and phamacists don\u2019t dispense “fetus control pills.”<\/p>\n This week, a Philadelphia abortionist in a public and busy practice (a reported $15,000 a day business) was in the news. He, his wife, and several assistants were charged by a grand jury with eight murders \u2013 specifically, a woman and seven babies born alive and killed by scissors severing their spines. There are other charges, such as transmissions of disease and health violations, including a gory clinic, urine and blood stains on waiting-room furniture, and multiple fetuses displayed in jars. \u201cDoctor\u201d Kermit Gosnell is a Black man, to whom \u2013 one wishes to believe \u2013 the disregard of human life, the arbitrary reclassification of who exactly is human and entitled to what rights, ought to have mattered especially.<\/p>\n Shame on him and the angels of mercy on his paid staff. Blood is, literally, on their hands. On the other hand is, plausibly, society\u2019s hand. Take note: The abortion mill was raided because it was suspected of writing illegal prescriptions for patients. The grand jury report blamed the murders on \u201clack of oversight.\u201d The charges speculate that the nearly 6000 abortions performed between 2004 and 2008 were never fully investigated because the patients largely were \u201cpoor and of color.\u201d<\/p>\n Abortion horrors, unfortunately, are not new. But in our culture, this The clinic was raided not because of murder and infanticide, but because it was suspected of making money by padding prescriptions.<\/p>\n The crux is not lack of conscience, no: \u201clack of oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n And these procedures continued, an average of five aborted babies a day (if Gosnell worked on Sundays too) not in dark hiding, but in a street-corner clinic, name on the door and listing in the Yellow Pages, unmolested \u2013 not because he hid his activities, but because to inquire too closely was politically incorrect.<\/p>\n There will be tears of \u201ccompassion\u201d from lawyers, for the mothers who didn\u2019t want to be mothers (and let us not forget fathers who did not want to become fathers). But somehow, as always these days, not many tears will be shed for the thousands of children who are missing, never given the chance for their faces to appear on milk cartons, much less to have their own names, or graves.<\/p>\n Do we doubt that God \u201cchooses life,\u201d by which construct we all should too? Psalm 36:9 reminds us that God is the One who gives and sustains life. The most devastated forest, after a fire, somehow soon is repopulated by bugs and flies and creatures. The tiniest blade of grass, with no sunshine and little water, eventually will break through a cement walkway.<\/p>\n How, is the question.<\/p>\n Life, is the answer. Not only are babies not \u201cchoices,\u201d but our response to questions of life A tender but powerful song by Tommy Walker, sung here in a moving video by the great Paul Baloche, caps the message for this particular day of the Sanctity of Life’s continual observance.<\/p>\n
\nindictment tells us the new standards of morality:<\/p>\n
\n.<\/p>\n
\nshould not be open to choice, either. Some things, even in America, 2011, cannot be left to standards of convenience or selfishness. Affirm life.<\/p>\n