Abortion History

Court sponsored, Court legislated and Court protected Abortion in America

During the sexual-revolution part of the Leftist-led major social upheavals of the sixties, the champions of human control brought their first test cases before the courts; prior to that, it was a felony everywhere. The very first abortions were legalized in a limited way beginning in 1967, in Colorado. By the time of the 1973 Roe case, three states allowed abortion under quite limited circumstances and several others when the woman’s life was in jeopardy, which was then, and remains today, an extreme rarity. Abortion as practiced today would have been a felony in all fifty states and the District of Columbia at that time. Then came Roe. Note the use of Orwellian Newspeak to describe the pro-abortion position.

Proponents, champions, sponsors and lovers of abortion cannot even speak its name in public, and they resist and resent anyone else using it. Listen carefully: Any time you hear anyone say that they are pro-choice, but not pro-abortion, you will be listening to a flagrant categorical liar in the act of telling a flagrant categorical lie. There is only one choice they are interested in protecting, and that is the right of someone to choose to abort someone else. That's it.

The word Choice is used only to keep from using the word abortion. They simply can't stand the truth of their position, and so they must obfuscate and blur as much as possible; therefore, they must make it appear that they are not for killing babies, they are simply pro-choice. See?

Choice? The position is called pro-choice?

Does that sound familiar? We’ve actually been here before, but we don’t remember. In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Mr. Douglas defended the right to choose. Abraham Lincoln’s reply, which still applies today, was that “No one has the right to choose what is wrong.” They were debating the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the Supreme Court, by a 7-2 vote, ruled that black slaves were not protected by law, that they were not “legal persons,” at least so far as the courts were concerned, and that they were the "property" of their owners. The Supreme Court said that people were property. The people in question were slaves, and as slaves, they were mere property, and, property rights trumped human rights. Of course, the abolitionists, Mr. Lincoln and probably the majority disagreed. Douglas’ argument: “We understand you oppose slavery and find it morally offensive. That is your privilege. You don’t have to own a slave if you don’t want to. But, don’t impose your morality on the slave owner. He has a constitutionally protected right to choose to own a slave.”

Ho-hum, heavy sigh, and here we go again. Note well that the topic of slave ownership, like the topic of aborting people, is not addressed anywhere in the Constitution; yet they were made into constitutionally protected rights by the Supreme Court. Out of nothing.

Organized pro-abortion forces always plan and choose their ground carefully. They seek legal test cases only in very carefully selected states and neighborhoods; areas with lower than average church attendance, for instance. Which is what drew them to early efforts to legalize abortion in Colorado and Oregon. Prior to 1973, each state had its own abortion laws, and only Colorado, Florida and New York permitted limited abortion, and some thirty-three other states permitted abortion only when necessary to save the life of the mother.

But then came 1973, with Roe V. Wade, and Doe V. Bolton, and the pro-abortion forces found a new ally in the Supreme Court, and thus they no longer cared where their test cases might originate. They can now make new law, from the top down, avoiding the ballot box and representative government completely. So what if it's unpopular? Shut up and get on the cattle car.

In Roe V. Wade the Supreme Court pretended that a Constitutional right to privacy (which, like abortion, cannot be found in the Constitution) existed, and they ruled that this hidden, secret, Constitutional right to privacy protects a woman’s decision to medically kill a conceived baby in the womb. See? That convoluted decision threw out Texas’ abortion laws, and ruled that states could not restrict abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. It allowed restricted abortion, meaning that it allowed some state restrictions on abortion, from after the first trimester until viability, ostensibly to make the procedure safer for the "mother." The ruling also prohibited abortion from viability until birth, with one singularly important exception: abortion was prohibited after viability except when necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother. Which sounds reasonable, right?

But then came Doe V. Bolton, in the same time frame, which overturned Georgia’s abortion laws. In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion could be performed “...in light of all factors - physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age- relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.” Remember the health proviso in Roe V. Wade above? Bingo. (Bingo is Latin for an ancient Catholic term, meaning, "game over.")

The fight was over; the pro-abortion forces won. In giving such a broad definition of the term health, the court removed virtually all barriers to abortion at any time during any pregnancy. All the "mother" had to say was that she wasn't going to feel good if she had to have this stupid baby. Doe V. Bolton, more than Roe V. Wade, is the real reason that so many babies are late-term aborted in America today merely because they are girls. Any time you hear a Clinton or Gore or any other pro-abortion Democrat liar getting up on a soap box and ranting over the “health of the mother” you know that this is what he is really talking about: legal abortion at any time, throughout all nine months, for any reason.

Which is, in reality, the situation today, and they know it; it’s what they fought for and it’s what they’ve won. Abortion is legal and is performed, not only right up to the time of delivery, but abortions are even performed during delivery.

This is new law. And it is new law that is not legislated, and it is not representative. Indeed, it directly overturned existing legislated and representative law, all across America. We never got to vote on it, and neither did any of our elected representatives, who apparently weren't even paying attention. And you never will get to vote on it if the Democrats have anything to say about it; you will never, ever, see abortion on any ballot. Who said there were any checks and balances between the three branches of government to keep this sort of thing from happening? Some silly civics teacher?

Let's look a little bit closer at the two Constitutional rights that can't be found anywhere in the Constitution, and see if we can figure out where the Justices' brains were. You can comb the Constitution till hell freezes over, and the only place you'll find anything remotely related to a right to privacy will be in the Fourth Amendment describing how we are to be secure in our homes and personal "papers and effects" against unreasonable searches and seizures. Nowhere else does it imply any right to privacy.

QUESTION: where did this "Constitutional" right to privacy, upon which the brand new "Constitutional" right to abortion is based, come from?

ANSWER: Justice Douglas made it up out of thin air.

Here's the history of it. Planned Parenthood was involved from the beginning, probably with the collusion of at least two Justices. In 1961 there was a case called Poe v. Ullman involving contraception that was dismissed by the Supreme Court because there hadn't even been any adjudication, no law had been enforced or broken, and there was nothing for them to uphold or overturn. Pretty simple, right? Get this: Justice Harlan issued a dissenting opinion - from the losing side - that in his opinion legal restrictions on contraception represented an invasion of privacy into an individual's personal life. Now, however thin this looks, this was the pre-ordained "precedent" to be built upon, because Justices don't like to be seen breaking entirely new ground; they need SOMETHING, however lame, to build upon. It's much easier to rewrite the Constitution while pretending to uphold it. So with this losing-side, dissenting, pure personal opinion, Planned Parenthood was then able to say "hey, we got ourselves a precedent, man."

Planned Parenthood then found a way to be arrested so they could mount another challenge to the law, and wound up again before the Supreme Court. In the 1665 Griswold v. Connecticut, the right to privacy became Constitutional Law, thanks to Douglas. He wrote in the decision striking down the legal prohibition on selling contraceptives that "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance."

Huh?

If you don't know what a penumbra formed by an emanation is, don't feel like the Lone Ranger. Neither did Douglas. It was his way of implying that Supreme Court Justices could and can imagine non-existent Bill-Of-Rights rights into being. There was no legal reasoning here, just naked personal opinion, pure and simple.

For the record, a penumbra is an astronomical term describing the partial shadow in an eclipse, or the edge of a sunspot, and, alternatively, is a way to describe something as unclear or fuzzy. Emanation is a scientific term for a gas that comes from radioactive decay, or, alternatively, it could mean an "emission."

The words are typical of Materialist / Atheist attempts to obfuscate and cover the truth in the presence of non-Materialists and / or Theists who might publicly argue, if they could figure out what had just been said.

This was either a dumb-assed decision, or an evil one; I'll let you decide. This was not the decision of brilliant legal minds whose lofty legal language is beyond the comprehension of us lowly hoi polloi. Dumb-assed decisions are not made by brilliant legal minds; dumb-assed decisions are made by dumb-asses. The alternative possibility is that it was planned that way all along, which would make the majority on the Court, clearly, evil, and destructive of our Constitution. This decision was no different than Dred Scott.

Douglas even manipulated the facts in the case to invent his new Constitutional right. At question was a doctor-patient relationship, but Douglas' opinion was framed around a non-existent, trumped-up husband-wife relationship, and even raised the imaginary specter of sex police, with the phrase "Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of the marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives?" even though nothing in the entire case was remotely related to police searching anything at all, or even to marital privacy. After Douglas' dumb-assed quote on emanations and penumbras, this is, perhaps his second-most famous and most often repeated quote, which has been used in a lot of “new Constitutional law” cases since, from pro-abortion to pro-sodomy. More new precedence for immoral groups like Planned Parenthood. Ain't precedence wonderful?

And then there were the arguments and the obvious perjury that were considered in this case. The NARL (National Abortion Rights League) and Dr. Bernard Nathanson admittedly lied to the Court in their testimony regarding "5,000 to 10,000 deaths per year" due to illegal abortions. Clearly a flagrant lie. The ends justify the means. (In 1972, the year before Roe, 39 women died from illegal abortions.) So, why were they not charged and convicted of perjury? Because that is a charge that is strictly reserved for Party opposition only. The Court itself lied. Justice Blackmun: "Roe against Wade was not such a revolutionary opinion at the time." That was a lie. Justice Ginsberg said that the radical decision of Roe v. Wade was largely unnecessary because society was already moving in that direction on its own. Another lie. Start counting the lies supporting abortion and you will never stop. Look at the euphemisms. "Terminating a pregnancy." "Products of conception." "Little gob of tissue." "Potential human being." Get this one: "Therapeutic abortion." Two biggees are "Women's health issues" and "Reproductive health." What the hell is healthy about an abortion? How the hell does an abortion enhance either reproduction or health?

The Supreme Court spent exhaustive hours questioning, debating, agonizing over and deciding precisely when human life begins, and in so doing have shown a complete lack of simple common sense and practical knowledge on the subject. They repeatedly asked lawyers presenting briefs before them what their opinion was regarding the beginning point of human life. I guess, because they didn't know, and weren't smart enough to figure it out, and couldn't think of anyone else to ask, like a scientist or a theologian. In their little world, if a lawyer doesn't know it, it isn't real knowledge. But this was just in public, for show; there were also private discussions that they held and wrote about.

If the object of an abortion - a dead human baby - is not human, and / or it is not alive, then, just exactly what is it?

First of all, regarding the human womb, it's not particularly known as a very good place to grow potatoes, is it. If something is growing in it and that something is not alive, or it is not human, then it most certainly is not a human pregnancy and therefore there is no real need for an abortion here. Case closed. Close all the abortion mills. By this convoluted legal logic we just proved that there is no such thing as human pregnancy, and we all know that the sole purpose of abortion is to terminate a human pregnancy by killing the baby and, hopefully, allowing the anti-mother to continue to live.

Regarding human life, it is the same as any species of life; within the species, life begins once and only once, with the species genesis, and it ends once and only once, in an event called extinction. Between those two events, for each unit of the species, life does not ever begin, it continues; it is transmitted. There are no exceptions to this rule. Let us discuss the beginning point of life for a unit of a species: conception.

Regarding the human species: Every single sperm cell, and every single egg cell, contains within it the exact same unique DNA code that is found within every single living cell of the living parent human being from which it came. The sperm never died, else it could not have penetrated the egg. The egg never died, else it could never have been penetrated. Once these two living and identifiably human cells get together, they form a one-celled Zygote, which, immediately, generates within itself a brand new DNA combination from the two sets of human DNA that came from the sperm and the egg. At this point, we have a completely determinate and absolutely unique human being, with hair and eye color, among other things, already pre-ordained. For that human being, unique in all the world, life has begun. It will continue to live until some event terminates its life.

A living cell or glob of cells in a womb, or in a Petri dish, or anywhere else do not ever go poof and begin to live, or go poof and suddenly become human. Currently living cells of any variety did not come from any source other than similar living cells; only life continuously begets life, in a manner in which life itself never ceases, for a species. That's the nature of life. It's not hard to understand. No species of life ever observed ever began to live except once, nor did any ever cease to live except once, and in between those events, life is transmitted in a process in which life begets life, without ceasing. Within the human species, it is the life of the individual units as well as the whole species that Judao-Christian morality regards as sacred. The Court has made itself separate from the rest of us and placed itself in direct opposition to us; the Court, in its majority, clearly holds nothing whatsoever to be sacred.

The Court's time would have more productively and less harmfully been spent deliberating on the number of angels that might be able to dance on the head of a pin. Instead, we learned from "our" highest Court, that abortion is a right, and euthanasia might be a right, and the continuation of life is only sometimes a right, for some of us. See?

In truth the "agonizing" and "studying" the Court did leading up to their pre-ordained Roe v. Wade decision was nothing but a sham and a flagrant lie. The "public" court is what we're allowed to see, but there is a "private" court in which the real deliberations go on. Censored, of course. They wrote and talked about abortion being justified as simply being a quite logical extension of contraception, pure and simple, proving that they knew very well that what they were killing was human beings, because contraception "prevents" human beings. Not little gobs of tissue. The majority on the Court were simply the lowest form of liars, and I offer as proof that they were liars the observation that they could not possibly be so stupid as to not know that the sole desired product of an abortion is a dead baby.

William O. Douglas saw abortion as a perfectly logical extension of contraception; he said it, he wrote it, he argued it, and his immoral personal opinion ultimately carried the day in Roe v. Wade. The whole, sole purpose of the new "law" was to provide another method of human control, pure and simple, from the very beginning. The Constitution, common law, medical ethics and the morality common to Western Civilization had nothing whatsoever to do with the decision; there is no existing connection between any of them and the decision, which was strictly and purely arbitrary. The States (meaning the individual States,) all of whom had laws restricting abortion, may be damned. Der Staat (meaning, the Leviathan State) now grants the legal right to apply lethal force against an innocent unborn person, anywhere, any time, for any reason.

Now, you might ask, where has the Church been on this issue, while Congress was sleeping. The Church's position has never changed, and a pitifully few American bishops spoke forcefully against the turn of events. But most of America's bishops never said a word.

Today, how is it that big time national spotlight politicians like Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry can simultaneously claim to be Catholic and openly, publicly, loudly campaign as stalwart champions, sponsors, defenders and lovers of abortion?

QUESTION: When professed "Catholic" politicians like Kennedy and Kerry make loud public statements and speeches supporting the abortion license, why doesn't their bishop stand up just as loudly and just as publicly and excommunicate them?

ANSWER: It's very simple; their bishop has no balls.

Kerry even commits the sacrilege and public scandal of receiving Communion every time he finds a church with a wimpy, heterodox, heretical or fellow Leftie pastor who will give it to him. Standing by in the shadows like a shrinking violet and sucking his thumb while allowing this to go on in full public view is not the sign of a strong bishop, but the sign of an absolute wimp, incompetent and unworthy of his office. Any bishop too cowardly to even enter the public arena, let alone draw his ecclesial-proverbial sword and step forward to do battle in public on so worthy a topic should retire, or be retired, and just crawl into a hole somewhere.

1) Marginalize Life.
2) Marginalize the Family

But, even after 1973, the court wasn’t through yet. After marginalizing the human right to life, they decided to weaken the primal social unit, the family, by stepping in between husband and wife, by reducing parental authority over children, and by reducing children’s submission and obedience to their own parents. In 1976 Planned Parenthood V. Danforth the court overturned Missouri law requiring consent of a young girl's parents or consent of a married woman’s husband before medically aborting her baby. In 1979 Belloti V. Baird the court overturned Massachusetts parental consent law, ruling that minors could gain court permission to abort babies without any need to consult their parents. Judges now permit “mature” minors, and “other minors,” meaning the rest of the immature ones, access to abortion, if it would be “in their best interest.” And, you might wonder, just exactly who is to determine what the “best interest” of these children might be? It doesn't matter; call it the Party, or the Leviathan State, or perhaps the Global Village. Certainly not their own parents. Shut up and get on the cattle car.

In 1986 Thornburgh V. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists the court struck down an “informed consent” provision in Pennsylvania law, ruling that, horror of horrors, true information about abortion might dissuade women from aborting their babies, and any provision for true abortion information ahead of time was “designed” to dissuade them. Which, of course, might hurt the new, multi-billion dollar, state sponsored, completely unregulated American abortion industry, and any possible political contributions or kick-backs related thereto.

Abortion, the most obvious sign of malignant social degradation existing in all of Western culture today, comes to us in a most predictable, and predicted, way. At the absolute root of it is, again, the idea of free sex, and, in support of the idea of free sex, the need to artificially eliminate the natural consequences of free sex and the responsibilities normally attached to sexual activity. You may be interested to learn that, in all of history, there exists not one single society, culture or sub-culture that ever began to accept, allow and legalize artificial contraception, which then failed to move on to abortion. And none that moved on to abortion that failed to move on to infanticide. And none that moved on to infanticide failed to move on to euthanasia. And none that moved on to euthanasia that failed to move on to atrocity, mass murder and even genocide. Gradual popularization of free sex weakens the moral ideas regarding the sanctity of marriage and the conjugal act, the “holy temple” of the body, and the very idea of chastity and self control.

The Catholic position is to completely oppose abortion as the unwarranted taking of an innocent human life, which is to say, Biblical murder. But, what about when the mother’s life is jeopardized by the pregnancy? This was not, in fact, a problem before the court invalidated legal abortion prohibitions in every state. Doctors - the old fashioned kind, who took the Hippocratic Oath and lived by it - made life and death decisions on an as-needed basis, and no one in their right mind questioned these purely medical decisions.

There is an exceptionally rare (fortunately) form of pregnancy called an ectopic, or tubal, pregnancy, in which the baby does not move to the uterus, but attaches in one of the Fallopian tubes, and begins its exponential growth there. The results are catastrophic, for mother and child. If surgery to remove the baby is not performed in very short order, the mother will surely die, and, because the baby is still so very tiny, there is no possible way that it can survive delivery. In this case, if medical action is not taken, both mother and child face certain death; only the mother can be saved.

When this happened in the past, doctors did not double check civil law, nor did they call their attorneys, nor did they consult canon law or any cleric; they simply did what had to be done according to their oath, and they saved the mother. The first rule of medical practice is to do no harm; when that is not possible, then we expect them to always do the least harm necessary.

Generally, if surgery to save the mother's life does not, as a purpose of the surgery, directly kill the baby, it is not a sinful abortion. If the tube is removed with the baby in it, for instance, or in the case of cancer or other problem necessitating a hysterectomy, these are allowed by the Church. Only when the doctor purposely and specifically removes the baby alone - not the tube, or other organs that might contain the baby - with the purpose, not of saving the mother, but solely of killing the baby and terminating the pregnancy, is it recognized as an abortion - a Biblical murder - by the Church.

Religious Censoring of Abortion Pictures

You have never seen a picture of an abortion on TV, and if the Courts and the Democratic Party, and their propaganda arm, the SLIMC, have anything to say about it, you never will. I have seen open heart surgery, brain surgery, live birth delivery, even C-section delivery, but never a much more common abortion. I have seen Holocaust film in which bulldozers push around huge mountains of human dead bodies; I've seen the gas chambers of the death camps, lampshades made out of human skin, films of horrible experiments performed on Jews and Gypsies and others, but never have I seen any abortion, through any public medium.

Why?

Because the ones who love it, champion it, sponsor it, defend it and seek to increase it can't stand to look at it; what they can't stand more than that is the idea that you and I might get to look at it, and actually see the absolute abomination that it is. I'm not saying they don't like it, or they just find it distasteful. I'm saying they absolutely cannot stand it. That goes for every single mainstream TV news anchor who supports it, which is just about all of them. They cannot stand to even look at it, and they will never, NEVER, allow you to look at it. They support it, but they will not truthfully describe in honest open language, they will not photograph or film it, and in point of fact they will very rigidly censor it. Holocaust, yes; brain surgery, yes; live birth delivery, yes; abortion, no. Never.

Look at how tragic-comic it was when partial birth abortion was debated in Congress. Grown up Congressmen and Senators using silly looking graphics, cartoons and artists renderings to try and explain, strictly verbally, how the abortion mills suck the brains out of unborn babies, collapsing their little heads, before finishing delivering them. Why couldn't they use pictures of the real thing?

Because the Party can't stand it, and the Party is powerful enough to religiously censor it, everywhere. Why do I say religiously?

I define religion as a strong belief regarding something super-natural, in something than cannot be proved by empirical means, where the believer feels he has a good, strong reason to hold the belief. I am a Roman Catholic. I hold to the Creed, of course; but at an elemental level, I believe that God exists; I cannot prove that by empirical means but I believe it anyway; I feel that I have good reason to believe what I believe.

An Atheist is a person who believes that God does not exist; he cannot prove that God does not exist using empirical methods; nevertheless, he feels he has strong reason to hold his belief that God does not exist. This is a strictly faith-based belief, just like mine; it is strong belief that is based on faith alone, and that Atheist may be said to be a person of faith.

You may call that whatever you want to call it; I call it a religion, or at least a religious belief. It is a strictly faith based belief system, because they believe what they believe by faith alone, not by any Earthly evidence. Many of them have considerably stronger faith than some of their Theistic opponents. And if this country has any officially established religion for which the evidence is everywhere reinforced by Court opinions, then that religion is Atheism. It is a rigidly held belief system regarding the supernatural. But the First Amendment restriction on establishing a state religion has not been violated, because - read the wording - because Congress didn't do it, the Supreme Court did.

And Atheism itself simply cannot even STAND to look at the product of abortion, or to allow anyone else to look at what it so strongly champions and sponsors and spreads and encourages, and obviously loves. What it brought to America. What it caused.

Millions upon millions of un-baptized little ones, torn asunder, in heaps and piles, not in consecrated ground, but in stinking garbage dumps, being fought over by sea gulls and crows and rats and maggots.

Going beyond the tragic-comical debate on the floor of Congress where real pictures depicting the topic of discussion were religiously censored, look at the words used by the news anchor talking-heads describing what was being debated. They couldn’t even use the words partial birth abortion. They preferred euphemisms, like “a rarely used procedure” – which was a lie, because there was and is nothing whatsoever rare about it. Whole abortion mills, chains of them, are dedicated to this one specialized type of abortion. The overwhelming majority reason for this, and all other types of late term abortion, is merely that the baby is a girl. It's just another convenient form of birth control, pure and simple.

Most aborted babies go down the sink garbage disposal, but later term babies' tissue is too tough, and so they just go into the garbage. At least most of them do, after "harvesting" organs and parts for maximum profit. (In partial birth abortions organs are harvested while the baby is still alive with its little head still undelivered; it's the best way to get the valuable, high priced organs while they are still fresh. Isn't that clever?) The Democrat-sponsored abortion industry is looking for heavier duty garbage disposals that can handle late term dead babies.

Note that you have also never seen any pro-abortion politicians glad-handing and photo-opting in abortion mills with abortionists and abortionettes. Abortion is something to be talked about and championed, but not looked at. Note that nobody in any abortion mill participates in "take your daughter to work" day activities. Imagine it. A little girl could be shown all the mechanics, and all the squirming little bodies in cold basins, and all the sorted piles. This pile here is because the "mother" couldn’t afford a child; this one is because there was thought to be something wrong with the child; and this one, the biggest one of all, because the child was known ahead of time to be a girl. And, of course, the related piles of blood money.

Medical doctors are actually involved in this. God help us all.

What should we do?

The Western Culture ethos, and the American Ideal have been grievously injured, perhaps unto death.

I cannot leave the topic of aborting people without talking about demonstrating and some of the ramifications and inevitable consequences of peacefully demonstrating. We are called to do what we can for the better; some of us feel that we can never seem to quite do enough, or that more needs to be done, and so we seek to do more. If you would make up your signs, say your prayers and join us at the entrance gates to major political rallies, or go to “greet” visiting and campaigning pro-abortion candidates, or to participate in major anti-abortion demonstrations, or to prayerfully stand in silent witness in front of the abortuaries, then you already understand something about sacrifice. You don’t need to be doing this. But, if you haven’t started, then before you start, you may not realize that, quite often, a little personal sacrifice in the form of time or effort or humiliation or other contributions may lead to, and indeed, it may demand of you, a much greater personal sacrifice, in some moral way. This is not for everyone. You may expect to be taunted and yelled at, and sometimes even threatened. People will get right up in your face and start an argument from a clearly belligerent and uncompromising position; if you cannot remain calm and rational, if you are not prepared to do verbal battle with insulting people with very foul mouths, if you can’t tolerate filthy language and direct insults and still continue a calm and rational and moral dialogue, then you may want to contribute to the cause in some other way.

But, if you still choose to demonstrate, know that it can get even worse. At the gates of a Clinton for President rally in Dayton, a young lady took strong exception to my signs, and began a long dialogue, rambling on and on about how I was somehow interfering with the Democratic process and the “Constitutional right to choice,” meaning solely, of course, the “choice” of someone to reach out and abort someone else. She wasn’t aware that the Constitution had nothing to do with any such right, and seemed largely unaware of the first amendment too, but I let the constitutional issues go by and tried to turn the topic more to natural law and simple monotheistic morality, and the wrongfulness of killing our own young. It seemed to be going nowhere, because, although she called herself Catholic at one point, she “felt” that all life was sacred, not just human life (but she still wanted the right to kill babies,) and yet she had little problem with the fact that aborting puppies will not be tolerated by the same people who promote aborting people. Including her.

She went on and on about someone who “found herself pregnant” and was about to be disowned and abandoned by her family, with no income, no completed education, no job, no shelter, no way to care for a child, and I was trying to take away her escape, her “choice.” When I told her that there is no need strong enough and no reason valid enough to kill a child over, she was incredulous. She was so very certain of her position, so very proud in her perceived wisdom. I asked her how old she was, and she said that she was seventeen. We gazed at each other, from a foot or so away, across a vast gulf of invisible but impenetrable difference. To her, I was some kind of religious-zealot dinosaur, and to me she was a toddler in diapers, toddling straight toward a buzz saw. I couldn’t reach her. I wanted to smack her and hug her at the same time. This was not an issue that could be settled in a brief street encounter between an old man with a sign and a young girl with a right; her secular teachers had had eleven or twelve years to do the damage they had done to her, and I couldn’t undo all that damage in one conversation.

I longed to take her somewhere and sit down with her and tell her all the things her public school teachers never told her about, about chastity, and purity, and decency, and the higher dignity to which she is called and of which she is fully capable, and about self control, as opposed to self esteem, selfism, unlimited individual rights, and the new social fixation on the new self centered universe. These positions are opposite. “Choice” says, this is my body, leave me alone! Jesus says, this is my body, given up for you. Sacrifice, at any level, is largely unheard of by today’s youth; they don’t know what it is; they can’t do it. They are a long ways off from The Way.

Failing to find a way to reach her on the single issue of aborting someone, I tried to give her one little nugget, a seed that I hoped would one day bear some fruit. She listened when I told her that there is only one single thing that is very strictly and religiously censored by the state in America today, in public schools, in the public media, and in the public in general, and that one religiously censored thing is Holy Scripture. Knowing that fact, I said, should be enough to induce her to get it and read it to find out why.

The hard part came later, in reflecting on the encounter. What if she was the “friend” who was in trouble? What if she was the one about to hit the street, or an abortion clinic? All I could think of was what I didn’t tell her; that if she was in trouble, we could help; that we would not leave her out in the cold; that she really did have a choice. These are tormenting events; they stay in your thoughts; you never know if you’ve said enough, or too much, or the wrong thing. If you go out there, always try to have at least one sign somewhere that talks about the mercy of Christ, and always be prepared to let someone know that you can actually, physically help them. They may not be willing or able to tell you that they need help; you must be prepared to somehow let them know it is available.

Which brings us to the next level of sacrifice we might be called upon to make. Sooner or later, someone will ask you for help; what do you do then? In our neighborhood there are two “Life” centers, one primarily but not totally Protestant and one primarily but not totally Catholic; we support them both; they support everyone, all creeds, no creeds, no exceptions. These are the places to refer those in need; they provide everything from food and medical attention to shelter and shepherding homes, for them and for their new babies. Adoption is available - easily available - but not necessary. And where do the funds and the items, and, most importantly, the “shepherding homes” come from? From ordinary people, just like you, and just like me.

Are you prepared to share what you have, be it ever so humble, with someone who has less? A stranger? Someone you know nothing about? The State won’t do it; the State sponsors abortion, and wants her baby dead. It’s up to us, or it won’t get done. Nothing worthwhile is easy. And young women in serious moral crisis need a real choice, and they don’t think they have one. They need a new chance, they have critical spiritual, emotional and physical needs that can only be properly met by true, decent, devout Christian or Jewish disciples. If you leave her to the secularists, she will abort her baby, and she will eventually suffer mightily for it. Usually, at the time, they don’t really know what they're doing, but sooner or later reality sets in.

Consider Rachel, who wept, inconsolably, for her children, because they were no more. Rachel could not be consoled. Meditate upon that thought. We are talking about nature here, as designed by the Almighty. Nature does not compromise here. We are not supposed to kill our own offspring.

On this subject as on many others, we can clearly see many national leaders and a whole political Party, and all the rest of our national secular elite minority, planting their feet and championing a cause that is against the religion of nearly everyone else in this 86% Christian, 96% Theist nation. By their words and actions they teach young girls that it is natural and right and good for mothers to choose to kill their own babies. They sponsor it, and they seek to increase it. They lead us in sin. They turn us away from God. They consistently oppose both Western morality and the national majority, and they are so slick about it that they are winning.

Now listen to me, brother. You and I must walk our own paths as we are given light to see our paths, and probably no two paths are the same. As for me, I will say this. I have put on Christ. I am an American citizen. If I am committed to wearing the holy cross of Christ in public, and if His Gospel is in my heart, and if His name is on my lips, and if I have pledged allegiance to the flag and used His holy name, and if these things have any meaning at all, how then can I turn away from this absolute abomination against His law, this absolute national disgrace, this twisted, unnatural thing, and just go on about my business as though it were not happening?

My Christian conscience can not stand it, my sense of national pride cannot stand it, nature cannot stand it, and I cannot and will not stand for it. Human babies are not trash. America is not Nazi or Communist. Short of hurting anyone or damaging property, I must do whatever I can, however I can, as best I can, at a personal level, local level, national level and international level, to stop abortion, and, just as importantly, to stop the idea of the needfulness and the goodness of abortion.

So long as God grants that I draw breath, until no more babies die, until no more women cry, I will do whatever I can, and I will continually seek new and more effective ways to fight abortion. And in the same manner, I will oppose the slick, disgusting, twisted and perverted secularism and secularist thinking that is at the root of it.

Let us pray.

Father in Heaven, Lord God of all creation, send down Your Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, that He may touch the hearts of all abortion providers and abortion promoters. Lord, we beg You to soften the hearts of everyone who works in the abortion industry, to let the scales fall from their eyes, that they might see the abomination at their own hands.

We pray that they might recoil from it, Lord, that they might turn from it, that they might repent of it, and that they might pray and fast in reparation for it, that they might come to work zealously, with all their talent, in direct opposition to it, that they might earn redemption through Your mercy, and come at last into Your everlasting life.

Lord of Mercy, Father of Jesus Who so loves little ones, let Your glorious face shine upon all of these un-baptized little ones who have been and are being and will be killed in such a sinful way. Lord of compassion and love, see the wicked way in which so many mothers have been tempted and misled and failed by social pressures and by educators and by men, and by civil authorities, and grant them, in Your infinite mercy, opportunity to repent of it and return to Your perfect grace.

Father in Heaven, have mercy on us all, we beg You! Lord God Almighty, accept our prayers and our fasting and our works in reparation for these sins upon the soul of our nation, turn not Your face from us, but hear Your servants, and grant us more time to repair the damage, repent, and return to Your grace.

Mercy, Lord! We cry out for mercy!

Merciful God, Lord of all, we humbly ask all of this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Note added May 10, 2007, re the Holy Father’s remarks to reporters on his plane trip to Brazil.

Mexico had just passed a legal abortion law, and Mexican bishops had publicly declared the self excommunication of the pro-abortion lawmakers.

On the plane to Brazil, reporters asked Benedict XVI if the Church had excommunicated the politicians of Mexico City who had voted to legalize abortion in the first trimester.

The Holy Father said that the excommunication for those promoting abortion is "nothing new, it's normal, it wasn't arbitrary. It is what is foreseen by the Church's doctrine."

The Pontiff also underlined that Christian politicians need to be consistent with their beliefs, and confirmed that the Church announces the Gospel of Life.

"The death of an innocent, of a newly born baby is inconceivable," the Pope added. "It is not something arbitrary and the Church expresses value for life and for the individual character of life from the moment of conception."

Father Lombardi, who was with Benedict XVI on the plane, clarified that neither the Pope nor the Mexican bishops had declared those politicians excommunicated.

The press office director explained that the Church teaches that the promotion of abortion is not compatible with the reception of Communion.

They then asked the spokesman: "So, are they excommunicated"?

Fr. Lombardi responded "No. They excluded themselves from Communion."

This means that they effectively excommunicated themselves, by the very act of willfully committing a very public (and therefore scandalous) grave and mortal sin. The sin itself was enough, under Canon Law; public scandal just piles on and makes it that much worse. A little elaboration on excommunication might be helpful for some.

Excommunication: (From the Latin ex, out of; and, communio or communicatio – meaning communion – literally, exclusion from the communion.) Excommunication is the most severe Catholic ecclesial penalty or censure in existence. It is a medicinal and purely spiritual penalty that deprives the guilty party of all participation in the common blessings of the ecclesiastical society, which is the Body of Christ. Being a penalty, it supposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Church can inflict, it supposes guilt regarding a very grave offence. It is a medicinal rather than a vindictive penalty because it is intended to correct the culprit and bring him back to the path of righteousness, and not merely punish him. Very grave sin, most especially of a very public and scandalous nature, cannot be tolerated as normal, operable and acceptable within the ecclesial community, lest the community itself change for the worse.

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

excommunication (Eksk@mju:nI"keIS@n). Also 5 excomunycacion.
[ad. late L. excommuŽnicaŽtioŽn-em, f. excommuŽnicaŽre: see prec. and -ation. Cf. F. excommunication.]
The action of excommunicating or cutting off from fellowship.
1. Eccl. The action of excluding an offending Christian from the communion of the Church; the state or fact of being so excluded. Also in wider sense: The exclusion of an offending member from any religious community, e.g. Jewish or heathen.
The Canon Law recognizes two kinds of excommunication: the lesser, by which an offender is deprived of the right to participate in the sacraments; the greater, by which he is cut off from all communication with the church or its members.
1494 Fabyan Chron. vi. clxiv. 168 This to be obseruyd vpon payne of excomunycacion.
1555 Eden Decades 172 We furthermore streightly inhibite all maner of persons..vnder the peyne of the sentence of excommunication..to trauayle for marchaundies.
1651 Hobbes Leviath. (1839) 502 This part of the power of the keys, by which men were thrust out from the kingdom of God, is that which is called excommunication.
a1744 Pope Love of the World Reproved, A part in every swine No friend..May taste..On pain of excommunication.
1781 Gibbon Decl. & F. III. 34 A sentence of excommunication was pronounced, which enjoined Ambrose to depart from Milan without delay.
1856 Froude Hist. Eng. (1858) I. iii. 192 Excommunication seems but a light thing when there are many communions.
b. transf.
1830 Hood Haunted H. i. iii, A house–but under some prodigious ban Of Excommunication.
1840 — Up the Rhine 16 The yellow flag which indicates that sanitary excommunication [quarantine].
1873 F. Hall Mod. Eng. 34 He calls you a utilitarian. The greater excommunication being thus denounced against you.
2. Short for ‘sentence of excommunication’.
1647 Clarendon Hist. Reb. ii. (1843) 43/2 To restrain any excommunication from being pronounced..without the approbation of the bishop.
1781 Gibbon Decl. & F. III. lvi. 366 By some acts of rapine or sacrilege, he had incurred a papal excommunication.
1866 Kingsley Herew. vii. 129 The pope fulminated an excommunication against him.
3. (See quot.)
1751 Chambers Cycl. s.v., The rule of the Benedictines gives the name Excommunication, to the being excluded from the oratory, and the common table of the house.

In current Catholic usage:

Revised Code in 1983 removed the 1917 code distinction between the excommunicated person to be avoided and the one to be tolerated (CIC 2257 § 1 and CIC 2258 § 1.)

Self imposed excommunication, latae sententiae, is imposed by the willful commission of the sin itself.

Church imposed excommunication, ferendae sententiae, is a formal imposition of the penalty, and carries with it greater solemnity and greater difficulty in achieving restoration of communion.

The Abortion Canon: Canon 1398 – A person who procures a completed abortion incurs an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication.

The old 1917 Code (CIC 2350 §1) is largely restated. All directly involved as principle agents or necessary cooperators in the deliberate and successful effort to eject a non-viable fetus from the mother’s womb thereby incur a latae sententiae excommunication from the body of Christ.

I submit that publicly or privately promoting or supporting or even voting for a civil law, political issue or political representative who’s stated purpose is the legalizing or other enabling of abortion fits the description of being a necessary cooperator in multiple willful abortions. Perhaps even millions.

There is nothing new here. No one should be the least bit surprised.

The fact that the majority of bishops in the United States, with damned few but very notable exceptions, just stand around acting mute for years and years while the same thing goes on here doesn’t mean that the rule has ever changed in the Church. What it means is that the clear majority of Catholic bishops in the USA are yellow bellied nut-less wonders who are not really fit or competent to fulfill the requirements of their high offices.

The Church tells no one how to vote. But the Church retains for herself the right to determine who is a Catholic. So, for detractors and pro-abortion candidates and activists and voters, go ahead and promote and vote for abortion; you are perfectly free to do so. Just stop pretending to be Catholic while you do it, because you have willfully excommunicated yourself from the Catholic Church by your own willful actions.

That pretty well covers the majority that makes up the Democrat Party, which sponsors, champions and promotes lawful abortion throughout the full term of pregnancy. Abortion is not only a plank, but probably the largest and most important plank in the whole Democrat Party Platform, right next to the pro-sodomy plank. This is what the Democrat Party loves, while pretending not to love it, and what big shot Democrats sponsor and defend, while pretending to be aloof from it. This is what they stand up and fight for, even as some of them come forward in American Catholic Churches, to add sacrilege to their sins, and bring public scandal into the Church in America. And they do it while lots and lots of American bishops pretend not to see.

Because, why, Heavens to Betsy, we mustn’t be divisive.

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