 |
Editor's Note: Will
someone please tell me why, in God's Name, we still allow the murder of
our most innocent in the name of convenience or lifestyle?
Townhall...
Hope in the Abortion
Fight
By Kathryn Lopez
In New York City, 41 percent of babies are aborted.
It’s even worse than that, actually.
As the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a group that supports abortion
alternatives, has pointed out: “Sixty percent of African-American
pregnancies in New York City were aborted in 2009, the most recent year
for which data is available. In a 10-year period beginning in 2000,
more than 900,000 pregnancies in the city ended in abortion -- nearly
one-eighth of the entire city population of just over 8 million.”
Abortion, of course, is a hot-button word, bringing up all kinds of
emotions in all kinds of people.
Even though it’s legal, it’s generally not considered a social good.
Which is why groups that advocate for its ease of access -- and
expansion -- typically go to great lengths to avoid the actual use of
the word.
And, even though we may frequently avoid it at the dinner table and in
political speech, there are some areas of consensus. For instance, even
enlightened, progressive New Yorkers are shocked by the 41-percent
statistic. Earlier this year, McLaughlin and Associates found that 64
percent of the city’s residents think that number is shockingly high --
even 57 percent of self-identified pro-choice women agree.
So what’s a desperate pregnant woman to do? If you live in New York,
call the archbishop’s office. Timothy Dolan has renewed a promise made
by that great defender of human life, the late John Cardinal O’Connor:
if you are pregnant and you need help, the Catholic Church will help
you.
The Church has faced its well-publicized setbacks, but deep in the
heart of its ongoing renewal is the commitment to the most innocent
among us. It was a priority of the recently beatified Pope John Paul
II, whose superior communication skills, fearlessness and love made it
the premier human-rights issue of our day.
The awful numbers in New York present both a crisis and an opportunity.
In part, to insist, as John Paul II was wont to, on a little truth.
Congress is getting in on the act. Shortly after Easter recess, the
House passed a measure that would bar any taxpayer dollars from going
to organizations that provided abortions. With that passage, the
pro-life majority in the House codified the Hyde Amendment, which
prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion, and has been a favorite talking
point of abortion advocates who oppose further government action. But
the long-standing amendment is actually a narrow funding restriction,
which does not apply to all federal funding. If the House bill were to
pass the Senate, the president would be presented with a bill that
would, for once, cover all federal funding, permanently. The House’s
vote wasn’t a dramatic attack on women’s rights as claimed by the left,
but a protection for American taxpayers who don’t want to be
financially contributing to abortion.
And yet it was “appalling,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee insists. EMILY’s List, which supports pro-choice candidates
for office, warns that it is a precursor to the looming “dark ages,”
and that it is but “only one heinous facet of (the right’s) war on
women.” Actually, it’s mainstream.
An-under-the-radar book, “Beyond a House Divided: The Moral Consensus
Ignored by Washington, Wall Street, and the Media” by Carl Anderson,
made the point that at a time when eight in 10 Americans actually want
to significantly restrict the legality of abortion, the doom-laden
rhetoric about a simple piece of legislation is pure nonsense. It is
now long commonplace to insist you’re personally opposed even when you
advocate for it. Even Democrats appreciate that, at least in a lot of
their rhetoric. Maybe the debate over abortion funding can united
instead of a divide.
So many of us -- especially those whose lives have been changed by
abortion -- want people to know they can support life, and that,
besides ending a life, abortion will hurt the mother, the father, and
so many around them. And there are groups out there in the trenches,
spreading the word and doing the work. People like the folks at Good
Counsel maternity homes in New York dedicate their lives to making sure
women have options.
In 1996, during the partial-birth-abortion debate, the late congressman
Henry Hyde warned of “the coldness of self-brutalization that chills
our sensibilities, deadens our conscience and allows us to think of
this unspeakable act as an act of compassion.” Outraged New Yorkers and
a simple funding bill in the House are signs we’re not dead yet.
Read it at Townhall
|
