Right Side News, Sunday, 16 October 2011 12:28 Eric Retzlaff
Abortion is the proverbial elephant in the living room in American politics.
When I recently began participating in this year’s 40 Days of Prayer for Life to end abortion, I had an epiphany of sorts. I have always been opposed to abortion. I’ve prayed personally and in church for its end, voted for pro-life candidates, sometimes aided pro-life groups, and occasionally attended prayer rallies.
» If you like this article, please subscribe to our daily newsletterBut for the most part, like many Christians, I’ve been busy with my own life: with work, family, friends, and various diversions. Now I’m seeing the abortion issue with greater clarity and urgency.
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The 20th century was an era of mass murder. Tens of millions of innocent people were killed in the name of some version of state socialism. The worst perpetrators in terms of the numbers killed--Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong--are long dead.
The only major state-sanctioned genocide that began in the 20th century and continues to thrive in the 21st is abortion. The National Right Life Committee states that more than 53 million abortions have occurred in the United States since legalization in 1973 through 2009-10, based on information from the Guttmacher Institute, once a research arm of Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider.
What I find scarier than the sheer magnitude of the killing is the lack of any significant public outcry against it. We’ve grown comfortable with genocide as long as it doesn’t affect us, our families or friends directly. One quotation, of uncertain origin, may help explain this: “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”
Often we don’t get upset because we don’t feel the pain or loss suffered by women and families. Helping us overlook the pain are many media outlets, religious groups, politicians, and educational institutions, which focus on the plight of women with unplanned pregnancies rather than the well-documented emotional and physical toll abortion can take on women.
Organizations such as Rachel’s Vineyard that aid emotionally traumatized women after abortion are well aware of this. “My abortion has left me empty, alone and in despair,” says Lori in one of many women’s statements on its website.
“It has taken me to a place I almost couldn't come back from. The self-hatred I see every time I look in the mirror has been my constant companion for the last ten years.”
Somehow abortion forces have made the developing baby the culprit here, a kind of parasite, as if no consenting adults were involved with its conception. The idea of solving problems by getting rid of people is quintessentially Stalinesque. The Soviet dictator was once quoted as saying, “Death solves all problems—no man, no problem.”
The abortion advocates’ dehumanization of the unborn baby as “a blob of tissue” or “the product of conception” is aimed at helping to salve our consciences. The indictment of slavery by the 18th-century French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu applies equally to abortion: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [blacks] to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.”
My wife has astutely pointed out on several occasions that the moral and spiritual decline of the nation is primarily a Christian problem. Hilmar von Campe, a Protestant Christian who was a member of the Hitler Youth and served in the World War II German army, raises the issue of Christian culpability in his book Defeating the Totalitarian Lie. How could a largely Christian German nation allow the Nazis to commit such “horrendous crimes?” he asks.
His answer: “I went to church, but I was not a Christian. I didn’t love God, and neither did they [many other Germans], no matter what they said, because the only way to express your love for God and for Jesus is by obeying our creator’s Commandments, and by making them the basis for your national life.”
St. John Chrysostom, in a homily on the Acts of the Apostles, may not have gone as far as labeling weak Christians as non-Christians, but he does have something strong to say: “There is nothing colder than a Christian who does not seek to save others.”
Can a nation that condones genocide judge rightly on other matters and can it continue to be blessed by God? More than 620,000 men died in the Civil War before slavery was abolished. Will Mother Teresa’s statement about abortion become a prophecy: “Nuclear war is the fruit of abortion.”
Eric Retzlaff is a former newswriter, editor and publicist living in Rotterdam, N.Y. As a registered nurse, he was a freelance medical writer for Albany (N.Y.) Medical Center.
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If you oppose abortion for religious reasons, then by all means don't have an abortion. Your view is a minority opinion in the United States, where the majority of Americans want abortion to remain a legal and available procedure.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
If you oppose abortion for religious reasons, then by all means don't have an abortion. Your view is a minority opinion in the United States, where the majority of Americans want abortion to remain a legal and available procedure.
minority or majority opinion means CRAP......it's liberty to do what you think you/god/family/sig other etc work out.......American's want anything they think is free and easy.....but the sheople fail to follow the strings in the web of their environment often banging their head against a tree instead of looking at the entire forest.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Actually, Rox, the most recent Gallup poll finds more Americans consider themselves pro-life than pro-choice. More people now think abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, and fewer people think abortion should be legal under all circumstances. The greatest percentage of people accept abortion in limited circumstances, e.g., rape, incest, life of the mother. There is no widespread love of abortion. See http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more-americans-pro-life-than-pro-choice-first-time.aspx
The idea that opposition to abortion is simply a religious issue is passe, and long ago refuted. The developing baby from conception is a genetically different person from the mother or father. Former pro-choice pioneer and obstretrician Bernard Nathansen became pro-life because of the scientific evidence, not for religious reasons. He was an atheist at the time. And that is true for many others, including former abortion facility directors. You should read their testimonies. http://prolifeaction.org/providers/davis.php http://www.osv.com/tabid/7621/.....p;
The religious issue is an old bogus PR spin. Give it up.
Kempis, Re read your link... You may have made an assumption that isn't in the Gallup poll. I can be Pro Life (personally) and Pro choice (Legally) In other words, I would never opt for an abortion for my family, but still want abortion to be safe and legal for those who feel differently.
Only 22% of Americans want abortion to be illegal. The other 76% want abortion to be legal or legal with some restrictions.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
I 'personally' believe every single thing this Eric Retzlaff wrote. Those could have been my words. I also believe that it is a personal choice and that everyone will be held accountable for that choice. I also believe that when a nation makes abortion, the law of the land, that nation will also be held accountable.
Someone has to speak and be the voice for the unborn, just like someone has to speak for the dead soldiers that also die an unnecessary, violent but 'nationally legal' death.
We have become a nation of choosing who has the right to live and who doesn't.
Thank you Mr. Redzlaff!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
[color=red][/color]the la-raza people talk about the end on the gringo in north america and blacks talk oprnly about jew zionist bankers/wall st that have to go.
the seeds of genoside are bringing forth a bitter harvest.
While the Catholic Church is 100 percent against abortiion, it recognizes that a developing child may unintentionally and indirectly die if a mother is being treated for a life-threatening malady, such as cancer. It doesn't require a mother to sacrifice her life in these circumstances. However, one Italian woman, who was an MD, heroically chose to forgo her own treatment in order to save her baby and is being considered for canonization.
In the cases of rape or incest, an innocent human being dies because of someone else's malevolence--that is, the perpetrator of rape or incest (who may never be caught or punished). Is that fair? Whatever the reasons for abortion, the result for the developing baby is always death.
I'm sure that no one is saddened by Gaddafi's death.....but yet we laugh in the face of it! Sorry folks, but this reaction kinda sickened me!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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