It is our calling and duty to choose life
Published 3:45 pm Tuesday, May 21, 2019
“Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5
If you’re my age or close to it then you’ll remember the cheesy video from Wham for their song, “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.” And if you remember the song and video, then you’ll remember the campy Choose Life shirts. I was 11 years old at the time and didn’t understand the context to the shirts. I just knew I, like most guys my age, were into Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Van Halen, etc…and wondered what girls saw in George Michael.
I didn’t realize at the time the implicit message of choosing life had to do with abortion. I was unaware that the pro-life platform had become a social, political and even more importantly a moral/religious issue during the 1980s. Ronald Reagan had campaigned on a pro-life anti-abortion platform in 1980 and 1984. He had allied with evangelical pro-life groups and Catholics as well, which made for an interesting and new alliance among Catholics as well.
In the little over a decade from which abortion on demand had become the law of the land via Roe v. Wade, there was a tremendous push back from conservatives through the 80s. This brought about a hardening pro-choice stance from the Democratic Party. One which bled over into their campaigns. It seems like yesterday that Bill Clinton said abortion should be; “safe, legal and rare.” A message aimed at pleasing the social conservatives the Democratic Party could still claim at the time and the leftist pro-abortion wing at the cusp of taking over the Democratic Party.
Growing up in Appalachia in one of the notches, if not the buckle of the Bible Belt, abortion was always something most people I knew shuddered at the thought of, and even recoiled at. I can remember sermons preaching of the horrors and the damnation as a child in the Baptist church, and also homilies of the new holocaust when I sought out the Catholic church as an adult.
I can also remember the push back from the popular culture as a young man from Eddie Vedder of the group Pearl Jam scrolling pro-choice graffiti on his arm during an MTV segment, to films like “The Cider House Rules” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” There were also songs like “Freshman” by The Verve Pipe and “Brick” from Ben Folds Five that dealt with subject in a less didactic manner, but were still a lament of the loss of a child.
It was in those times (the late 90s early 2000s) that the issue of abortion became more and more of a political football. A Republican would come in and change some regulations which would anger the pro-abortion camp and then a Democrat would come in and reverse the regulations bring joy back to the infanticide camp and dejection (if only momentarily) to those who stand for life.
Fast-forward 20 years plus into today’s political and moral landscape and the issue of abortion seems more prevalent than in years past. Earlier in the year, New York state passed. what the left termed, “one of the most progressive abortion laws in the nation.” At the time, governor Andrew Cuomo and other supporters of abortion celebrated being able to kill a child up to the moment of birth by lighting up One World Trade Center pink, as if it were something worthy of celebration.
New York’s ghastly and evil abortion law has been perhaps eclipsed by recent laws in Kentucky, Georgia, Ohio and Alabama, as well as others. Many of these laws restrict abortions after a fetal heartbeat has been detected, making them much more restrictive than states with pro-abort laws. Alabama, perhaps, the most pro-life bill recently signed into law even includes jail time for doctors and women who participate in abortion.
This has led to left-wing Marxist judges overstepping their bounds and striking down laws. It has led to calls for Hollywood elites to boycott states like Georgia, and even washed-up actors like Alyssa Milano calling for a sex strike. Which, perhaps to her misunderstanding, means less unwanted pregnancies and thereby less abortions. Maybe logic and reasoning is not the strong suit of the irrelevant Hollywood leftists. The evidence clearly points to the fact it isn’t.
Abortion, or the term I prefer to use, infanticide, is an issue where the middle ground is increasingly unable to be occupied. And though that may be unfortunate for those who clamor for civility above all, to me it is not such a bad thing. In fact, I don’t think it is bad at all. When it comes down to it, an abortion ends a life via homicide. It may be that it ends a life at different stages of development, and in fact it does, but it is human life nonetheless. For as science teaches, as far as I know, no species known reproduces something other than its own species.
There are multiple examples of animals that bend the rules of reproduction but not one animal reproduces another. There are no dogs who reproduce and have a cat. Tigers do not reproduce monkeys. Sharks do not produce guppies. Even the interbreeding of a female horse and a male donkey (which is technically inter-species), which brings about a mule, is still an Eguus, thereby the same genus. The caterpillar that morphs into a butterfly is still the same creature in different stages of development. There’s no time that the caterpillar isn’t going to be a butterfly if it is allowed to fully develop.
The same is true of a human fetus. Though a full term baby and first evidence of when the sperm and the egg come together and form, what pro-aborts call, a clump of cells, are much different. The fact remains that from conception to delivery there is human life, forming and growing. There’s no point in which the fetus isn’t human life in stages of development.
This is a fact thing brings us to one and only one conclusion, ending the life of an unborn child, is ending a human life. Post utero this is always referred to as homicide. With few exceptions, those who argue for abortion, tend to downplay this. Arguments are made about viability. Theories are espoused about when someone becomes human. Claims, such as, being able to breathe on one’s own determine one’s humanity in a physical sense. This proposes great difficulty in recognizing those in a vegetative state, a coma, or even those in need of continuous oxygen therapy as human. It is a position not grounded in science, or any serious philosophy or moral thought.
If we take seriously the crime of murder then society from all facets of belief must seriously examine the act of abortion. If, as I believe, that in this atrocity, we are extinguishing a human life at its most defenseless time, then there probably aren’t strong enough laws against it. If were talking about the horrific ways in which some of the procedures are done, then Alabama’s law is a good starting point.
The horror of how abortions are carried out and the horror that the woman lives with for the rest of her life are one of the main reasons the left clings so preciously to their most unholy sacrament. In the secular humanist religion of the left, which was given impregnated by Satan, given birth by the French Revolutionaries, Marx, and nurtured by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez and many others, family, like religion, country, king are obstacles to the allegiance to the monolithic state. For communism to work, man must discard all those allegiances, and bow down to Moloch, in the form of the state — a state devoid of bonds, like a common religion, culture, race or allegiance to a monarch.
The left, which in the United States encompasses the modern day Democratic Party on a national and state level, is dug in deep to protect abortion. It has been a platform on national and state levels for as long as I can remember — and one reason many socially conservative Democrats have either jumped ship or vote Republican outside of local elections. It can make many people, including me, a one-issue voter in the context if the person supports abortion or not. In my case, I will never cast a vote for someone who is pro-choice. I encourage others to do so as well.
For me it comes back, not so much to George Michael and Andrew Ridgely’s campy shirts and ridiculous video, but to a faith grounded in life and having life abundantly; to protecting those weakest among us; to a medical profession that used to swear an oath to first, do no harm; to the family, one of the most cherished and God ordained institutions of civilization. It is in that context we must strive to protect and cherish life, especially that of unborn and all children through all stages of development. It is our calling and duty, to pray, advocate, vote accordingly, and if called upon protest to protect the unborn. It is why I do so, and I implore all others to choose…life.