COMMENTARY: March, Mourn, Protest, Pray and then VOTE PRO-LIFE, PERIOD

By denying the pre-eminent right to life and denying to an entire class of people the freedoms both to be born and to have a future, the entire structure of human rights has been put at risk. The recognition of the right to life must be the very first question we consider in evaluating any Presidential candidate in 2008.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - Thirty five years ago, on January 22, 1973, seven unelected justices of the United States Supreme Court, in an opinion which will live in infamy, indirectly aided a National bloodbath.

Roe v Wade has resulted in the loss of over fifty million children killed through legalized abortion. The opinion also laid the groundwork for the growing movement to legally sanction the killing of the elderly and the infirm under a misguided notion of “mercy”.

The Roe v Wade decision was not based on sound legal precedent. Rather, it was based on a legal fiction, set into motion years earlier in a series of poorly decided Court rulings concerning contraception and consensual sexual activity between unmarried adults. Those decisions were set into motion, indeed orchestrated, through the efforts of activists who intended to change the law. They succeeded.

This series of judicial decisions created out of whole cloth a “penumbra” around the First Amendment to the United States Constitution within which the Supreme Court then found a so called “right to privacy”. Utilizing this construct they dismantled the real constitutional right, the Right to Life. This legal fiction, judicially created out of whole cloth, was then bolstered within the Roe opinion by references to incorrect history and junk medical science.

A study of the earlier decisions which set up the Roe opinion reveals that there was a clear legal strategy, directly attributable to the activist organization Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood was the organizational stepchild of Margaret Sanger, who wrote regularly in support of the killing of minority children in the womb, and expressed frequent disdain for the handicapped. She was well known for her promotion and endorsement of eugenics.

Current leaders of Planned Parenthood balk at such claims. However, they are factual and cannot be refuted.

The death of fifty million children since the Roe decision has created what the late Servant of God John Paul II rightly labeled a “Culture of Death” in America and beyond. The unprecedented legal decision overrode any restrictions on abortion in all 50 States. That was until recently, when the most heinous form of feticide, the delivery of a child to within one inch of actual birth and the deliberate crushing of her skull causing her death, was finally upheld as a permissible “restriction” on the so called ‘abortion right’.

Norma McCorvey, a plaintiff in one of the cases which were joined together in order to obtain the result in Roe, has recanted for giving what she now admits was false testimony in the lead up to that decision. She has committed the remainder of her days to trying to undo the horrors unleashed by her role in this evil. In one of her two books, entitled Won by Love, she recounts the experience which began her journey to becoming pro-life:

“I was sitting in O.R.'s offices when I noticed a fetal development poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. "Norma," I said to myself, "They're right." I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, that's a baby! It's as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth--that's a baby!

I felt "crushed" under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn't about 'products of conception.' It wasn't about 'missed periods.' It was about children being killed in their mother's wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion--at any point--was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear."

Norma will probably march with the thousands braving the cold on January 22 this year. They will march, mourn, protest and pray again this year as they have now for 35 years. However, Norma is a very different woman now. Happily, she knows the forgiveness of the Lord of Life and she was received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1998.

In 2005 she tried to petition the Supreme Court to reopen Roe acknowledging that it was based upon lies, but the Court would not even consider the request. After all, Roe is now “settled law” and must be respected they argue. Remember that when a candidate speaks of appointing “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court. Caveat Emptor as they say in the law.

This year, the thousands who gather in Washington D.C. do during a crucial election year. That is why I title this piece “March, Mourn, Protest, Pray AND VOTE.

Sadly, thirty five years have past since Roe. We have made little progress in eradicating the effects of this horrible Supreme Court decision. Without the restoration of the right to life and the recognition of the true first freedom, the freedom to be born, we may not have a future as a truly free people.

I propose to all who share my pro-life convictions and are reading this article that we cannot allow ourselves to be deluded during this Presidential campaign.

We must VOTE PRO-LIFE, PERIOD.

We should reject all efforts to refer to our bedrock conviction that every single human life from conception through every age and stage of life and up to death is a “single issue” approach to politics. Whether such a charge of “single issue” is leveled by the left or the right, it is absolutely incorrect. The pro-life position is not a “single issue” approach at all. Rather, it provides the entire framework within which we should evaluate every single political and economic issue.

All public policy must be at the service of the dignity of the human person, the primacy of marriage and the family upon it, and recognition of our obligations in solidarity to the poor. It should be ordered toward the common good.

However, if we are going to make any honest claim of concern for the poor we must recognize the poor in all of their manifestations, including those whose voices are muffled by the walls of their mother’s womb, weakened by their infirmities or muted by their age. These little persons in the first home of the whole human race, their mothers’ womb, were rightly called the “poorest of the poor” by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

Yet, one of the current candidates, an energetic and dynamic orator, speaks of an “epidemic of violence” and rightly decries the growing violence in our Cities and its spread throughout our culture. Yet, he openly supports the first and most heinous of all violent acts, the one which legally shields a “Doctor” while he reaches into the first home of a child, the womb, and takes the babies life intentionally.

He gave another of his characteristically eloquent messages this weekend. This time he decried what he referred to as an “empathy deficit”. He is once again correct in his insight. We have grown callous as a culture to the cries of the poor. Yet, he supports the unfettered so called “right” to abortion, effectively refusing to hear that cry when it comes from children in the womb while the instruments of torture, whether surgical implements or injected chemical poisons, are being reigned down upon them in the name of a Court created “right” to kill by abortion.

All candidates who claim to have a concern for the poor must be pro-life. No-one who is pro-life should even consider supporting any candidate who claims to care for the poor who is not pro-life.

Then there is the effort to reduce support for the pro-life position with what kind of Supreme Court Justices a potential candidate will appoint. This is deceptive. There are “Conservative” judges and lawyers who support Roe as “settled law” and thus would not vote to overturn it.

Their view of “conservative” is, as the word implies, to maintain the status quo. So when a candidate says that he or she is supportive of the so called “abortion right” but then says they will only appoint “strict constructionist” judges, look out.

In the undertow of the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, an entire class of persons in America, children in the first home of their mothers womb, have become “chattel” not persons. Chattel is an old legal term that refers to personal property. In effect, a new form of slavery was introduced into the American experience. This new slavery is now protected by the institutions of government.

This evil is hidden by a language which is rooted in a counterfeit notion of freedom and privacy. This evil is also perpetuated by any candidate who hides behind the language of “choice” when human life is at stake. It is the contemporary equivalent of a candidate stating that they personally oppose slavery but will protect the choice to own a slave.The contradiction is clear.

Treating certain people as products to be used rather than persons to be protected by law has eroded the foundation of authentic freedom. By denying the pre-eminent right to life, and denying to an entire class of people the freedoms both to be born and to have a future, the entire structure of human rights has been put at risk.

The recognition of the right to life as fundamental and unalienable must be the very first question we consider in evaluating any Presidential candidate in 2008, no matter what the political label and no matter what other positions they hold. Rejecting this first principle affects every other issue. This rejection not only threatens more children in the womb, but, by promoting a utilitarian approach to persons it threatens the elderly and the ill.

Through the misuse of words such as “mercy” and the application of ever changing concepts such as “quality of life”, the rationale has been introduced to promote euthanasia as acceptable behavior rather than an unspeakable crime. What masquerades as “mercy” is a lack of concern for the weak, the vulnerable, the sick, disabled and the elderly.

This anti-life thinking now threatens the proper advance and development of promising medical research. Rather than promote the use of stem cell research which does not take life, it insists on promoting a new kind of Frankenstein laboratory where embryonic life is manufactured to be made the subject of experiments which always leads to death of the embryo for spare parts.

The acceptance of the rhetoric of use and abuse has made the once unspeakable sound somehow acceptable. It began with accepting the idea that children in the womb are disposable. It follows by characterizing human embryonic life as “clumps of cells” from which we can “extract” stem cells, when the medical science is clear that every such “extraction” kills that human embryo. Science must first and always be at the service of life.

To be acceptable, any candidate must affirm the inviolable dignity of every human life from conception to natural death, at every stage and every age. Any candidate who refuses to recognize this right to life must be rejected.

Along with this bedrock position, they should support every legitimate effort to ensure that the dignity of the human person becomes the polestar of all public policy. This insistence upon a right to life is not a "single issue" approach to politics but rather the framework within and against which every other issue should be measured.

March, Mourn, Protest, Pray and THEN VOTE PRO-LIFE

Some would tell us that a President can do little to change the situation concerning the killing of children in the womb now protected by the so called “Abortion right.”

I say to them, NONSENSE.

Not only does the President have the bully pulpit and the power of appointment but the President has the potential to persuade at a time when most Americans are beginning to rethink the whole abortion issue and are increasingly concerned about creeping euthanasia.

In 1983 Ronald Reagan wrote,”Our nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators — not a single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973.”

He was correct.

History is clear; truly good leaders inspire the American people to make great sacrifices for what is right during times of national emergency. It is no accident that the March for Life coincides with the week when we remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose words and witness effected desperately needed changes and continues to inspire.

It certainly helped, during the dark days when this Nation was mired down in a horrid Civil war and could barely summon the strength to consider the moral evil and social horror of the legalized “ownership” of other human beings because of their skin color, to have the leadership of Abraham Lincoln. We must never forget that that kind of slavery was once called “a right” by the Supreme Court. They were wrong then and they are wrong today about the child in the womb.

We need a Pro-life President. One who has the conviction about the right to life deep in their bones and will do everything they can, including leading the charge to persuade hearts and minds all over America. We need a Pro-life President who will only appoint Pro-life Judges and pledges to lead the drive to pass a pro-life amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

I really do not care which political party they have noted next to their name on the ballot. However, at least this year, the Democratic Party has unfortunately not put forward one of the growing number of Pro-life candidates in their own party.

The Republican Party is dancing with defeat by waffling on this vital issue.

I encourage all pro-life people to VOTE PRO-LIFE, PERIOD.

Yes, March and call the attention of America and the whole world to the evil that is now the law of the land in America.

Yes, mourn and weep for the 50 million who could have been members of our National family but who were killed by abortion.

Yes, protest against this new form of slavery where another whole class of persons, children in the womb, are being treated as property.

Yes, pray that the Lord who is the Author and Giver of Life will intervene and bring conversion to hearts and make justice flourish for all, including children in the womb.

But then show up at the polls in record number and VOTE PRO-LIFE, PERIOD.

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