After 30 years of living with abortion, we dare not give up this battle.

So, 30 years later, is there really anything new to say about the abortion issue? I think so. Consider these two points:

We forget how awful abortion really is. It's not just the promoters of abortion who have rationalized their approval of the practice. Even we pro-lifers can be numbed to the grim realities. Thirty years of state sanction for abortion have taken their toll on almost everyone. Something that once was hideous has now become more like halitosis or being 12 pounds overweight. It's something we know we have to deal with sooner or later, but the growing numbness means—for almost all of us—that it's going to be later.

Evidence of some "softening" among pro-lifers is the shift of our energies over the last 20 years from hard-edged political and direct action tactics to support for crisis pregnancy centers. I myself voted just last night to approve a local church budget with a benevolence figure that includes $8 in "soft" pro-life giving for every $1 that it includes for "hard" pro-life activity. I understand —and have used—the argument that says the pro-life cause has to show itself just as compassionate as it shows itself principled.

But ironically, even while some of us have backed off a bit from our direct confronting of abortionists, many who are involved in the practice itself and its promotion have come to understand just how grisly their work really is. That's partly why they labor so hard to change the subject. It's why Bill Clinton always said (if quite disingenuously) that he wanted abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare." It's why the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) has just changed its name to NARAL Pro Choice America. Clearly, even that group just doesn't like the baggage of that word abortion.

Not that NARAL and its partners in crime have given up. Indeed, The New York Times reported last week that NARAL is planning an extensive, multimillion-dollar campaign to make abortion a critical issue in next year's presidential campaign. David Garrow, legal historian at Emory University, says NARAL wants to take advantage of Americans' apparent love affair with the word choice: "It's a free way," he says, "of getting 'pro-choice' into a news story, even if editors don't allow the words to be used in the reporter's voice."

But they're spending all that money and energy against the backdrop of recognition that they are still fighting an uphill battle. In spite of having the news and entertainment media, the state educational establishment, and the biggest church denominations (not to mention the Supreme Court) on their side, they realize that most folks, deep down, know there's something terribly wrong with taking the life of a little baby.

As Ken Connor of Family Research Council says, "They want to talk about pro-choice, but it's not choosing between chocolate and vanilla. We're talking about the right to choose to kill an unborn child."

It may seem repetitive, but that's the reality. Maybe we've just gotten tired of saying it. We shouldn't. For it is still the ugly truth about abortion. And we need to take advantage of the fact that most people know it. We need to strip away the denial that has enveloped us all.

So what has so much silenced so many of us pro-lifers? I think it may be in part that:

We also forget that God's grace is big enough to cover even this terrible sin. My guess is that—and while it is only a guess, I'm not totally na•ve—the reality of abortion is much more prevalent in evangelical Christian circles, and perhaps even among pro-lifers, than we have generally acknowledged. Such a fact naturally tends to mute our once noisy protests.

Life is so much easier when we can paint everything in shades of black and white. If we can always be the good guys, and always portray Kate Michelman and Gloria Feldt as unique promoters of evil, what simplicity (and monotony) that brings to our lives.

But if we have sin of our own to confess, the story line gets a bit more complex. Now it's not just that we're calling on society to end an evil practice. Now we no longer merely extend to the Kate Michelmans and the Eleanor Smeals of the world some theoretic promise of forgiveness from God. Now we brokenly ask them to join us in begging God to pardon not just their behavior, but our own as well.

I think that puts abortion in a new perspective. It is, of course, a bloody practice. It is, from so many angles, an almost unthinkable act. America's toleration of abortion must grieve God.

But the bottom line is that unless and until we have dealt with our own sin, and in the process publicly demonstrated how vast God's forgiveness can be, we are in no position to expect reform in the rest of society. Judgment—and mercy —always begin with the house of God.

But they're spending all that money and energy against the backdrop of recognition that they are still fighting an uphill battle. In spite of having the news and entertainment media, the state educational establishment, and the biggest church denominations (not to mention the Supreme Court) on their side, they realize that most folks, deep down, know there's something terribly wrong with taking the life of a little baby.

Antonin Scalia and His Critics: The Church, the Courts, and the Death Penalty Antonin Scalia replies: What the "pro-choice" American does not believe is that a human fetus is as fully a human life as Uncle Charlie.

Why Abortion Isn’t Important Here is one of the (to my mind) greatest philosophers produced by England in the last century, telling people-especially other philosophers-that sometimes it is better to walk away than to argue. Why? Because a person's conscience can become so corrupt, and lead to such equally corrupt rationalizations, that to engage them in serious argument about those rationalizations is both pointless-being unlikely to have the slightest impact on their thinking-and, what is worse, dangerous-bringing the thinker of good will into serious danger of having his own conscience perverted by the sophistries of the other.

Are unborn children human beings? Are they persons? No doubt about it. The following essays argue the pro-life case...

When Do Human Beings Begin? -- by Dianne N. Irving, Ph.D. In this essay, former NIH bench research biochemist Dianne Irving demonstrates the scientific fact that the lives of human beings--and human persons--begin at conception.
Personhood Begins At Conception -- by Peter Kreeft, Ph.D. Professor Kreeft explains what exactly a "person" is and why the various philosophical positions which deny that the unborn child is a person are themselves inadequate.
Is the Unborn Less Than Human? -- by Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D. In this essay, Dr. Beckwith lays out the scientific facts surrounding human development and explains why it does not make sense to argue that a human being is created at implantation, quickening, or birth.
When Does a Human Become a Person? -- by Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D. Continuing the previous essay, Dr. Beckwith demonstrates why other functional criteria given for personhood--such as sentience, brain development, and viability--are inadequate. He then refutes the "gradualist" position, which incorrectly asserts that the unborn becomes more and more human as the pregnancy progresses. Finally, he discusses the positions of various abortion and infanticide advocates like James Rachels, Mary Wollenkott, and Michael Tooley.
Does Life Begin At Implantation? -- by Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D. In this essay, Dr. Beckwith addresses the phenomena of monozygotic twinning, hydatiform moles, choriocarcinoma, blighted ova, cloning, and fertilization wastage. He then shows how these phenomena fail to disprove the position that human life begins at conception.
Scientific and Philosophical Expertise: An Evaluation of the Arguments on Personhood -- by Dianne N. Irving, Ph.D. In this essay, biochemist Dianne Irving argues that positions which assert that early human embryos are not persons are based on inadequate philosophical principles and faulty scientific data.
The Human Rational Soul in the Early Embryo -- by Stephen Heaney, Ph.D. In this essay, Professor Heaney discusses the various theories of "ensoulment" that permeate philosophical (and theological) discussions on abortion.
A Survey of Arguments for Immediate versus Delayed Animation -- by Scott Sullivan. In this essay, Thomist Philosopher Scott Sullivan critically analyzes the theory of mediate animation.
The Tiniest Humans -- an interview with the renowned geneticist Jerome Lejeune and the father of modern embryology, Sir Albert William Liley

Great post Remedy!

It's all true. The country hates to hear the truth.

I just visited the only former abortion mill turned Memorial in the country: National American Holocaust Memorial in Baton Rouge, LA. 30,000 babies died there from 1986 to 1994. It reopened May 12, 1994 as the only Holocaust Memorial of it's kind in the United States. It is also a center of Christian Pro-Life activity, providing services to help women in crisis pregnancies.

The tables and killing equipment are there just like the day it closed. There is blood on the floor in one room, all the tools of death sitting (quitely).

Fr. Frank Pavone, Priests For Life, said the second Mass there after it became the Memorial. There are pictures of Father Frank standing in the former execution rooms holding some of the equipment! Unbelievable. I felt like I was walking in a nightmare.

America! You have become deadlier than Nazi Germany and Stalins' Russia combined (42,000,000+ million aborted America citizens since 1973, growing daily) But you just keep pushing your baskets through Wal-Mart like: "nuthin's happening-dude" we're the land of Liberty, everything is just fine.

But you just keep pushing your baskets through Wal-Mart like: "nuthin's happening-dude" we're the land of Liberty, everything is just fine.

The Question of God A fundamental fact of our existence, one that we learn very early in life, is that we're on this earth for a very short time... The fear of abandonment is the first fear we experience as a young child a baby screams when its mother walks out of the room. Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital has shown that, in terminally ill patients, this is what they fear most the fear of being left alone, of being abandoned. It's a fear we harbor all of our life. Yet we cannot escape the harsh reality that every breath we breathe, every heartbeat, every hour of every day brings us nearer to the time when we will leave those we love.
Federalism: Reconciling National Values with States' Rights and Local Control in the 21st Century A constitutional principle without an actual constituency to back it up will soon crumble.
Death as Deliverance: Euthanatic Thinking in Germany ca. 1890-1933 Writing in 1989, the late Cardinal John O'Connor of New York City, an ardent pro-life advocate, predicted that euthanasia would "dwarf the abortion phenomenon in magnitude, in numbers, in horror." When one considers the sheer number of abortions that are performed each year and that have been performed over the last two decades, this statement borders on fantastic. But Cardinal O'Connor's are not the words of someone given to exaggeration. While there is nothing inevitable about human predictions, O'Connor's words are haunting. What is it that can hinder this "prophecy" from coming to pass?

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