For Dear Life
GUEST COLUMN
Proponents of the rights granted by Roe v. Wade speak of abortion as a “choice”; they are “pro-choice.” But to many of us, the word sounds inappropriate in this context: It tends to put on the same level two very different entities, as if it were a matter of mere whim or mood, as in the trivial case of two flavors of ice cream put before us for our selection.
But, in actuality, what is before the “chooser” is the alternative between two totally unequal, imminent conditions of a budding human being: death or life.
Recently, an American surgeon opened a mother’s womb to operate on a prenatal malformation in her fetal child. He reported that the unborn infant, three months or so in development, stretched out its little hand and clutched his finger.
Who has not been moved by that gesture in a newborn, reaching out for something to hold onto — as if our finger were a pole tendered to a drowning person, a lifeline to cling to?
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Now it is pro-abortion Catholic politicians who are teaching the bishops the meaning of the Eucharist, something as absurd as it is unprecedented.
How can good-hearted people, whose hearts bleed for peace and for poor people, not feel the excruciating pain of the child who is destroyed in the womb?
If there's a large discrepancy between the number of Americans who identify as pro-life and those who believe abortion should be outlawed, then there's a growing misunderstanding of what it means to be pro-life.