June 5, 2009 9:36 AM
More on Tiller, Howorth - and substantive discussion
When - and if - you have the time to linger over thought-provoking articles, First Things is the place to go. Yesterday, Elizabeth Scalia posted a piece called Tiller, Long, Bonhoeffer, and Assassination - which deals in a substantive way with the philosophical divide between pro-lifers and pro-abortionists. Compare with the shallow offering of Claire Howorth's Terror in the Heartland - whose sole intention was to score points with the In-Crowd at Vanity Fair and gin up more misunderstanding and hatred toward pro-lifers.Shame on anyone who capitalizes on a tragedy to score political points - then ignores sincere discussion!
Long, btw, is the soldier who was killed by a Muslim at an army recruiting station - a crime clearly motivated by religion. The reason you might not recognize his name - or know that his assassin is a Muslim - is because our Government Media has not deemed this act of terrorism as heinous as the assassination of George Tiller, a man who committed an estimated 60,000 "late term" abortions (at $5000 a pop), evaded Kansas law and now on the fast track to canonization by the Left - see Media Coverage Differed in Killing of Abortion Doctor [sic], Army Recruiter).
"Late term" is a euphemism for a type of abortion fiercely defended by "pro-choicers" (another example of slaphappy LeftTalk) which involves vaginally delivering a viable baby feet first, holding the head within the womb, then stabbing the skull with a pair of scissors so the baby can be pulled out of the womb with forceps - dead on delivery. Life proponents call these - with more scientific accuracy - partial birth abortions.
Many of these babies are aborted because they have Down syndrome, a grotesque form of discrimination that belies the civilized status we claim for ourselves. As Mother Teresa said "Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child, and be loved by the child." In that same spirit, there is a waiting list of families available to adopt babies with Down syndrome - and many who would do so if asked in order to save a baby from abortion.
Facile, sensational and polarizing pieces like Howorth's do nothing to further the dialogue - belying the hypocritical Leftist plea that we all "come together."
By contrast, thinkers like Elizabeth Scalia make me proud that I am now a conservative.
Since I'm still living the MommyLife - though I'm old enough to be a grandmother - I know you don't have a lot of time, so I'm passing on some large chunks of Scalia's post below. If you have time, you can read the entire artile at First Things. And because she has so much wisdom to share, you might want to bookmark her blog The Anchoress. It's important for us to know how to share these issues with others - with dignity and a true desire to increase understanding..
If you can use the millions of dead unborn to justify a murder, this time, then you can use other rationales for other murders. Once you have justified the killing of a George Tiller, what is to stop you from finding a means to justify other killings, or the whole concept of assassination?On the contrast between media reaction to two different assasinations - one emplyed as a drumbeat against the Christian pro-life movement and another being covered up because it involves a Muslim terrorist:
In a so-called late-term abortion, a baby is delivered vaginally, and feet first. The body and shoulders are delivered, but the infant's head is held within the birth canal, until the doctor can slip a scissor into its skull and suction out its brains, at which point he will deliver a dead child and avoid a charge of infanticide. We are told that these abortions are necessary to spare the life or mental health of a fragile mother who may not be able to endure the physical or psychological rigors of childbirth. The American Medical Association has quietly conceded that--as we do not live in the nineteenth or even the early twentieth century, when a cesarean section was all but a death sentence for a woman--there really is no medical reason for such an abortion. One may additionally argue that delivering a baby feet first, then shoulders, is by no means a simple or easy sort of delivery, so the dangers it purports to spare a woman are not obvious.
George Tiller specialized in aborting advanced pregnancies and he is being held up as a hero and martyr by those who can read the previous paragraph and not find the word savagery forming on their lips. Those of us who call ourselves pro-life take a very different view, and cannot call Tiller a hero, but neither can we support his murder.
Tiller, despite his choices, was still a created creature of God, and his life was God's to take, not man's; who is to know at what point in a man's life he will suddenly, like Paul on the road to Damascus, be brought to his knees with an encounter, and then seek out mercy, forgiveness, and the saving blood of Christ he will need to wash away the blood he has himself spilled? There is no man or woman on earth who is beyond this redemption while they live. If you take his life, have you interrupted the time and opportunity that, in Christ's plan, in Christ's fullness of time, would have been his moment of clarity? If so, then what have you done to your own soul, in cutting short the opportunity for his soul to find its redemption?
One of the reasons so many Catholics struggle with the death penalty is because we do believe that life is sacred, and that redemption must always be given its day, thus we cannot allow ourselves to indulge in relativism over the issue of life. Benedict XVI correctly called relativism a dictatorship and it is easy to see why: to reflect on matters of life and death in the fun-house mirror of relativism is to succumb to the allure of our own human (and thus faulty) reasoning. Relativism is to be avoided because we can so easily use the threads of relative thinking, no matter how thin they may be, to weave for ourselves some protective cover for the evil we do, and so we must guard against it.
Of course, while many hundreds of thousands of words are being written about the murder of George Tiller, and much political hay is being stacked against so-called Christianists, another murder followed Tiller's--and it is being mostly ignored, even by the same president who, within hours of Tiller's death, managed to express his profound sadness over it. A young recruit by the name of William Long finished his boot-camp training, stopped in at his Arkansas recruitment center, and was slain by a man named Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, whose name and religion routinely go unmentioned in press reports.Returning to one of the articles which prompted her musings, Scalia ends:
Why should we care about some dumb hick named William Long, who was only a soldier and not a hero abortionist? And why should his assassin's name or religion matter? Because William Long was as entitled to the life he had, as was George Tiller. And Long's death, at the hands of a man who used his religion to justify his actions, is the ultimate reminder of why Christians cannot emulate Bonhoeffer, for all his brilliance, or Tiller's murderer: When we start thinking that we know the heart and mind of God so well that we may decide who lives and who dies, we slip into a mode of Antichrist.
The Pauline paradox "when I am weak, then I am strong" carries a flipside: "When I am strong, then I am weak." Relativism is dangerous because we can too easily slip into the belief that we so well comprehend God's will that we can confuse our own will for God's, and thereby do terrible damage to one another. God's rain falls on "the just and the unjust," and it is one of the challenges of the life of faith that we must leave to God the rendering of his Justice.
The duty of a Christian--and it is a difficult duty--is to remain in the present moment that we might be alert to the promptings of the Holy Spirit ("continuing instant" in gratitude and prayer) while also taking the long view of things. This requires trust that however things look of a moment or a day, God is present and working: Nothing is static, everything is in a constant state of flux, all of it churning forward so that "in the fullness of time" Christ may restore all things to himself.
What is left? Well, prayer, which is the most subversive of powers; it is a self-renewing weapon that cannot be wrested from us, and it cannot be over-employed.
Saletan issues a challenge in his piece: He asks Christians to ponder whether they really believe that abortion is, in fact, murder:Maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it's the latter. We're looking for ways to prevent abortions--not just a few this month, but millions down the line--without killing or prosecuting people. Come and join us.The words sound reasonable, but they follow an unapologetic celebration of a life lived in service to the largest of the forceps, and the suctioning of the smallest and most innocent brain cells. "Come and join us," is an insidious little invitation that wants you to feel comfortable in all you give up, made by people willing to give up nothing, themselves, not even the largest of the forceps, or the smallest of the pills. They say they want fewer abortions and believe they will get them with more and more contraception, bigger public-awareness campaigns. They don't seem to notice that forty years of more and bigger has not yet reduced the number of abortions. And they don't want anyone else to notice, either. They just want submission.
We must not submit. No matter how smooth the oration, no matter how appealingly the hand of invitation is extended, the culture of death, which promises everything, ultimately offers nothing.
But we know, as the angel tells Joseph, "with God, nothing is impossible."We are dealing with an unfathomable mystery of life and love--the nurturing of both or the disallowance, the bringing forth or the refusal--the continual opening or the closing of the world. The wrestling between sides has been going on for thousands of years, even before Moses said to his people, "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse, choose life, that you may live." The struggle will continue until "the fullness of time." What is a believer to do?
If we are to err, let us err on the side of life. Let us choose life, that the world may live. And let us pray.
Posted in Culture Wars, Current Affairs, Media Bias, Pro-Life Issues | Permalink
Comments
According to several articles I've read, Tiller did not do partial birth abortions as you describe, at least, not recently. He apparently "stopped the heartbeat with an injection" and then they came back in a day or two to deliver the stillbirth.
Otherwise, excellent post!
Posted by: Kelly | June 5, 2009 12:07 PM
I am shocked at the response over this entire event. I think I was more naive than I knew.
I am nine months pregnant as I write and I can't fathom anyone willingly aborting this child for me! (Let alone what kind of person I would be to want that regardless of the babies imperfections!)
The world is so blind, and backward. Its refreshing to hear someone so eloquently put to paper everything I feel about the matter, thanks for sharing!
Posted by: Laura Brugere | June 5, 2009 1:39 PM
The first comment was not by me, "small 'k'" kelly. Didn't want anyone to think that I thought treating a preborn baby like an elderly dog was anywhere near OK.
Posted by: kelly | June 5, 2009 3:10 PM
Gee, thanks kelly with a small k. I was just letting Barbara know that this isn't what is being commonly reported, because you know how the opposition will jump on any little perceived error to disregard your argument.
I don't believe there is anything in my comment which indicates I thought either practice was "anywhere near OK."
Posted by: Kelly | June 5, 2009 5:14 PM
I heard audio with Tiller himself describing the procedure as Kelly described.
Posted by: Elissa | June 5, 2009 9:19 PM
heartbroken....
Posted by: Ruth | June 5, 2009 10:52 PM
"Maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided?"
Slavery and the Middle Passage, Auschwitz and the Final Solution,Rwandan genocide, Soviet gulags and the killing fields of Cambodia: murder? or something less, a tragedy that would better be avoided?
I know what I really believe. On this there is no middle ground.
Posted by: Renee P | June 6, 2009 12:21 AM
Don't know how reliable Wikipedia is. Please correct me if I am mistaken, but this is what I found on their site:
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (Pub.L. 108-105, 117 Stat. 1201, enacted November 5, 2003, 18 U.S.C. § 1531[1], PBA Ban) is a United States law prohibiting a form of late-term abortion that the Act calls partial-birth abortion.
The law was enacted in 2003, and in 2007 its constitutionality was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart.
The act pertains to a procedure that is medically called intact dilation and extraction.
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act defines "partial-birth abortion" as follows:
“An abortion in which the person performing the abortion, deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus; and performs the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus. (18 U.S. Code 1531)
I am speechless. I just can't fathom how someone can perform such a "procedure".
Posted by: Victoria | June 6, 2009 1:07 AM
Found this. I suppose this is a loophole that an MD may try to use, and how this procedure, as horrible as it is, may still be performed??
Despite its finding that "partial-birth abortion ... is ... unnecessary to preserve the health of the mother", the statute includes the following provision:
“ A defendant accused of an offense under this section may seek a hearing before the State Medical Board on whether the physician's conduct was necessary to save the life of the mother whose life was endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself."
Horrific.
Source: www.answers.com
Posted by: Victoria | June 6, 2009 1:29 AM
Sorry Kelly, I read your comment as though it were a more OK and acceptable means of late term abortion.
Having worked for years in the veterinary field I remember some doctors by-passing the intra-veinous administration of the "blue juice" and trying to hit the heart directly. Your comment reminded me of that and I guess I felt a shudder.
The pet owners were usually devastated and there was usually a very emotional response. That apparently doesn't happen at Tiller's clinic.
Posted by: kelly | June 6, 2009 10:16 AM
Thank you for this. As another commenter said, it put into words so eloquetly what I have had in my heart. Thank you.
Posted by: Kristy in Germany | June 6, 2009 12:02 PM
