The now-ubiquitous terms “reproductive health” and “reproductive freedom” have contributed mightily to a slaughter of the innocents in these United States.
The death toll from that massacre is now greater than the estimated 60 million civilian lives erased by area bombing, genocide, starvation, and disease during World War II. If the victor of D-Day, Dwight D. Eisenhower, could write of that bloodletting that “the loss of lives that could have been creatively lived scars the mind of the modern world,” what would Ike say about 65 million would-be Americans deliberately killed before they were born?
“Reproductive health” and “reproductive freedom” (a usage coined by the recently deceased Gloria Steinem) were, are, and always will be euphemisms deployed to hide the truth of what happens in an abortion. Such prevarication has led to a terrible coarsening of American culture and American public life, as demonstrated recently by the Reproductive Health Access Project in a recent “Fact Sheet” [on] How to Use Abortion Pills for 14-20 weeks”.
As my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Mary Rice Hasson noted when drawing my attention to this horror, the “fact sheet” is “diabolically cold and heartless.” But that was perhaps an understatement. Here is what the “fact sheet” has to say while advising its readers to “keep using misoprostol every 3 hours until you pass both the fetus and the placenta”:
WHAT WILL I SEE? You will pass blood, clots, a fetus, and a placenta. It is okay not to look. The fetus will be several inches long, and you may see a head, arms, and legs … You may be able to feel the umbilical cord attached to the placenta. If so, you should not pull on the umbilical cord.
WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THE CONTENTS THAT PASS? This depends on where you live and what you prefer. If everything is small enough to flush down the toilet, you may do that. If you are around 15-16 weeks or later, the pregnancy may be too big. To lower legal risk, you can wrap it in many layers of plastic and place it in the garbage with other household waste.
I apologize for the tawdriness — indeed, the stomach-churning inhumanity — of this. It is important, however, for thoughtful citizens to recognize what the anti-culture of euphemism has done to our country, to the point where it is deemed publicly acceptable to describe a twenty-week-old pre-born child as “household waste” to be thrown into a garbage can after a Do It Yourself abortion.
Which brings us to the Commonwealth of Virginia, where a proposed constitutional amendment is on the ballot in November.
Its promoters describe it as an effort to safeguard a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” As another EPPC colleague, Ed Whelan, wrote, however, “Amendment 1 would make abortion freely available throughout the third trimester of pregnancy, all the way up to birth; abolish the rights of parents to be consulted on, and to consent to, abortions sought by their young daughters; and enable anyone to perform an abortion and to escape legal responsibility for botching an abortion.”
Then, after noting the part of the amendment that reads, “The Commonwealth shall not penalize, prosecute, or otherwise take adverse action against any individual for aiding or assisting another individual in exercising such other individual’s right to reproductive freedom with such other individual’s voluntary consent,” Mr. Whelan, one of the country’s most eminent constitutional commentators, drew out the implications of this attempt to constitutionally embed a spurious “right:”
Say that a girl’s boyfriend illegally obtains abortion pills and encourages the girl to take them without visiting a doctor. The girl voluntarily agrees to do so. It turns out she has an ectopic pregnancy or is beyond the weeks of gestation when the pills are safe for her to take. She dies as a result. No matter how egregious the boyfriend’s conduct, Virginia could not take any adverse action against him.
The late, great historian Christopher Dawson taught that “a society is only as great as its spiritual aspirations.” Perhaps I might extend Dawson’s insight to propose that a society is only as great as its moral self-understanding. And if a society accepts as a self-evident truth that freedom is sheer willfulness, to the point where the deliberate aborting of an unborn child at any stage of pregnancy is constitutionally protected, then that society has lost its moral bearings and is wandering in a wilderness of lethal confusion.
Virginian voters in November should take note: their Commonwealth was, after all, the home of the man who inscribed the unalienable right to life into America’s birth certificate, 250 years ago.
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About abortion and recent euphemisms, this comparison table (in the “Third Reich and Contemporary Society,” William Brennan, The Abortion Holocaust: Today’s Final Solution, St. Louis: Landmark Press, 1983, selections from Chart 6, and 100-102):
“I know of not a single case where anyone came out of the chambers alive” (Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess on the destructive capacity of Zyklon B gas, 1947) and “It never ever results in live births” (an experienced abortionist on the merits of dissection and extraction, 1981);
“The subjects were forced to undergo death-dealing experiments ‘without receiving anesthetics’” (Dachau freezing experiments, 1942) and “the fetuses are fully alive when we cut their heads off, but anesthetics are definitely unnecessary” (Fetal researcher Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980);
“No criticism was raised” (conference of German physicians to the Ravenbrueck death camp sulfanilamide experiments, Berlin, May 1943) and “no one ever raised an eyebrow” (meeting of American pediatricians to an experiment involving beheading of aborted babies, San Francisco, 1973); and
“What should we do with this garbage” (Treblinka, 1942) and “an aborted baby is just garbage” (fetal researcher Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980).
In “Mein Kampf” (1925) Adolf Hitler referred to Jews as “a parasite in the body of other peoples”; fifty years later, the year of Roe v. Wade, a radical feminist group branded the unborn as “a parasite within the mother’s body” (an early edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women”).
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Said the Chinese Emperor when asked what he would do to save his nation: “I would restore the meaning of words.” Abortion = fetal homicide.
Yes, thank you for those examples, it’s all one of the same.
“Abortion” though can refer to a spontaneous miscarriage or a direct abortion to commit feticide.
Abortion on demand – scourge of society and future of the species
The Nazis upheld a deeply veiled language, which they used to hide their vicious goals and deceive their victims as well.
All social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering.
Abortion is a barbaric act.
As someone who adopted her children, this graphic description of the abortion procedure makes me sick. Abortion has been around forever but new medical approaches in recent years have too many on the left treating this subject like a person is cutting off a hangnail. Maybe if it was required reading for our late in high school aged teens, there would be less casual sex.
I still ask myself why we never hear anything from the pulpit about proper sexual behavior and chastity. For all ages but especially the young who have not yet made major life decisions. This should be spoken to the early teens so it becomes part of their life perspective. There is no glory in sleeping around. Indeed it often leads to this sort of a result, which is a tragedy. Yet, our church keeps cheerfully marrying young people who the priests KNOW are in these live-in relationships, with nary a word. Too many clergy fear their higher-ups who may get complaints from parishioners telling them to mind their business. Well, the immortal souls of their parishioners IS their business. Its about time some of them said something.
I love to hear of co habitating couples marriage!
To Susanne lee: A prominent theologian said some years ago that cohabitation is not a preparation for marriage – it is a preparation for adultery. The couple have already indicated that they believe having sex with someone not your spouse is OK.
Casualness…it’s all about “being spiritual without being religious”. Entropy! A drift into paganism and even the convergence of religions. The choice not to choose…
“Islam has not wanted to choose between Heaven and Earth. It proposed instead a blending of heaven and earth, sex and mysticism, war and proselytism, conquest and apostolate. In more general terms, Islam proposed a blending of the spiritual and the temporal worlds which neither in Islam nor among the pagans have ever been divided” (Jean Guitton, “Great Heresies and Church Councils,” 1965).
Boy! Do I agree with you. I’ve been dismayed at the failure of our Clergy to preach the gospel of life. NEVER, in over the 90 years that I can remember, has a priest preached a sermon, from the pulpit, about generous family life, the evil of the contraception or the horror of abortion. Conception avoidance is now the norm of most married couples. Not so long in the future we will reap the whirlwind as our world population collapses. Don’t believe it? Dig deeper.
To LJ: What you say is so true.The abortion industry’s own statistics say that 87% of the women getting abortions are single. So, before killing the unborn there is serious sin involved. I am using the word serious this time as the bishops seem to have discarded the word mortal.
The typical USCCB or individual bishop statement usually runs along the lines of abortion is a violation of human dignity, etc.
We oppose abortion because it is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life. This is the definition of murder. The CCC lists four Sins that cry to heaven and murder is first on the list. That people are endangering their eternal salvation obtaining an abortion or assisting in any way is typically not mentioned. While the bishops say that abortion is the preeminent issue their conduct does not indicate this. Over One million unborn babies killed in this country annually should evoke outrage.
It’s worse, it is not just “the terrible coarsening”, it is plain conspiracy of the Catholic Hierarchy of looking the other way. No sermons against abortion, no mass prayer vigils in front of abortion mills, no excommunication of abortion supporting Catholic politicians so why not expect “the terrible coarsening”.
Well, that’s partly because they’re too busy looking for ways to normalize homosexual relationships. It’s a matter of (warped) priorities.
“If you are around 15-16 weeks or later, the pregnancy may be too big. To lower legal risk, you can wrap it in many layers of plastic and place it in the garbage with other household waste.”
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In the age of legal chemical-abortions-at-home, how prosecutors can arrest and charge women who dump their deceased babies in the trash is going to get interesting.
Isn’t ear piercing illegal without a parent’s permission?
It varies by State
“If you are around 15-16 weeks or later, the pregnancy may be too big. To lower legal risk, you can wrap it in many layers of plastic and place it in the garbage with other household waste.”
.
In the age of chemical-abortion-at-home, how does one prosecute women for improper handling of a body?
Another fine article from George Weigel on the abortion holocaust. Too bad he has dedicated his energy to not only give witness but to live simultaneously in constant denial of support for the holocaust, directly and indirectly, by many high prelates in our own Church. If the Church were to exercise real unity instead of taking refuge in abusing “unity” as just another meaningless aphorism, abortion would not exist.
Another fine article from George Weigel on the abortion holocaust. Too bad he has dedicated his energy to not only give effective witness but to function simultaneously in constant denial of the support given to the holocaust, directly and indirectly, by many high prelates in our own Church. If the Church were to exercise real unity instead of taking refuge in preaching “unity,” making it just another meaningless cliche, abortion would not exist.
Why yes, kick those tires before you buy that car.
I don’t think Miss Susanne was endorsing cohabitation but instead was saying we should be glad when those couples choose matrimony .