This past Friday the 51st annual March for Life stepped off in Washington, D.C. at 1:00 PM after a noon rally on the National Mall. Tomorrow, 22 January, is designated the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children. It is the date on which in 1973 Roe v Wade was passed.
Despite the victory in the 2022 Dobb’s decision that overturned the tragic Roe decision 49 years later, returning the decision to states rather than national blanket approval, there is still much to be done in efforts to protect vulnerable life. Abortion has already had, disastrous consequences for the individual, the family, society, and the world at large, that will take generations to undo.
On April 18, 2018 the Washington Post published an article that began: "Nothing like this has happened in human history. A combination of cultural preferences, government decree, and modern medical technology in the world’s two largest countries has created a gender imbalance on a continental scale. Men outnumber women by 70 million in China and India." These imbalances are having and will have devastating effects on society,
However, inequality in the womb extends beyond the simple question of preference for a child's sex, to questions of health status, projected cognitive abilities, and overall potential of the child in utero.
Iceland has almost exterminated Down syndrome. Abortion is the usual and expected course if pre-natal tests reveal evidence of trisomy 21. As Icelandic Geneticist Kari Stefansson “. . . we have basically eradicated Down syndrome from our society – (such that) there is hardly ever a child born with Down syndrome in Iceland anymore." When asked what a 100% termination rate indicates about Icelandic society, Steffanson replied that "It reflects relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling,” that he doesn’t see as desirable because “You’re having an impact on decisions that are not entirely medical. ”Here at home over 63% of children with three copies of chromosome 21 are aborted. Margaret Sanger, the virulently racist, a proponent of eugenics, and foundress of Planned Parenthood, would be thrilled by those statistics.
Pre-natal screening has become a lucrative business in the U.S. But there is a problem. An article in the N.Y. Times Magazine a few years ago began by noting that some of the tests looking for missing parts of chromosomes in an effort to make a prenatal diagnosis of congenital disease are wrong 85% of the time. An eighty-five percent incorrect rate is an appalling statistic on which to base life and death decisions. When you consider that Tom Brady's career pass completion rate is 64.3% it appears that he is four times more accurate than some prenatal tests.
In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, (“The Gospel of Life”) St. John Paul II described how eugenic abortion is justified in public opinion through a mentality
which accepts life only under certain conditions and rejects it when it is affected--or might be affected--by any limitation, handicap, or illness. He went on to condemn
masking the horror of crimes against life by describing them in euphemistic terms.
Unfortunately, the devaluation of vulnerable human lives has been extended to include the elderly, many of whose lives are seen as of little or no value simply as a result of the changes associated with aging and the diseases which afflict those of us who are old.
This devaluation drives the increasing trend to legislate the intentional killing of the sick elderly, and sometimes not so elderly, through what is euphemistically called "physician prescribed death.” As of May 2, 2023, unlike other states, Vermont, our neighbor to the north, chose to permit out-of-staters to be brought to the state so as to be put down there.
One must ask exactly when illness in the elderly or trisomy 21 in an unborn child became capital offenses. As Dr. Cicely Saunders, foundress of London’s St. Christopher’s Hospice explained: "Impending death is no excuse for ending life. Rather than rushing to kill the dying in the name of ending their suffering we should focus on practical measures for alleviating their pain and spiritual means to make their final moments worth living."
Opposition to the intentional killing of the sick is not just "a Catholic thing." The Joint Declaration on End-of-Life Issues of the Abrahamic Monotheistic Religions represents the combined opinion of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. It was signed at the Vatican on October 28, 2019. It includes the following:
“Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are inherently, morally, and religiously wrong and should be forbidden with no exceptions. Any pressure upon dying patients
to end their lives by active and deliberate actions is categorically rejected.”
Humankind has struggled for millennia to discern the meaning and value of life to understand the fundamental equality of all human lives. Are some lives more important than others? Should some lives not be allowed to be born?
How long before we exterminate the ill and dying for economic reasons once they are no longer productive? Do we truly realize that while cure is rare, care and healing are always possible?
Pope John Paul II of happy memory was prophetic in pointing out the danger in the tendency to disguise crimes against life in its early and final stages by using innocuous medical terms that distract attention from the fact that what is involved is the right to life
of a human person.
An ideal world wouldn't need an annual March for Life, but it will remain a necessity
for the foreseeable future. That is one of the tragedies of our time.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiescant in pace.
"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace."
___________________________________________
Among one of the big surprises of my life was finding myself in Vietnam after tertianship in Australia. It was an impulsive choice when the provincial asked if I wanted to stop in Hawaii on the way home. As I've never wanted to stop in Hawaii I blurted out, "May I go to Vietnam instead?"
The photos below were all taken in or around My Tho in Mekong Delta. How I got to spend three days with a group of religious sisters is a long story that involves a Vietnamese tertian classmate who took me there.
All of the shots are of kids.
As soon as they saw me with the camera, initially on a balcony, crowds of kids gathered. 
Looking down at the clusters of children who attended the kindergarten that the Sisters of St Paul of Chartres conducted. The church is forbidden to be involved in education beyond the level of kindergarten. 
A very rare sighting of me with children. A few hours later the sister in the photo took John and Me to visit her priest uncle and then to visit her family. She did not tell her mother we were coming. Wonderful scene of pure joy when we got out of the VW Bus. 
At Go Cong Beach. This boy saw the camera and mugged shamelessly. 
A little wary of the camera. He was the last kid at the daycare, helping to straighten up while waiting to be picked-up.
Fr. Jack, SJ, MD
No comments:
Post a Comment