Abortion obsession
Monday, October 28, 2024
*Fr. Eduardo Barrios, SJ
There are many issues of interest to the citizens of the United States, all aiming to provide a better quality of life, such as legal and safe immigration, education, medical services, the cost of food and medicine, national and international peace, housing, and trade, among others.
However, the campaigns for the November 5 elections to win the White House are focusing too much on an issue related to death: abortion.
There is much discussion about the rights of an infant that is developing in the womb. At one end of the issue are those who argue that the right to be born is acquired at the moment of conception; at the other end are those who claim that this right does not exist even in the ninth month. But everyone knows that abortion kills a living being growing inside the mother. Is it something or someone?
The frenzy to defend abortion tooth and nail is somewhat reminiscent of the Nazi obsession with seeking out Jews to deport to Auschwitz or other extermination camps. Between 1939 and 1945 Hitler's Nazis executed some six million human beings, including Jews, Gypsies, and Christian opponents. This genocide pales in comparison to the more than fifty million babies aborted worldwide every year.
Many people take abortion lightly because they have not fully visualized the cruelty of the practice.
During the first weeks of pregnancy, chemicals in the form of pills, plus some prostaglandins, are usually prescribed. There are serious risks for the mother. For the human embryo, it means certain death, and suffered in excruciating pain. From the sixteenth week of pregnancy, a saline injection can be used; it burns the skin of the embryo and causes death by poisoning and hemorrhage.
After about eight weeks, abortion is performed as a surgical procedure. One is called suction, using an instrument that resembles a vacuum cleaner. Other surgeries involve cutting instruments that shatter and dismember the tortured unborn; sometimes the head must be squeezed until the skull is crushed.
The most shocking method is the cesarean section; the baby is born alive and is left to agonize for hours until it expires and is thrown into the trash can of the “reproductive health” clinic. Some health that breeds death!
Pregnancy should not be considered a disease to be cured. Most unwanted pregnancies are the result of the abuse of free will; one must take care of oneself. There are also dramatic pregnancies, those caused by criminal actions such as statutory rape and incest. We can understand that the victim may naturally think of having an abortion, but this should not be condoned. There are always selfless married couples, with or without children, who are willing to save babies through adoption.
Clinics warn mothers that abortion has risks to their physical health. But they do not warn them of the psychological damage. While the medical team commits infanticide, the parents of this human being are committing a worse crime, filicide.
Very often the pregnant woman who had an abortion in her youth, lather contemplates on the fact with a better-formed moral conscience. If she is Catholic, she will go to the confessional in search of divine forgiveness. There are times when, although the confessor tells her that he has the power to absolve this sin and that she does not need to confess it again, the woman continues to confess the same thing over and over again, thinking that her crime cannot be forgiven by God.
A woman who has had an abortion can contact the Respect Life Office of her diocese and seek help. Project Rachel, a post-abortion healing ministry comprised of a network of lay volunteers, priests, deacons, and mental health professionals who provide spiritual and psychological support for those who are suffering from an abortion experience. In the Archdiocese of Miami, one component of Project Rachel is "Entering Canaan," a program that accompanies women and men on their journey of healing and forgiveness from abortion. For more information, call 954-981-2984, or visit www.miamiarch.org/respectlife or respectlifemiami.org.
