In the world of politics, it is impossible to vote for
any party that supports abortion while what we need from any party that has
declared itself "pro-life" is specificity: the way it will not just call itself
pro-life but take an action or pledge to initiate the end-game against this most
odious and incredible of human practices. A visit to an abortion mill by a
leader would be an excellent way to start, and there is no reason it couldn't be
done (and every reason why it should).
We can no longer slough it off to the courts, hoping they
will solve the issue. Despite its Catholic majority, the U.S. Supreme Court
seems unlikely, for now, to overturn existing law (that is, Roe v
Wade, the most notorious decision in America's history, opposed now
even by the woman who was "Roe" and in whose name abortion was legalized in
1973), while moving the legislative branch on any issue has proven to be all but
impossible in recent times. [See at bottom for a recent view on what Roe does and
doesn't mean.]
There is however the powerful weapon of the "bully
pulpit," and a leader speaking loudly and candidly about this great evil -- a
constant drumbeat -- would have an impact on personal decisions, especially
those of the young (teens and those in their twenties), who account for
three-quarters of abortions.
A constant drumbeat from the top of government could be
extremely significant and we have never really seen that -- abortion spoken
about with the same passion as foreign affairs, scandals, or the economy.
Beyond choosing judges, we need politicians to make
appearances (can you imagine if leaders did this?) at those clinics.
Up to now, abortions have proceeded largely
because it has remained an issue that is not openly and loudly and
constantly denounced. It is more a sporadic issue. The good news: abortion is
somewhat down. From a peak in the United States of 1.4 million in 1990, it fell
through the 1990s and into the 2000s to 1.2 million in 2008.
And the rate of abortion, which was once
twenty-nine each year for every thousand women, is now more like twenty per
thousand women (a third less, with the total number remaining more than a
million in part because the population has increased).
That's good news. The rate is down.
But fifty million U.S. babies have succumbed, which is
like taking the metropolitan areas of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago and
combining them.
Can you imagine if a disaster killed that many?
Astoundingly, more than a billion babies have been killed worldwide in
the last several decades. There are nearly a hundred thousand babies terminated
each year in Canada but at a lower rate (about fourteen per
thousand).
Back in the U.S. -- sadly and scandalously -- 28 percent
of abortions are for "Catholic" women, though Catholics are twenty-five percent
of the American populace.
The statistics are beguiling: there are rises and
declines no matter which party is in power, though the general decline would
seem to bear testimony to the awareness raised by pro-lifers on billboards,
bumper-stickers, and clinic placards. After rather steady decline through the
1990s and first few years of the 2000s, the long-term decline in abortion
stalled starting in 2005.
Thus, it remains a searing crisis.
We are reminded of this by a new book, Abandoned: The Untold Story of the Abortion Wars,
by Monica Migliorino Miller, a pro-life leader in Michigan who fought her first
battles in Wisconsin and Chicago. It is called "the best book ever written on
abortion" by author-film-maker Dinesh D'Souza, and "unprecedented" by nurse Jill
Stanek (a nurse and major pro-life blogger), while Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life
Action League has described it "the most important book ever written on the
subject" and pro-life activist Father Frank Pavone calls it "revealing like no
other book." Raw. Gritty. Compelling. And tough to stomach.
It is no pleasant topic, as will be seen by the excerpt
we are running from the new book below, but perhaps an excerpt every politician
should be required to read. These are snippets taken from descriptions of
pro-lifers searching through trash at a notorious Midwest clinic [caution:
graphic, upsetting]:
WE PULLED
our cars slowly into the dark alley. Rats scurried before our headlights,
frightened by the noise of our intrusion. We parked our three-vehicle caravan in
the alley off Monroe Street, near Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago and
stopped in front of a loading dock upon which stood three garbage dumpsters and
a filthy blue trash barrel. The address, 30 South Michigan, was crudely painted
on the barrel in white lettering. It had rained in the Loop earlier that day,
and the alley pavement shone with a slimy oil. We turned off our engines and
headlights, paused for a moment, and looked around to make sure no one else was
about. The stench of rotting garbage nearly overwhelmed the eight of us as we
slowly and quietly got out of our cars. We climbed onto the loading dock, lifted
the dumpster lids, and began to sift through the trash. I opened the lid on a
bright red dumpster and yanked out a bag of garbage. Peering into the very
bottom of the dumpster I saw a bag that was baby blue in color. As I hauled the
bag out, I noticed it was heavier than the others. I rested it on the loading
dock and opened it. The top of the bag was stuffed with bloody surgical paper,
and underneath was a small, heavy cardboard box, about the size of two shoe
boxes, sealed in duct tape. I pulled the box out, carefully cradling it in my
arms, and placed it in the backseat of one of the cars. We returned the rest of
the bags to the dumpster to look as though nothing had been disturbed. As we
pulled out of the alley, rats again darted in front of our headlights. One
scampered across the top of a dumpster as our car made its way down the wet and
oily path and out into the street.
We made the short drive to the northwest side of
Chicago and parked our cars outside Joseph Scheidler’s garage. I lifted the
cardboard box, carried it into the garage, and set it down on a card table
beneath a bright utility light. We all gathered around the table and stood in
apprehension as the duct tape was carefully peeled off the box and the flaps
opened. I peered inside and saw small plastic specimen bags, known as Whirl
Paks, each filled with a dark reddish liquid. We took the bags out and laid them
on the table. There were forty-three altogether.
Several bags were marked with a woman’s name, age, a
date, and two numbers. The smaller number told us the gestational age of the
aborted fetus contained within. We thought the other number indicated the
amount of abortions performed at the Michigan Avenue Medical Center since the
beginning of the year. As of this Saturday night, March 14, 1987, the number was
in the three thousands.
-------
THE morning sun beat down upon us and the small remains
of the aborted babies began to shrivel in the heat. I occasionally bathed the
torn body parts in formalin solution as I stood behind one of the long tables we
had set up on the wide sidewalk in front of the Michigan Avenue Medical Center.
It was an unusually warm spring day, May 6, 1987. We had laid out nearly six
hundred bodies of unborn children we had dug out of the trash behind the 30
South Michigan clinic. This was our “on the street” press conference organized
by Joe Scheidler, meant to expose to the public the victims of abortion. It must
still rank as one of the most unusual press conferences in journalistic
history.
Most of the bodies remained in their plastic Whirl
Paks, neatly stacked together in homemade infant-sized coffins. These were made
by Peter Krump, who put his carpentry skills to work and constructed the small
white wooden boxes. We took several of the torn bodies out of their plastic
containers and assembled them in trays for the media and passersby to observe on
the busy avenue.
A few moments after the tables were set up and the
bodies displayed, two Filipino workers from the abortion clinic came down to see
what was happening. They looked at the trays of bodies and the children’s
coffins filled with the familiar Whirl Paks. They glanced at the enormous
spectacle laid out in front of their clinic for all to see before dashing
quickly back into the building. No other workers came out during the remainder
of the press conference. The clinic workers and Dr. Florendo never expected
that the unborn they had buried in the trash in the back alley might one day
reemerge on their front doorstep.
Dozens of reporters arrived. So did the police, who
confronted Joe about the tables set up on the street. Many who walked to and fro
upon Michigan Avenue stopped at the tables to peer at the bodies. I was
impressed by their spontaneous expressions of horror. Most of those who looked
at the crushed bodies were dumbfounded at the obvious humanity of the fetal
babies and aghast at the evidence of violence written upon the torn flesh and
severed limbs. One man who came by shook his head and muttered, “This ain’t
nothin’ but murder.” A group of three African American women paused to gaze at
the bodies. One began to cry. “That’s a baby! A real baby!” said another,
completely amazed. Many looked at the bodies, shook their heads sympathetically,
and kept on walking.
There was something pure in these reactions. These
people were not prepared for what they saw. They were on the street that morning
walking to work, or going shopping, or to the library or the museum, but
wherever they were going they did not expect to see what we had laid out for
them. The aborted babies, who were never meant to be seen, now intruded into the
lives of these strangers. The passersby had no psychological preparation, no
time to set up any mental barriers against the obvious tragedy of the torn
bodies, no opportunity to theorize about abortion or put it into a ready-made
political category. They had not read any editorials or commentaries just before
arriving on the scene that might somehow mitigate the reality that these were
real human beings who had suffered a form of violence. For me it was a
privileged moment to see a kind of spontaneous enlightenment erupt in the souls
of others. I knew that those who saw the fetal children would never think of
abortion in the same way again.
-----
I REMEMBER her face. I remember everything about the
woman—her light brown skin, her dark brown eyes, the way she hung her head and
tried to fight back her tears. It was a cold October morning outside of the
Summit Women’s Health Organization. Her boyfriend had just dropped her off at
the corner of 6th and Wisconsin, at the foot of a tall office building in
downtown Milwaukee.
“I’ve got to do it,” she said. “I know it’s wrong, but
I got to.”
“But, Carolyn, you see this picture of what abortion
will do to your baby. You know this is a human life, a human being, your own
child. Please, let me help you.”
The street corner was busy with people hurrying to and
fro, and the noise of the traffic competed with the sound of our voices. The
world around us was oblivious to the life-and-death struggle playing
out on this grey city street. Carolyn
started anxiously toward the heavy glass revolving doors, and I followed after
her, still pleading.
“Carolyn, at least give yourself one more day to think
it over. Your baby’s worth at least one more day.”
“That’s true,” she replied, still walking toward the
building.
“Come on, Carolyn. Come with me. Let’s get a cup of
coffee and we’ll talk.”
But her hand was already on the door. “I’ll read your
pamphlet. I’ll think it over while I’m up there.”
In another instant she was inside the building, her
figure blending into the darkness of the lobby. I called after her, but she was
gone.
So close. She was listening to me. She even told me
her name. She had taken my literature. She seemed hesitant to confirm her
choice—but in the end she walked through the doors and disappeared. Another
loss. Another tragedy. I would feel regret and sorrow for days afterward. And I
would mourn for the loss of her baby.
Somehow, almost inexplicably, I missed her child. How
could I miss a person never born? I didn’t know this life, nor the millions of
others who perished in abortion. I did not have what our culture calls a
“meaningful relationship” with this unborn baby slated for abortion. But the
suffering of my heart told me, on an intimately personal level, that the slain
preborn were really here once, and now they were gone, as though banished from
the world.
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