The Valley Catholic
February 3, 2015
commentary
17
MaKinG a DiFFeRence: Protecting the unborn in a ‘throwaway culture’
By tony Magliano
What a sight!
Over 25 times from
the top of Capitol Hill
in Washington, D.C., I
have seen a sea of people marching to
proclaim the dignity of unborn human
life, and how death-dealing abortion
sends the unholy message that some
human beings are disposable.
And as I write, I plan to march with
and view that sea of people once again,
during the 42nd annual “March for Life”
on Jan. 22.
It’s always a moral and spiritual
shot-in-the-arm for me.
But good as they are, the Washington “March for Life” and the “Walk for
Life West Coast” in San Francisco (on
Jan. 24), as well as dozens of similar
events at state capitols throughout the
U.S., are simply not enough.
While significant progress has been
made to lessen the number of abortions,
nonetheless, according to the National
Right to Life Committee approximately
1 million unborn brothers and sisters
are brutally dismembered by abortion
each year.
And globally, according to the proabortion Guttmacher Institute, over 40
million unborn babies are killed annually by abortion.
Throughout the entire year believers
in the God of life need to pray, educate,
peacefully protest, donate and lobby on
behalf of the unborn. They can’t do it
for themselves.
Therefore, please email and call your
two U.S. senators (Capitol switchboard:
202-224-3121) urging them to cosponsor
and actively support the “Pain-Capable
Unborn Child Protection Act” which
would ban most abortions after 20
weeks of unborn life.
There is solid medical evidence that
unborn babies feel pain by at least 20
weeks after fertilization (www.nrlc.
org/abortion/fetalpain). And abortion
is brutally painful.
According to the National Right to
Life Committee (NRLC), the abortion
technique known as “dilation and
evacuation,” used to abort unborn
children up to 24 weeks, uses forceps
with sharp metal jaws to grasp parts
of the developing baby, which are then
twisted and torn away.
Another abortion technique after
16 weeks of pregnancy known as “saline amniocentesis,” inserts a needle
through the mother’s abdomen and
withdraws a cup of amniotic fluid and
replaces it with a powerful salt solution.
According to the NRLC, the baby
swallows the salt solution and is
poisoned. Additionally, the chemical
solution causes painful burning and
deterioration of the baby’s skin (www.
nrlc.org/abortion/medicalfacts/techniques).
In a Sept. 20, 2013 address to a
gathering of Catholic gynecologists,
Pope Francis affirmed the sacredness
of unborn human life, and connected
it to the work of social justice.
He said, “In all its phases and at
every age, human life is always sacred
and always of quality.”
The Holy Father said abortion is a
product of a “widespread mentality of
profit, the ‘throwaway culture,’ which
today enslaves the hearts and intelligences of so many.”
This mindset he added “requires
eliminating human beings, especially
if physically or socially weaker. Our
answer to this mentality is a decisive
and unhesitant ‘yes’ to life.”
Taking a consistent ethic of life
position, the pope linked together
unborn babies, the aged and the poor
as among the most vulnerable human
beings whom Christians are called to
especially love.
“Things have a price and are saleable, but persons have a dignity, they
are worth more than things and they
have no price. Because of this, attention
to human life in its totality has become
in recent times a real and proper priority of the Magisterium of the Church,
particularly for life which is largely
defenseless, namely, that of the disabled, the sick, the unborn, children,
the elderly. …
“They cannot be discarded”!
Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist.
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