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Abortion ultimately undermines respect for all life |
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By Deirdre McQuade
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Wednesday, 23 September 2009 |
On Sept. 11, James Pouillon was shot multiple times and killed while protesting abortion outside a high school in Owosso, Mich. According to reports, the suspect in custody, Harlan James Drake, admitted to police that he had also killed Mike Fuoss earlier that morning and that he had intended to murder a third man against whom he held a grudge, but was arrested before he reached his last victim.
The violence didn’t end with his arrest. The Associated Press reports that Mr. Drake was hospitalized after an attempt on his own life in the county jail.
Nor is that the end of it. Some angry people are already calling for the death penalty, yet another act of violence.
Pro-life
demonstrators are no strangers to verbal and physical harassment and
even death threats, but this is the first publicized case of one’s
murder.
Police who took the suspect into custody reported that
Drake targeted Pouillon because he didn’t like his sign showing the
disturbing reality of abortion. On one side, the placard read: “LIFE”
accompanied by the lovely image of a smiling baby, while the other had
“ABORTION” written above a gruesome photo of the bloody remains of an
aborted child.
James Pouillon’s murder is reprehensible.
Whatever one thinks of the appropriate public use of such images — and
there is a range of opinions even within the pro-life movement —
certainly no one deserves to be killed for speaking out against the
horror of abortion.
The photo on his placard is gruesome because
abortion is gruesome, but his brutally honest witness is no cause for
such fatal hostility.
Undermining respect for life
The
image on his sign is one of violence — a most extreme form of violence
against vulnerable, defenseless, innocent children in the womb. That
the violent act of abortion — and the seemingly intractable
controversy surrounding it — is, at times, associated with more
violence is unfortunately not accidental.
Indeed, in their
Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities (2001), the bishops of the United
States note that legalized abortion has made ours “a society
increasingly coarsened by toleration and acceptance of acts that
purposely destroy human life.”
They note the interdependence of
all life issues, saying: “A society which destroys human life by
abortion under the mantle of law unavoidably undermines respect for
life in all other contexts.”
With less respect for human life, and a greater coarseness toward killing, the road is paved for more violence.
But the violence of abortion is not necessary. It can be stopped.
Resources available
Hundreds of pregnancy care centers and parish networks are ready to assist families who are tempted to resort to abortion.
Those
who perform or promote abortions can repent and come to use their gifts
in the service of life rather than its destruction.
And thanks
to God’s grace at work in and through Project Rachel, the ministry of
the church and its compassionate counselors, men and women can receive
healing from past abortions.
The Catholic bishops’ conference
and scores of other groups that make up the vast pro-life movement in
America are working hard toward the day when no abortion will have the
sanction of law.
This fall, consider gathering your family and friends together to pray for an end to abortion and all forms of violence.
Deirdre
McQuade is assistant director for policy and communications at the
Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops.
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