So much in the news these days gives us pause during our frenzied pace this Advent season. For instance, we recently learned that Charlie Sheen’s ex-fiancée is claiming that he “forced her to have an abortion in March 2014 because ‘he did not want his child to have his blood type (i.e., HIV-positive).’ When Rossi objected to terminating the pregnancy, Sheen allegedly ‘erupted into a fit of rage, stating he would “kick her to the curb” if she did not have an abortion and that he did not want her to “give birth to a retarded child.”’”
Such callous disregard for the human being created by God in His image and likeness is not uncommon in our day. We see another example in London as well, where teaching assistant Kevin Wilson “stomped on his pregnant ex-girlfriend’s stomach and killed their unborn child after she refused to have an abortion.” Wilson and an accomplice are being criminally tried and the case is currently in trial.
Again, the preborn child and his mother suffer abuse at the hand of someone who cannot accept a child as a gift from God.
Abortionist Natalie Whaley, who writes that she fears for her own life, says in a recently commentary: “I perform abortions because I have the skills to provide this basic medical care. I perform abortions because it is moral work.” Whaley sees her role as an abortionist as nothing more than providing medical care because killing babies is the moral thing to do! How does that even make sense?
As chilling as this sounds to some, there are far too many who would agree with Whaley’s perspective. The organization she belongs to—Physicians for Reproductive Health—has long ago relegated the performance of abortion to a service, completely ignoring the cold, hard truth that every act of abortion kills a person.
On its website we find this statement, “As physicians, we believe that speaking about abortion helps remove the stigma that has been attached to it by anti-choice lawmakers and organizations. Legislation that puts politics and ideology before the doctor-patient relationship interferes with our ability to provide the highest level of care to our patients.” Those words are indicative of a mindset that is not only reflective of the abortion industry but of the mental attitudes that persist among the Sheens and Wilsons of our world today.
The word “choice” masks a multitude of sins, while at the same time kills consciences and lines bulging pockets with blood money. Such is the situation we confront on a daily basis. So how should we cope?
One very wise nun, a member of the Daughters of Jesus, wrote: “It’s true that the present-day reality can sink us in discouragement, can prostrate us thinking that we are a very small drop in the great sea of this world so broken by the absence of God.” But, she continues, quoting Saint Candida Maria de Jesus: “‘Trust in him who said one day, “I am the Light, I am the Life.”’”
Indeed, that is not only the answer to how we as pro-life Americans cope, but how we find the strength necessary in patience, mercy, and love of truth to witness to the lost souls, one by one.
Because we have faith, we also have hope. And we know that it is not any one of us who will convert the wasteland into a fertile ground of devotion to life, but rather the One who calls us to follow Him and never count the cost.
