Every once in a while, those dedicated to advancing the culture of death get their ire up and just can't enunciate facts. This is usually because there are no facts to support their position, having said that, we know that we can always expect rants from such people. There have been a couple of doozies this week.
Both of those bellowing are female, both have a long record of pro-abortion fanaticism, but both, in my humble opinion have gone off the deep end.
Missouri State Senator Joan Bray, for example, took off after pro-life male politicians in a manner that I have not heard about in a very long time.
The debate that occurred in the state senate focused on a piece of legislation that was originally supposed to protect the expectant mother seeking an abortion from coercion by the abortion provider. The current bill is so weak that pro-life activist/lobbyist Sam Lee has asked legislators not to vote for it. But that has not deterred Senator Bray. Bray was incensed by the very idea that such a law would even be proposed. During the debate, Senator Bray said, "A vote for this bill is a vote for the state to lie to these women in print. I'm sick of women being treated like they're so stupid that they can't be responsible for their own reproductive decisions."
Note that Bray did not expound on the reasons why expectant mothers do not need to know the dangers of aborting a child, but rather focused her comments on gibberish. We've heard all this before; it only occurs when pro-abortion zealots cannot defend their position.
Let's see what else Bray had to say: "I'm sick of women having no options, and being coerced to give birth."
Coercing a mother to give birth to her own child is a ridiculous premise. If the woman in question does not wish to bear a child, then she can take steps to avoid the situation that brings about pregnancy. Bray is the one insulting women, at least in this case:
"I'm sick of a bunch of men around here, year after year after year, piling up restriction after restriction after restriction on women who found themselves in a very unhappy, unpleasant circumstance of an unwanted pregnancy."
How did these expectant mothers find themselves in this circumstance? I think we know exactly how it happened, and again, we know that people of both sexes know how to avoid it. The preborn child is not the cause of unhappiness, unpleasantness or unwantedness; he or she did not have a say in the matter. However the female and the male did, Senator Bray. Think about it.
Senator Bray again: "I am sick of the disrespect for women who come to the Capitol defending a woman's legal right to choose an abortion."
Aha! You see, we finally got to her point. Bray is not going to advocate abstinence until marriage, fidelity within marriage or any of the qualities that predispose self-respect and respect for the other person. No, Bray just wants unrestricted access to abortion on demand.
Yes, Senator Bray is sick, but not because of the defense of preborn children that she is hearing and not because of the sincere concerns some lawmakers have about expectant mothers whose health and well-being will be at risk if they decide to abort their children. In fact, it seems to me that Senator Bray is sick to death of the growing number of pro-life advocates in the state legislature and has chosen to lash out at them in a manner similar to a cat fight … though there is but one of the usual two feline contenders in this fight.
The idea of tying "responsibility" to the notion of solving a problem by killing a person has been around since the struggle between pro-life and pro-death forces began. But now that the pro-life movement is making appreciable gains in public sentiment and political commitment, things are looking bad for the Brays of the world. I think the poor lady needs a vacation.
Using a single speech to attack her peers, suggesting that they are disrespectful toward members of the opposite sex smacks of disingenuousness.
Perhaps Senator Bray's bigotry against pro-life men comes about because she is too committed to rhetorical zealotry and has lost her ability to be civil. I don't know, but it certainly appears that way.
And then there's the case of Frances Kissling, the second bellowing female. She was president of Catholics for Choice for 25 years until 2007, and currently is visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Frances got her nose out of joint because a group of Catholic leaders, including yours truly, signed on to a letter asking President Barack Obama to remove anti-Catholic hypocrite Harry Knox from the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
In our view, you cannot have a Catholic-hater involved in advising the president regarding faith-based questions because the man is already predisposed to be a religious bigot. Harry Knox attacked Pope Benedict XVI regarding the use of condoms in Africa. On the subject of the Wyoming bishop who would not give the Eucharist to a lesbian couple, Knox wrote:
In this holy Lenten season, it is immoral and insulting to Jesus to use the body and blood of Christ the reconciler as a weapon to silence free speech and demean the love of a committed, legally married couple. The Human Rights Campaign grieves with the couple, Leah Vader and Lynn Huskinson, over this act of spiritual and emotional violence perpetrated against them.
Even though such public pronouncements are clearly antagonistic toward moral sensibility and logic, the signers of the letter wanted to be sure that specific documentation accompanied the letter. In fact, the Media Research Center did its homework for the express purpose of doing all they could to avoid the controversy we all knew would erupt. And erupt it has.
Frances writes
A rogue's gallery of some of the most vicious and marginal figures on the Catholic right have sent a letter to the President calling on him to oust Harry. Who are these guardians of civility in religious discourse? … Judie Brown, of the American Life League, a group so virulent in its own anti-Catholicism that it attacked D.C.'s former Cardinal McCarrick during the 2004 election campaign for not denying Communion to pro-choice John Kerry. Brown claimed McCarrick was not obeying the pope who had, according to her, demanded that Catholic legislators who were pro-choice must be denied Communion.
Frances, the truth is that the pope did not demand that anyone obey him, but rather that they pay close attention to the 2004 memorandum sent to the bishops by the Vatican. In that memorandum
they are urged, after careful examination of the situation with a particular pro-abortion public figure, to take proper action to deny Holy Communion to such people. Church law does not exist to be ignored; it exists to be enforced and there are no exceptions.
Frances Kissling, like Senator Bray, is up in arms. She is all about name-calling, denigrating those with whom she disagrees and lobbing verbal cannon balls toward those of us who truly understand the difference between good and evil. Truth makes Frances uncomfortable in the same way it makes Senator Bray uncomfortable.
The truth about which I write does not belong to me; it belongs to no human being but is, rather, that truth that is written on the heart of every human being by God Himself.
This is the fundamental difference between these two ladies and those of us who are committed to that truth. Frances cannot articulate a strong, viable defense of Harry Knox in view of the documentation that was provided to President Obama. And so, like Bray, she resorts to vilifying the messengers so that she can ignore the message.
Disrespect, bias and twisted zealotry grow in a garden sown with seeds of deceit. Such language maligns, but never counters, intellectual honesty. The Kisslings and Brays of our world are sad figures, not only because they have resorted to tactics like those noted here, but because they are human beings who are loved by God and who have somehow lost their way. Let us pray for them and for those who accept what they say without questioning it.