By Judie Brown
Today marks the first day on our journey toward the celebration of the birth of Christ, which occurs nine months from today. But there are other momentous events that require nine months, including—and most especially—the gestational age of a preborn child who enters the world approximately nine months after her life began.
The wondrous conception of a new human being is also celebrated today as we reflect on the Annunciation, that day on which the angel Gabriel advised Mary that she had been chosen by God to be the mother of His Son. This announcement, which because of Mary’s YES changed the world for all time, is momentous in more ways than we can share in this brief article.
Father Leonard Feeney, MICM, got to the crux of the matter quite nicely when he wrote: “The moment when God’s request to Mary will, by her consent, be fulfilled, is called the fullness of time. This means that time and eternity have touched in a single moment of embrace and will never separate again, either for all time or for all eternity.”
It is this wondrous moment that calls us to be grateful, to be faithful, and to be ever committed to celebrating the truth that every human being is equally precious before God, even when that person is tossed away like trash by those who detest the preborn and God Himself. One such recent news item underscores this point.
The oxymoronic organization Catholics for Choice bedevils the patience of many Catholics, including yours truly. Attacking the status of the Vatican within the United Nations apparatus, they state: “The UN should not be granting this high-level diplomatic status to a religious body that is interfering in the progress of already-established goals.” In other words, because the Vatican defends the right to life for every person, it is meddling in the agenda of death that is the cornerstone of CFC operations.
We suggest that it is they, not the Vatican, who should be banned from United Nations meetings. We pray that one day that occurs.
And there are signs of hope that this might well evolve, given the recent news that Planned Parenthood has fled New York City. According to reports, the organization is closing its Manhattan facility due to rising maintenance costs and other financial pressure. Of interest is that the budget for this facility was more than 20 million dollars a year, a very big deal when we think about how little it costs to operate a pro-life pregnancy center where babies are actually saved, not killed.
In one location, the nine months of pregnancy are celebrated. In the other, a baby is destroyed. If that is not a prime example of good versus evil, I am left wondering what is.
There is also the pharmaceutical role in ensuring that the nine-month gestation of a preborn child does not result in a newborn. But what nobody is talking about, at least in the mainstream media, is that birth control hormones are proven to result in a greater risk of heart attack and stroke. It would seem that we are living in an age when human beings, no matter their age, are disposable and do not deserve to hear truth.
The lust for money knows no bounds among those who ply their trade in the ongoing effort to live up to Margaret Sanger’s philosophy that many people are mere human weeds. And yet, as is usually the case, reality sets in and people are beckoned to see reality through a clear lens rather than one darkened by ego.
The first nine months of anyone’s life must occur in the warmth of a mother’s womb. As the newly conceived child travels from the fallopian tube and then into that womb, she is making a journey that should be peaceful and comfortable, not painful and deadly.
On this Feast of the Annunciation, let us pray that many hearts and minds will be opened. For as Dr. Bernard Nathanson said, “Fewer women would have abortions if wombs had windows.”