A Time for Life

Over forty years ago prenatal books were plentiful for expectant mothers that described the medical science of the stages of life within the womb. This included early movements of the baby, the ability to grasp, a heartbeat, the ability to sense, to feel, to hear and to see. This was accepted medical science, let alone the fact that the expectant mother could sense the life within her. As if further proof was needed there then emerged even further medical technology that gave physicians a "window into the womb" by real-time ultrasound, electronic heart monitoring of the child, fetoscopy, and cardocentesis. The proof of life within the womb is irrefutable and the medical profession knows this.

Yet in the 1960's a handful of dedicated activists launched a "marketing" campaign aimed at capturing the media and public opinion in order to legalize abortion. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the pro-abortion group NARAL, told how they made up catchy slogans, fabricated fictional polls, and put out false statistics in order to sell abortion. Amazingly, without checking the validity of the information the media bought and reported all this. The pro - abortion movement gained great momentum.

Today the American conscience (including many young girls / women) is conditioned to believe there is no life until birth and what exists within the womb prior is just a lump of flesh. The word "fetus" is over used and the word "baby" is purposely avoided. Planned Parenthood alone performs over 330,000 abortions per year and received over $1 billion in taxpayer funding from June 2010 to June 2012 and it continues. At the same time this non profit organization recorded a profit of $243 million. Abortion clinics all over the U.S. are protected from any government oversight, health inspections, or regulation of their practices. This is very evident from recent happenings.

There is a pattern of government protection that is disturbing. Tom Ridge, Governor of Pennsylvania from 1995 - 2001, a Republican and a Catholic, specifically avoided any inspections of abortion clinics in the state so as to protect them from any scrutiny. As a consequence, under this protection, "Dr." Kermit Gosnell was allowed to operate a filthy, unsanitary abortion clinic in Philadelphia, without inspection, for over 17 years! Worse, in late term, he was unqualified to perform internal abortions so he evolved to the practice of delivering babies alive, and then killing them. His clinic, protected by Ridge, was horror beyond belief.

Similarly, Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat and a Catholic, now US Secretary of Health and Human Services, as Governor of Kansas from 2003 to 2009 protected "Dr." George Tiller a well known late term abortionist. Tiller would willingly, and had the reputation of, performing late term abortions. Yet partial birth abortions were against federal law! He also had a ghoulish practice. On his very web site (I saw it with my own eyes) he would offer: a Certificate of Miscarriage (a lie); a photo of the aborted baby with the parent(s); a footprint or a handprint; and a Baptism of the aborted baby...all for an additional fee. He was openly operating against the law, yet protected by government. He would abort a baby up to nine months!

In the State of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat and a Catholic, is now proposing that there be unlimited, unrestricted abortions allowed in the state up to full term, 9 months; that teens do not require parental approval; and that the abortions do not require a medical doctor to perform them. Can you imagine the "Gosnell" type of clinics that will emerge? Another pure horror show in the making while human life is being taken.

Sadly, the "Gosnell" and "Tiller" horror abortion clinics are not aberrations. This is specially and purposely due to the lack of government oversight of these clinics. It goes well beyond being politically correct. There is a fear that what will be discovered will hurt the cause of abortion. Human life doesn't matter, neither does the health of the women involved,...the abortion cause is supreme.

In America alone we have allowed well over 50 million abortions to take place since the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision. The President of Planned Parenthood was given an opportunity to speak at the Democratic Convention, thus highlighting and promoting the cause of abortion in America. On April 26 of this year, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, addressed a Planned Parenthood event.

In my mind, the willful taking of human life, the taking the lives of beautiful, innocent, helpless babies, well over 50 million of them since 1973, is the worst holocaust in humankind. Things are upside down. That which is pure evil is accepted as being OK and the norm. Laws are enacted to protect it. Not only is it OK, but actually celebrated. What have we become as a nation? How can we sleep at night...beautiful, innocent, helpless babies....over 50 million of them.

I have written a letter to Bishop Timothy McDonnell requesting that "Life Chapels" be set up in every parish throughout the Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts in order to pray for an end to abortion. I have sent a similar letter to Cardinal Dolan, President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops requesting that Life Chapels be set up in churches throughout the United States. I am making an appeal to all religious faiths to do the same. I am requesting that the medical profession, each and every doctor out there, to stop being silent....you know better....speak up for the lives of those beautiful children.

"All human life--from the moment of conception and through all subsequent stages--is sacred, because human life is created in the image and likeness of God. Nothing surpasses the greatness or dignity of a human person...If a person's right to life is violated at the moment in which he is first conceived in his mother's womb, an indirect blow is struck also at the whole moral order." Pope John Paul II Washington D. C, October 7, 1979.

There is not a day that goes by that I do not cry, externally or internally, for the lives of those beautiful babies that are lost.

 

Al DiLascia