Sarx

ER HOUST Believes that abortion is the killing of an innocent life, created by God, for his own purposes and the denial of that Gift.

I also believe I shouldn’t Judge those (with, eg, excommunication) who make other choices in this matter, for I believe that the Church has, for many reasons, allowed for the taking of human life for the greater good and, while there is often sadness over the choice, unless we’re going to be pro-life across the board (pacifist, and non-Wal*Mart shopping to start, non vivisection and vegan maybe as well) I think we’ve got a lot of explaining to do when we interfere in this process for others. If we’re willing to bless one president who kills our sons and daughters in war, we need to let go of our other hang ups, too.

But having said all of that: I still believe Abortion is murder. As do all the other Pro-Life activists I know.

And nothing seems to annoy a Pro-choice activist more than this belief.

But I really wish the Pro-choice people would take a look at the situation in a different light:

If you, reader, believed deeply that someone in an adjoining building was murdering your entire family, or slaughtering an entire village of people, you’d bust in with guns slinging and try to save everyone. If you thought your Mom was being murdered in the next bedroom, you’d not organise a prayer vigil. If you thought the neighbour was murdering his children in the basement, you’d not stand outside with signs. If you deeply believed the butcher next door was grinding up children for the meat pies, you’d find a way to stop it. At all costs.

And yet the pro-life people manage to be only slightly annoying at most times: repetitive, prayerful. Yes, sometimes one of them gets a little fringey and does something that is, itself, anti-life. But, as I tried to indicate above, the miracle is that they are not all busting down doors.

I wish the pro-choice people could understand this. For them the debate is about the freedom of the mother to do something. In fact, for the pro-life people it is about murder.

And I think being moderately to extremely annoying about murder is showing great restraint. Largely remaining confined to the legal process, the appointment of judges, the signing of petitions, etc, is amazingly quiet.

By reason of my own hypocrisy – including my own inability to avoid slave-clothing and shoes – I’m constrained to pray for this holocaust to end. I believe someone might come to a different decision about this matter and, equally, be a far-better Christian than I. I don’t think it’s the end-all and be-all of the Credo. I’m equally stressed out by the idea that we should be shooting people in our streets, bombing innocent children in foreign lands, and feeding poison to ourselves at every turn. But we pray for and end: We would go and pray the Akathist to St Nicholas (protector of Children) and go home. Amen. That’s pretty powerful.

But very restrained, even if done on the front lawn of an Abortuary blocking the entrance.