Part 1
Abstract:
A small group of young black men is surrounded by a large group of young white men who have indicated that they wish to do significant harm to the former.
The small group of black men are fortunate in that they are well-fed, strongly-built, and accustomed to frequent persecution. These attributes would be a great consolation to these young men if their opponents were not also well-endowed and of greater number.
On the fringes of the conflict stands a small group of not unable white men who happen to be of the anti-racism persuasion. However, they linger in the corners and flit between shadows as the victims valiantly defend their dignity and valiantly fall, one by one.
One would undoubtedly say that the anti-racism group had committed a moral failure by neglecting to provide assistance to their brothers in need. Nevertheless, their crime is not unforgivable, the encounter likely being non-lethal and the targeted group having some means of self-defense.
Let us now not break step, but turn directly to the picture of pro-life activism in the current decade. Of what does it consist that worthily addresses the daily perpetration of countless irreparable evils?
Imagine a large group of pregnant women sitting in the waiting room of an abortion mill. They have already been addressed, one by one, by a solitary man who has indicated that he wishes to murder their children. They are sitting here awaiting the hour of bloodshed.
The children, whose death is imminent, are unfortunate in that they are weak, small, and accustomed only to the soft beat of their mothers' hearts, the peaceful bower of the womb. These conditions are of no consolation in the face of sharp instruments created to inflict the greatest harm possible upon their tender and fragile bodies.
Watching by the gate of the mill, quite near and totally aware of the violent upheaval of nature about to occur, stand a group of able-bodied adults who claim to oppose abortion, who enjoy declaring their fervor. They stand by as the frightened unborn dart from side to side of their sacred havens now violated and profaned, treated as a chamber of execution in the most heinous rape unimaginable.
Their persons are torn to pieces as they die in newfound pain uncomprehended.
One could not say otherwise but that the "anti-abortion" group had been ought else but complicit in their inaction, in their political correctness of moral abdication. Can their crime be forgiven? The encounter they witnessed could not have been other than lethal, and they but spoke and prayed while blood gushed forth from innocence.
Ross, thank you for inviting us to remember the horrendous act of abortion that is happening at a sickening rate in our country. I agree that we must do our part to end the evil, however I think your post falls a bit short in a few crucial areas.
ReplyDeleteFirst, in regards to your analogy comparing the fight in the street with the battle against abortion, I would say the correlation is thin. You are disregarding the free will of the mother, who yes, may be coerced to a degree by the child's father threatening to leave, or by her parents (certainly she is not being forced by the abortionist to murder her child, as the text above suggests). However, by the time she is walking into the abortion clinic, most mothers have resigned themselves to the decision they are making. In this sense, the mother is not the innocent victim of the abortionist, unlike the black men in your original analogy.
Abortion is a "clinical procedure" that happens on private property and with the mother's consent. What most pro-life workers do today is their best in accordance with the law. It sounds as if you are suggesting we go beyond the confines of the law. This can be a slippery slope. Also, you greatly discount the power of prayer in these situations, and you imply that those of us who are not using our bodies to physically stop the act of abortion from taking place are somehow morally culpable for the murder occurring. This raises general questions of your moral conscience.. With this line of thinking, where does our moral culpability begin and end? If your friend is having an unchaste relationship with his girlfriend, are you morally responsible for his impure acts, even if you have spoken to him about it? Are you morally culpable for your friend's inebriation at a party you both attend? Certainly your culpability varies or is removed, depending on the circumstance, no?
In your zeal to stop the act of abortion from taking place, I think you are forgetting the importance of relationships leading to conversion. The true victory of the devil here is not the death of the child, which is horrific. It is the sin on the soul of the mother. So why don't we think instead: how can we be present to, talk to, counsel, offer information and truth to, pray with and for, the mothers? These mothers are hurting in some way- what in their lives is the source of their drive to abort their own child? What can we do for these mothers? (That is what the pro-lifers are doing on the streets. Do not forget the good and effective work they are doing. Abortion clinics are being closed, praise God. Babies' lives and mothers' souls are being saved.)
Finally, "there is nothing to fear but fear itself" should be attributed to FDR, not MLK.
MLK used the quotation without reference in "I've Been to the Mountaintop" here: http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/ive_been_to_the_mountaintop/
DeleteYou are correct that it was originally spoken by FDR, to whom MLK refers here: http://books.google.com/books?id=4ysIWgsSr9AC&pg=PA86-IA19&lpg=PA86-IA19&dq=there+is+nothing+to+fear+but+fear+itself+mlk&source=bl&ots=ESrZIh9b-M&sig=ZyXFXQKducTtSdeiAu49XRGWIZE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LHoZVOS5EcyVyATHvYCABQ&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=there%20is%20nothing%20to%20fear%20but%20fear%20itself%20mlk&f=false
I am not suggesting that physically preventing murder is the only way, nor am I suggesting that all are required to participate in this. Those are extrapolations.
The analogy works because there is still a violent perpetrator, an innocent victim, and a party standing by.
The conditions surrounding the murder do not change the nature of the act, nor the moral requirement to act. The murders of Jews were legally sanctioned, etc.
Well, again, you are referring to the pro-life protestors as "standing by", rather than recognizing their words, counsel, prayers, and protest as a nonviolent action.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think it's important to just say specifically what you mean, instead of waxing philosophical. Your argument is confusing.
It is not enough.
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