Abraham's Bargain: we should not recriminalize abortion

When The Lord decided to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their many sins, Abraham bargained with God for their lives, reminding him of the injustice of destroying the good with the evil:

Then Abraham drew nearer to him and said: "Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty, so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike! Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?"

The LORD replied, "If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake."

Abraham spoke up again: "See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes! What if there are five less than fifty innocent people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?" "I will not destroy it," he answered, "if I find forty-five there." But Abraham persisted, saying, "What if only forty are found there?" He replied, "I will forebear doing it for the sake of the forty." Then he said, "Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?" He replied, "I will forebear doing it if I can find but thirty there." Still he went on, "Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?" "I will not destroy it," he answered, "for the sake of the twenty."

But he still persisted: "Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time. What if there are at least ten there?" "For the sake of those ten," he replied, "I will not destroy it."

The LORD departed as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham, and Abraham returned home.

Faced with the ever-growing number of societies that have de-criminalized abortion, perhaps the Catholic voter should recall that even the Lord we understand through the Hebrew Bible sets rational limits.

I just re-read the Catholic Answers column of the 10/24/08 issue of Commonweal. Yet another writer struggles with how to vote his conscience against orders from the hierarchy: part of the long chain of bishops arguing with bishops, bishops arguing with laity, and parishioners arguing with parishioners about how Catholic moral issues should shape political decisions.

I was fortunate here in the Diocese of Venice that our bishop at least acknowledged that politics and relationships with the world and the various governments are the proper sphere of the laity, not the hierarchy, and didn't order me to vote against my conscience.

We Catholics are not a one-issue constituency.  Being pro-life in my own opinion it does not necessitate holding the opinion that all abortions must be made a criminal matter.  I have witnessed the results of the Supreme Court's opinion the same as any of my age, and they have most certainly NOT been all negative.

Rather, what I have seen as the results of decriminalizing abortion is that:

1. Criminal gangs no longer make money by exploiting desperate women. 
2. Fewer women die from attempted or completed abortions.
3. Because women legally can choose abortion, those who choose life instead for their children conceived out of wedlock are now celebrated rather than spurned.  The women are not slut-shamed but are welcome in community.
4. There is no longer any stigma attached to those who are bastards.
5.  The abortion rate has gone down from what I saw in my youth.
6.  We no longer force young women to place their children for adoption.   

The last consequence, the end of most forced adoptions, is the most important boon of these to me personally.  I have held several women now in their 80s and 90s in my arms as they wept for the loss of the little ones ripped from their arms at birth because of social norms that their parents imposed to keep them from being publicly ostracized.  Family matters, especially the most important ones, belong in the hands of the family without the intrusion of government officials.

I have no desire to see abortion criminalized again.  We must fight for the lives of these children in better ways, by supporting their mothers-to-be good choices and discouraging those who would choose badly.

We also must remember that pregnancy and childbirth are matters of life and death.  We are blessed that better medical care has decreased the loss of mothers and infants over what was normally expected in my great-grandparents' day. My dad's father was the eldest of his large clan, but that was only because his mother lost her firstborn.  My closest friend from childhood grieved as her daughter's first child, Liam, died in utero for no reason just days before her due date.  

There are many, many spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) and stillbirths:  do we as a people really want the sheriff imposing on grieving families to investigate whether or not these tragedies were deliberate attempts to abort?  And for those that might have been deliberate, do we really want to incarcerate mothers who really are exhibiting a mental illness?

Criminalizing abortion means we jail people involved in abortion, viz. mothers and doctors.  I have no stomach for seeing that happen again.  I also object on moral and on religious grounds to the nonsense of legal personhood for the unborn.  

What should we do instead?   

The Lord in the Hebrew Scriptures judged no infant worthy to be joined to His covenant unless it lived for eight days, at which point the babe was named and circumcized.  In the New Testament, the last prophet John the Baptist is not named by his father until his birth, but it is John as a fetus who is the first witness to the Presence of Jesus in the womb of Mary.  Elizabeth knows because the babe in her womb leaps for joy at the sight of Our Lady at the Visitation.  Our Lord is named by the angel Gabriel at conception.  

I suggest that we should encourage our young people to name their babes in utero, as soon as the child's sex can be determined, and institute special Catholic blessing ceremonies for the unborn (performed only publicly within a mass) that the families can incorporate into their baby shower social events. 

In addition, making such blessings common would mean that we Catholics could offer further comfort to families.  A child lost by miscarriage who has been so named by the Church could perhaps have a Catholic burial that entrusts them to God's mercy as they did not receive baptism.  Having their Catholic community join with them in acknowledging the life and death of these unborn children would be a great comfort indeed to those who have experienced frequent miscarriages.  Our grief is great; sharing such moments publicly might be a help to many, and the result would be pleasing to our Virgin Mother.

Instituting such practices would do much to bolster the reality of human life in a positive and loving way.

Memories (email from my dad)

from my dad in an email this morning (yeah, he still does that, lol...)  Sorry, can't waste any more time to reformat it, but I think you can read enough of it to enjoy???


Subject:  Memories

Do you recognize these?

DID YOU EVER RIDE ONE OF THESE???         WHAT'S THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE TWO OBJECTS?                  DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S HANGING FROM THE CHAIN OR RUNNING UP THE POLE?       DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?        HAVE YOU EVER SHOPPED AT THIS STORE?     DO YOU KNOW HOW TO PLAY WITH THESE?    DO YOU KNOW HOW TO USE THIS ?              DO YOU RECOGNIZE WHO THIS IS?     DO YOU KNOW THEIR NAMES?                      HAVE YOU EVER HAD A GLASS OF THIS? DID YOU, OR ANYONE YOU KNOW, EVER TAKE THIS CLASS IN SCHOOL?                    HAVE YOU EVER SEEN OR USED ONE OF THESE?           DO YOU KNOW WHAT THESE ARE?        HAVE YOU EVER USED THIS?     HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED THIS?         WAS THERE EVER A TIME IN YOUR LIFE THAT THIS WAS THE ONLY OPTION TO DRY YOUR CLOTHES?         WHAT'S THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE TWO OBJECTS? WHAT'S THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE  TWO OBJECTS?        IS THIS A FAMILIAR SCENE?        DOES THIS BRING BACK GOOD MEMORIES?       DID HE EVER COME TO YOUR HOUSE?        DID YOU EVER HAVE TO SAY "HELLO" BEFORE YOU KNEW WHO WAS CALLING?     DID YOU EVER LAUGH OUT LOUD WATCHING THIS?    Aaahh the good old days...  If you answered YES to most of the above, YOU ARE OLD        Those who were born in the 30's to the 60's are the  last generations who played in the street.  During our  childhood we "walked" over a mile a day when we played, we played "hide and seek" outside at night with no worries  or fear of anything bad happening to us.   We are the first generation who played video games and the last to record songs off the radio onto a cassette tape.   We learned how to program a VCR before anyone else, we were the first to play from Atari to Nintendo. We are the generation of Tom and Jerry, Looney Toons, and Captain Kangaroo.   We traveled in cars without seat belts or air  bags, lived without cell phones and caller ID.  We did not have fax machines, flat screens, surround sound,  iPods, Facebook, Twitter, computers or the Internet, Internet,  Facebook, Twitter, computers or the Internet,  and through  it all we had a great time.         Now send this on to those who remember all these things  and those who are too young to know what maybe the  better times were really like.