Commentary: The Vigil at the Planned Parenthood Butcher Shop

I went to the butcher shop today for a prayer vigil.  The local office of Planned Parenthood looked to be closed as 85 people were gathered on the sidewalk with picket signs, Rosary Beads and Bibles.  You could hear prayer from two groups on opposite ends of the block.  This was one of 300 such vigils taking place nationwide.  From what I could determine there were many Christian denominations involved.  I left after the 1^st hour to post pictures and write about the event.  Walking away at quarter past 11 nobody had yet to see a TV news crew or a reporter from the local newspaper, which is located just a couple of blocks away.  Assuming some others left early and others came for the second and third hours but perhaps not in such large numbers then the total in our small city still exceeded one hundred.  If just 30 are left during the final hour and the newspaper sends a reporter we can be told it was a tiny and therefore irrelevant crowd.  I’ve worked in media for 30 years.  I know how the demoniacs work at editorial desks.

For the past two weeks I’ve taken a break from writing.  Possibly my longest respite from a keyboard in two decades.  I think it’s because I’ve been overwhelmed by the videos pouring forth from the Center for Medical Progress.  Planned Parenthood is by definition the Little Shop of Horrors franchised across North America.  The savagery described in such a cavalier manner by its minions and partners is heart wrenching.  Doctors and research labs appear to find dicing up fellow human beings not only profitable but humorous.  They see these tiny children as less than human.  I can only say a woman bragging about her dream of buying a sports car in exchange for body parts isn’t just sick and twisted and soulless but perhaps long ago forfeited her own humanity.  There were moments watching the videos when I nearly vomited.  I know it’s difficult for many to stomach the vile descriptions of sadism and butchery but our entire culture is hanging in the balance.  There was just one locally elected politician when I dropped by the vigil.  One of the members of my City Council, Rebecca Mills-Sojka, brought along her 3-month-old son.  She struggled with watching the videos as she thought of her newborn but finally summoned the strength to endure the almost unendurable.

I struggle as well and I’m a grown man who has watched corpses dragged from rivers.  I’ve been to accident scenes and looked beneath crushed vehicles and shuddered when seeing a tiny and empty little shoe on the pavement.  One hot summer day I watched as police pulled a shroud over a homicide victim only moments after he was gunned down.  None of these things could quite prepare me as I listened to the description of a baby’s brain being removed as his heart was beating.  He was someone’s child and I thought of the days when my daughter was young and I would carry her through the grocery store.  Or watch how she would jump for joy as a parade approached or her beaming smile the first time I set her atop a pony on a carousel.  And now the value of a human life is reduced to spare parts, gallows humor and a wanton desire for profit.

This last week I was hosting a radio program and I spoke about the future of our culture and country.  Like human beings nations don’t live forever.  Institutions and mores decay and eventually a lost population turns to escapist pleasures and is de-sensitized to the pain experienced by others.  A few years ago I was reading a science magazine and archeologists were chronicling the demise of a once-mighty culture in what is now the American Southwest.  In excavating old wells the men-of-science made a morbid discovery.  The wells were filled with the remains of children.  Mainly infants and toddlers.  It would appear near the end the kids were sacrificed.  For a false god or for anger or for pleasure?

As I walked today from the vigil outside the butcher shop and back to my car it struck me Western Civilization can answer affirmative to all three.  It may be fitting so many will find themselves in anguish and agony during the death throes of a nation.  It’s the haunting and collective cry of 60 million souls who never experienced love, a warm embrace or the protection of someone willing to shout, “Stop!”