Idaho’s Prop 1 Designated a Moral Evil by Catholic Church

The Nazis drowned newborns. In the death camps. Many pregnant women were arriving by train. Some were gassed immediately, while others were designated for work. When babies were due, filthy sheds were designated as delivery rooms. When the children arrived, they would be taken outside and submerged in rain barrels. Their lives were measured in minutes, if not seconds. What passed as medical staff didn’t consider it murder. Propaganda told them they were exterminators removing vermin. You need to push aside humanity to rationalize the behavior. I’m not making this up. Historian Niall Ferguson detailed the horrific crime in his book The War of the World.

In the Roman Church, adherents are frequently instructed to examine their own conscience. I’m sure it’s not exclusive.

A Matter of Life and Death

In November, voters in Idaho are being called on to reject or approve official recognition of what amounts to infanticide. “Reproductive freedom,” or “Reproductive rights,” as it’s called by the people who would whitewash the practice. They talk about “a clump of cells” or “viability”. The so-called learned among the elites use the Latin word fetus. Why not just say the thing? Translate the Latin, and you get a much more loving description. This is all about dehumanizing a defenseless child. Sound familiar?

The story of Nazis drowning babies made me physically uncomfortable when I read the book. It should! People need to stare evil in the face, so that they can recognize it, examine their own choices, and reject the abhorrent. There was a story I saw a few years ago about a college professor who polled his students. Most at the start of the class supported killing children in the womb, if for nothing else but for convenience. Then he brought out the visuals. The polling data drastically changed before the class departed the lecture hall. We need to stop hiding the details. The horrors of the concentration camps were out of sight and out of mind for the overwhelming percentage of Germans. They had some inkling, but it allowed them to live the charade.

When I was a young man, I was a hedonist. A libertine. I staggered through college and later worked all week, looking forward to Friday nights. I don’t recommend this approach. It’s personally and culturally corruptive. I no longer had parental control, and didn’t think much about the day I would answer to a higher power. That began to change in the early morning hours of a winter day in 1993. A nurse handed me a crying eight and a half pound baby. We’re called to be about more than ourselves. Maybe you don’t believe in the Almighty, but children will still change you, and for the better.

The Need for Constant Vigilance

Half a dozen years later, I was working as a TV news director in Binghamton, New York, when I got a call from an old co-worker. Her son was going to college a couple of miles away from where I lived, and she asked if I could check in on him. I had known him since he was three. He was an unexpected child, and his mom didn’t think she was prepared. But she chose life. One morning I took him to breakfast. He was a bright young man, but he told me a story about his years as a teenager. He and his friends mocked a woman in town who sported several pro-life bumper stickers on her car. She wasn’t casual; she was a warrior for the cause. He didn’t appear to know the circumstances of his own birth.

I understand he eventually met and married a young woman from a devout Catholic family, and today they have a large gaggle of children. The road can lead the same way for many of us, but we could avoid the detours and sometimes the horrors if we knew the truth instead of obscuring it behind euphemisms. And don’t forget that there are people who profit from modern medicine, and money is their God. Take that away, and they’ll need to find a new one. Maybe they’ll find the same one my friend’s son encountered.