Today, the 4th day of Christmas, the Church remembers the Holy Innocents, those children slaughtered by Herod in an attempt to eliminate the Christ child. Interestingly, it was fear that motivated Herod to authorize a wide-scale slaughtering of children; it seems the same motivation is often in play with the decision to abort a child.
Herod feared what the little child would take away from him, just as today people fear what the unborn child will take from them if allowed to live. Fear today is often at play on two different levels, the governmental level and the individual mother's level. The government, on behalf of some of the people, allows abortion because it is said many places that we are running out of resources, and need to eliminate the "excess population" as Dickens so succinctly said it through the mouth of Ebeneezer Scrooge. Fear is at the heart of the decision to allow abortions in our land, fear of what the children will take from us, and we need to first of all admit and own the fear, and then we must ask if it is warranted. We have long realized that the idea that we will run out of resources is a fraud, but people still choose to perpetuate the myth and the fear train pushes forward.
For the individual mother as well fear is often a strong motivating factor in the decision to abort. Fear of an inability to care for the child, fear of not being able to do what one wants anymore, etc. The mother, like Herod, fears what the child will take away from her.
May we spread the word to our society that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, may we reach out to struggling mothers in need to show them they need not be afraid with us around to help, and may we pray that the scourge of abortion may one day cease throughout the world.
Father, I agree with everything you say here. But I think THE point that often gets overlooked when it comes to the destruction of innocent children in our day and age is the fear of the fathers. The fear of men that somehow their lives will be negatively impacted if they are required to take responsibility for the children they have helped to conceive. In an overwhelming majority of the cases, the women who has the abortion often gives as a primary reason the pressure she felt to abort from the husband or boyfriend who does not want the child. I'm not saying I necessarily know how, but as a society we have to do a better job of instilling a sense of responsibility in our young men. As men, one of the primary roles God has given us is protector. If the men of our nation would stand up and begin protecting our women, abortion would come to an end!!!
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteWell said! I think of the line from Bella that the woman says who is considering an abortion - "I want to bring a child into the world out of love" and I think that says so beautifully the feminine desire to enter into and embrace the vocation to motherhood. There is also a great piece of fiction that I have my kids read at Ritter called "Miranda Over the Valley" by Catholic author Andre Dubus about a woman who has an abortion. The story is absolutely amazing (and very short). A great part of the story is when the woman's parents are pressuring Miranda to have an abortion and Miranda keeps looking for her boyfriend to step up and say, "I'll take care of her and the child" but he never does.
Our country needs men to be men!!