Abortion: Word Warriors for Life

I sometimes wonder what I would have done had I lived under Nazi rule.
         Could I, like Corrie ten Boom, find a hiding place in my own home for Jews facing imminent extermination, even though to do so might cost me all my property, my life, and the lives of every member of my family?  Could I, like Raoul Wallenberg, find some way to smuggle Jews out of the country, beyond the reach of Hitler's long arm, even though, as it did for Wallenberg, it might mean my own imprisonment, torture and death in impenetrable obscurity?  Could I, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, find the courage or moral resolve to plot the assassination of the madman at the helm of the Third Reich, a madman whose death means life for thousands, indeed millions, of innocent Jews, even though, as it did for Bonhoeffer, it might cost me my life and the lives of my co-conspirators? 
         These hard questions are no mere academic exercise.  I raise them to myself because they help me better understand what I ought to do now, in the midst of an American holocaust already seven times worse than that in Germany.
         In America alone, more than million unborn children have been slaughtered, a vast human sacrifice to the god of choice, the modern Moloch.  Each day more than three thousand unborn children are dismembered or burned to death in saline solution, only to be discarded in anonymous landfills like so much garbage, or like so many victimized Jews.  Portions of their aborted bodies have been harvested for medical research, as if the unborn were the newest cash crop.
         To protect unborn children in any legal way in America has become increasingly difficult.  If only the unborn were baby seals, I could lay my body down over them to protect them from the hunter's club.  But the Supreme Court will not permit me even to enter the abortuary, where I might strap myself to the operating table.  Indeed, if I want to help protect the lives of unborn children in mortal danger, I am not even permitted to voice my views within twelve yards of the abortuary.  If I do, I go to jail -- but not the doctor who snuffs out the child's life; and not the mother who pays him a handsome fee to do so.
         If she cannot pay, I must.  Every day my taxes help fund abortions and medical experimentation on the dead bodies of the children who are its victims, much as all Germans were forced to pay for the extermination of the Jews and for the ghoulish experimentation performed on them years ago.  If I refuse to pay, I go to jail.  But not the modern Dr. Mengeles who perform these horrible deeds for a living.  They go home to quiet neighborhoods and to plush homes that I helped to purchase.
         Unlike ten Boom, I cannot hide the potential victims.  They are hidden already, hidden inside the very persons who want them dead, the very persons determined to make the womb a tomb.  Unlike Wallenberg, I cannot smuggle the unborn to safety across the border.  Indeed, I cannot even smuggle myself onto abortuary property.  And unlike Bonhoeffer, I cannot plot the assassination of their killers, unless, like Bonhoeffer, I myself am willing to end up dead at the hands of the state. 
         I often wonder what ten Boom, Wallenberg and Bonhoeffer would have done if German doctors had developed the Nazi equivalent of RU-486, a pill that kills Jews the morning after they are discovered, a pill the authorities want to approve for prescription use in the privacy of your own home.
         Like those three noble persons, I live in a culture of death, a culture where death has become routine, a culture where those at either end of life -- at its beginning or at its end -- have been legally deprived of their very existence.  I live in a culture where those who kill them are still called "Doctor," a term I ought never use to identify death dealers.
         Think about it.  If I were fighting against racial discrimination in America, the obstacles arrayed against me would not be permitted to stand.  The Supreme Court would not prevent me, under pain of imprisonment, from voicing my views energetically and persistently within twelve yards of restaurants or country clubs that refused to admit blacks.  It would not force me to subsidize mass lynchings or send me to jail if I refused to pay.  And if, while trying to save a black man or woman from imminent death, I had to shoot a lyncher, I would be honored, not executed.  Talk show hosts would invite me on their programs to discuss equality before the law and how to provide and protect it, not to televise my execution.  No one would denounce me for opposing the legalization of a death pill for blacks, even one available only by prescription.
         The courts seem not to understand that to kill unborn children is at least as horrible as to keep blacks out of white schools and colleges.  Discrimination is indeed evil; killing is worse.
         I wonder how many blacks die each day from abortion?  I wonder how much money white abortionists make from it?
         I've thought a lot about ten Boom, Wallenberg and Bonhoeffer.  I've decided to fight their fight, but with different means -- the only legal mean snow available to me.  I'm going to use words, weapons mightier than swords.
         Already I know of four foregone abortions, four lives that would have been four deaths had I not written or spoke.  When I argue against abortion, I have this great advantage:  I am right and abortion is wrong.  The argument against abortion is supremely winnable.  But I win it only when I persuade a mother against it.  When I do, a life is saved, no matter what the law allows.  Laws are often wrong, dead wrong.  After all, both Nazism and slavery were legal.   
         Now I'm working on number five.

date modified:
5 July 2006