Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director
Priests for Life
States all over the country are passing bans on the partial-birth abortion
procedure. Legislators in Missouri recently voted to override their Governor's
veto of such legislation.
The next step on the part of pro-abortion forces was to use the Court system
to stop the law from taking effect. (Supporters of abortion know that they
cannot get support for their extreme views from the public, so seek help from a
handful of judges instead.)
What should really catch our attention, though, is one of the reasons that
the Governor of Missouri gave for his veto of the partial-birth abortion ban.
The Governor was reported to say that the legislation would constitute an
open invitation to violence against abortion providers.
Now let me get this straight.
Legislation which prohibits an act of violence against a baby is bad, because
it invites people to kill those who kill the baby? I wonder how many other acts
of violence should therefore be permitted under law so that people won't
feel justified in killing those who carry them out. This is upside-down thinking
if there ever was such a thing.
Abortion supporters have been using this line for a while. I myself have been
accused of inflaming violence simply because I write and preach that abortion is
"killing."
Let's go back a few decades in history. When Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was
exposing racial injustice and mobilizing people to correct it, he received a
letter from eight Alabama
clergymen. Part of the letter read,
"Just as we formerly pointed out that 'hatred and violence have no
sanction in our religious and political traditions,' we also point out that such
actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those
actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems.
Dr. King responded with his famous
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he wrote,
"In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must
be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion?
Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money
precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates
because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries
precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink
hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God -consciousness
and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of
crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the Federal courts have consistently
affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his
basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society
must protect the robbed and punish the robber."
In our day, what actually promotes violence is the pro-choice mentality. When
someone kills an abortion provider, he/she is practicing what pro-choicers have
preached for decades: that sometimes it is OK to choose to end a life to solve a
problem.
Contact Priests for Life at PO Box 141172, Staten Island, NY 10314; Tel:
888-PFL-3448, 718-980-4400; Fax: 718-980-6515; email: pfl@priestsforlife.org;
web:
www.priestsforlife.org
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