On this anniversary of the Roe vs Wade decision, the utter incoherency of the pro-abortion position is on display in this story out of Colorado.
A Catholic church plans to bury the ashes of as many as 1,000 aborted
fetuses Sunday, raising a storm of protest from those who accuse it of
exploiting the pain and grief of women for political purposes.The Sacred Heart of Mary Church obtained the ashes from a mortuary that
had a contract to cremate remains from the Boulder Abortion Clinic. But
the clinic said it didn’t know the ashes were being given to the church.
The abortion proponents are outraged but
The owners of the mortuary defended its actions.
"First of
all, Crist Mortuary obviously cremated these fetal remains at the
request of the clinic, and the church had a site and was willing to
take them," said Terry Hemeyer, managing director of Service
Corporation International in Houston, which operates Crist. "There was
no intent of the mortuary to make any political or religious statement
at all. They were trying to do the right thing, which I think they are
doing."
The church began getting ashes from the mortuary in
1996 and had been doing burial services since 2001. Parishioners went
public this year to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade,
the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
"We never
meant this as a political statement; we wanted to give dignity to the
unborn child and dignity to the pain and sorrow a woman who has had an
abortion feels," Susan LaVelle, a parish volunteer organizing the
service, said.
The church cemetery has a Memorial Wall for the
Unborn, with tiny plaques put there by women who have had abortions.
Each one has a message:
"Forgive Me."
"No less real, No less loved."
The remains of 3,000 fetuses are buried near the wall. On Sunday, 600
to 1,000 small boxes of ashes will be emptied into a tomb and covered.
LaVelle said Chuck Myers, a Crist employee, contacted the church in
1996 after discovering human remains in material received from the
abortion clinic.
"The clinic said it was just tissue, but when
he opened it up he and his staff were traumatized," she said. "He asked
the church what he should do, and our priest offered to bury it."
Myers could not be reached for comment, and LaVelle said she was baffled by the controversy.
"If we had not buried these ashes, they would have been thrown away in
the trash," she said. "Why would they be upset that we are treating the
remains of unborn children with dignity?"
Exactly. The base position of the pro-abortion movement is that the preborn child has no inherent value and is therefore expendable. A child only receives value as it meets certain arbitrary criteria – being loved, having certain motor skills, etc. In that respect, (according to this philosophy which I believe is false) the preborn baby is somewhat like a piece of furniture. If the furniture matches my criteria for worth, I keep it, but if it doesn’t, I toss it away. Here is the kicker, though. If I find an old couch worthless to me and discard it, what do I care what happens to it after that? If someone else finds it valuable and wants to keep it out of the trash pile and do something with it, why should it bother me?
It shouldn’t. But that is where this abhorrent ethical system breaks down. A preborn-born baby is not equivalent to an old couch and deep down, everyone knows that.