What I have seen and heard


	Bishop Gregory

There is a drama being played out this week in Washington. You might legitimately be asking yourself: When isn’t there such a drama being played out in our nation’s capital? This week, President Bush is scheduled to sign into law a ban on partial birth abortions.

This represents a hard-fought victory on the part of men and women of good will who have found this brutal action simply too horrendous to justify any longer. Our church proudly has been a stalwart in this legislative success, yet Catholics are not the only ones who represented a moral voice in advancing this legislation. Finally, common sense seems to have triumphed to convince Congress that this type of brutal killing of an infant is more than our consciences can endure and our legal traditions can tolerate.

Nonetheless, those who support this violence against human life are already planning a series of court challenges to this legislation. We anticipated that such judicial contests would be forthcoming. We must continue our efforts and prayers to keep this legislative success intact.
You might ask yourself, “Why would anyone be opposed to outlawing the early partial delivery of an infant for the mere sake of killing the baby?” Those who oppose this law recognize that to admit even in this extremely cruel activity that a human life is being sacrificed might eventually lead reasonable people to question the legitimacy of abortion under any circumstance.

Our courts have not had a very encouraging history of making clear and consistent decisions in protecting human life. I am certain that this legislation was prepared with an anticipated court challenge clearly in mind. I pray that this legislation will pass the litmus test that our courts appear to impose on any law that touches on the issue of abortion. It is a litmus test that establishes “a woman’s right to choose to destroy the life within her womb at any time is absolute.”

Children within the womb have no rights at any time — even as they may be in the very act of being born. To admit that a child begins to enjoy some protection under law is viewed by some as a threat to the rights of women. At least that is the ordinary official position of those who oppose this legislation and any similar attempt to ban this cruel practice.

There is another equally frightening scenario on the horizon that potentially may multiply the destruction of human life many times over. The biological-genetic discussions that are currently taking place in research modules and university laboratories throughout the world that involve the achievable cloning of human embryos may well make the question of partial birth abortion passé.

In such scientific experimentations, human embryos may be produced for the “harvesting” of parts that will “improve” the lives of those of us fortunate enough to have been born but are now suffering from diseases or other human limitations. Some of you might suggest that such activity is really scientific hyperbole and really not a concern for us here and now.

Those same sentiments might well have been the position of those who would have then considered the slaughtering of an infant in the process of being born an unthinkable science fiction situation only a generation ago.
The simple fact is that the human conscience and public morality have been anesthetized with the repeated assaults that come under the guise of “freedom, choice, personal decisions, and privacy.” If you don’t believe me, just try to figure out how we got to where we are now and what might be lurking just beyond the petri dish.

The Messenger
2620 Lebanon Ave.
Belleville, IL 62221
phone: 618-235-9601
fax: 618-235-7416