Thursday, January 9, 2014

God would weep, I believe

I wonder what God is thinking about his chosen people this day.

In the Religion News roundup today, it was pointed out that Israel has made it easier for economically distressed women to obtain an abortion.

The 2014 “health basket” of medical services and medications approved by Israel’s cabinet Sunday (Jan. 5) includes free abortions for Israeli women aged 20 to 33, regardless of the circumstances.
The $4.6 million earmarked by the Health Ministry committee will cover some 6,300 abortions for women who cannot afford the procedure.

In 2013, almost 20,000 women received permission to abort from hospital termination committees, according to Efrat, an organization that encourages women considering abortion to have their babies.
Until now, government-funded abortions have been reserved for women younger than 19 or older than 40, and in cases where the fetus has a severe defect, the mother’s life is endangered, or the pregnancy is a result of sexual abuse. If a woman believed the pregnancy would cause her harm, physically or emotionally, she had had to pay for the procedure herself.

Ruth Tidhar, who heads Efrat’s assistance department, said that in a country like Israel, where mothers receive paid maternity leave and preschool education is heavily subsidized, “it gives a mixed message when contraceptives aren’t funded by the government while abortions are.”

Judaism does not share the Roman Catholic belief that life begins at conception, but various Jewish streams have a range of opinions on the issue. The one thing most Jews agree on: That abortion is always permissible if the mother’s life is in danger.

Since 1973 there have been more than 50 million abortions, legal abortions, legalized murder in my opinion which I'm happy to still have. This subject, which I've never really written on before for reasons I don't remember, is a heated, difficult topic for many. But it has become a back-burner subject as we wrestle with gay marriage and the like.

But it's an important, very important, tremendously important topic, and it's personal to me. I was born to an unwed very young woman in 1953. If I had been more but 20 years later, I would certainly have been a prime fetus for discussion would I not.

So, it's always been as personal to me as it is to women who argue for rights.

I'm speaking at a pro-life rally in Eunice on Jan. 22, and I'm going to use some of the ideas from a man named Matt Walsh.

He points out that a society that says it is okay to kill its young, even its disabled fetus' because they are disabled, is a society that is going to fall.

He uses the story of Brock and Rhea Wuth who recently won a $50 million lawsuit against a hospital. The reason? They weren't told their child would be severely disabled. They told a newspaper that if they had known of the genetic defect, they would have ended the pregnancy. We now live in a society that rewards folks for wrongful life instead of wrongful death. We now live in a society that says you pick and choose who lives and who dies based upon how viable they are or will be. We live in a society that allows inconvenience to be a reason to kill.

With that in mind, maybe we should just go shoot Steve Gleason and all the persons who have ALS or Alzheimer's or Dementia or whatever the next big ticket item is.

As Walsh says, they love their child, now 5 years old, but they wanted him dead.

Now, again, this is a tender subject, a difficult subject. I get that the child will never be what we call normal. I get that. I really, really get that.

Read this and make an opinion for yourself.

Since the ... public opinion has become increasingly preoccupied with questions of demographic policy and the continuing decline in the birthrate. However, it is not only the decline in population which is a cause for serious concern but equally the increasingly evident genetic composition of our people. Whereas the hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring burden the community.

A little dictator named Adolph helped form that idea. With great misfortune, he let the idea go beyond that. He okayed the killing of more than 70,000 who were deemed to be incurably sick or mentally challenged. He sterilized more than 360,000 people so that they could not perpetuate this misfortune on children.

Is that where we want to go?

No, no, no you scream.

Oh, by the way, the Wuth's had been told there was a 50-50 chance they would have a child with the defect their son has. Wonder if they know they would have been prime candidates to be killed in a large country a mere 75 years or so ago?

Wonder if the government in Germany would have paid for it?

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