Don’t forget our annual Christmas caroling at the Abortion Mills this Saturday, Dec. 18, starting at 9:00 a.m. at the Planned Parenthood mill on the corner of LaSalle and Division Streets. We go from there to carol outside the Washington St. mill at 10 a.m. At 11 a.m. we’ll be at the American Women’s Medical Center on Western Ave., and end at Noon at the Albany Mill on Elston near Cicero.
These sites are familiar to our regular counselors and prayer warriors. For specific addresses and maps, see the full schedule.
Kissling Ponders “Life After Roe”
The poor liberals, mostly identified with the Democrat party, are trying many devices to appear that they are not quite as bad as they are. They’re trying to look a little less pro-gay, a little less pro-abortion, and a little more religious. They’ve got to try to do something to look more like conservatives — mostly Republicans, with their moral middle.
One example is a ten-page diatribe by Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice entitled “Is There Life After Roe? How To Think about the Fetus” We read through the long mish-mash, and try as she may, she can’t let go of her support for abortion.
On page three, though she says abortion is not an absolute right, she equates the unborn child with cancer cells, viruses and AIDS. She refers to an unborn child as a life that is dangerous, and does not deserve respect. She refers to a living, growing human being in a woman’s womb as “genetic material,” and wonders why Clinton thought abortions should be “rare,”if it is justifiable. Why should it be rare?
She does comment, however, that the idea of printing T-shirts saying “I had an abortion” “were in poor taste.” And she says the abortionists’ opposition to the Born Alive Infants Act — which captured many people’s sympathy, even some abortionists’ — made the abortion movement look heartless.
But the fact is that they don’t want fetal life to be considered valuable at any time, because any claim that the fetus has value weakens the abortion cause. She is not happy with the recent effort in the U.K. to make abortion legal only in the first 20 weeks.
Kissling Concedes Fetus Not “Nothing”
But on page five she admits that while nobody knows when a fetus becomes a person , this is less important than a simple acknowledgement that the fetus is not “nothing.” It does, she admits, “have some value.” This is going some for Kissling.
She worries over 3-D and 4-D ultrasound pictures of fetuses that appear to be awake, asleep, walking, yawning — engaged in activities that are related to human identity. Some of them, she says, struggle and appear to have a great determination to live.
She waxes eloquent on page five over the fetus being a part of our humanity, and that we are drawn to it as part of the ongoing mystery of who we are. But we don’t want to over-dramatize the fetus, she says.
On page six, Kissling worries about some pro-choicers for their lack of respect for fetal life, their “hardening of the heart” in the pro-choice position. She writes that this worries her, so much so that she thinks perhaps pro-choicers should say something like, “Yes it is sad, unfortunate, tragic that this life could not come to fruition. It is sad that we live in a world that needs abortion.”
She then toys with some ideas that perhaps pro-choice people have to give a little, stop opposing every effort of pro-lifers, such as the partial birth abortion ban and Born Alive act and even parental consent laws for very young girls. Maybe a little anesthesia might be used to numb the fetus if the mother agrees, she is willing to concede.
Kissling Gets One Thing Right
In a footnote on page ten, Kissling declares that if abortion is really murder, all pro-lifers, including the bishops, should act like it, and do more than attack pro-choice Catholic politicians. “Nothing short of austerity and sacrifice is called for it you believe that abortion is the greatest evil facing humanity.”
It took ten pages to reach that point, hidden in a footnote, and cynical as it is, it’s her best line, and one we can’t really disagree with. I never thought I’d ever say anything nice about Frances Kissling.
Now back to writing hundreds of Christmas Cards.
