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Planned Parenthood Apes 40 Days for Life

Flyer promoting Six Rivers Planned Parenthood's "40 Days of Prayer: Supporting Women Everywhere"

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but sometimes it’s also rather bizarre and macabre.

Since 2007, the 40 Days for Life prayer campaign has resulted in over 5,800 babies saved from abortion, 69 abortion clinic workers quitting their jobs, and 22 abortion clinics shutting down altogether following local 40 Days for Life campaigns.

In response, Six Rivers Planned Parenthood (SRPP) in Eureka, California has decided to launch their own campaign [PDF] calling for “40 Days of Prayer: Supporting Women Everywhere.”

It’s being spearheaded by the Humboldt County Clergy for Choice, an official committee of SRPP. The Clergy for Choice page on the SRPP website begins with this explanation of who they are:

We are religious leaders who value all human life. We accept that religions differ about when life begins. We are here to help.

We believe that human life is holy. That’s why we believe in your right to choose to be a parent or not.

How to even begin unpacking that?

Thanking God that Abortion Is “Still Safe and Legal”: Seriously?

Each of the “40 Days of Prayer” includes some sort of intention. For example:

Day 9: Today we pray for women who are afraid of their lovers. May they find the confidence to turn away from abuse and take care of themselves.

One has to wonder to what extent Clergy for Choice — and for that matter, people who call themselves “pro-choice” generally — are aware that legions of women have abortions not because they want to but because someone who supposedly loves them pressures them into it.

Toward the end, it gets weird:

Day 38: Today we pray for a cloud of gentleness to surround every abortion facility. May everyone feel calm and loving.

And then, the next day:

Day 39: Today we pray for a contagious love to overflow from our spirits.

But not so contagious, apparently, that it envelops unborn children.

And then, on the last day, the tired, old mantra:

Day 40: Today we give thanks and celebrate that abortion is still safe and legal.

“Still” implies that that as long as abortion has been legal it has been simultaneously safe.

But that wasn’t true in the past, and it’s certainly not true now.

If You Believe God Condones Abortion, You’re Committing Idolatry

Surely we can see that thanking God for abortion is wrong for a host of reasons. But one reason I hadn’t considered before yesterday.

I was listening to the Relevant Radio program “Go Ask Your Father,” and Fr. Richard Simon — the “Reverend Know-It-All” — was talking about the First Commandment and its prohibition of idolatry, and explaining that our conception of what constitutes idolatry is often too limited.

After responding to the tired old allegation that when Catholics (and Orthodox Christians, et al.) create statues, icons, and other sacred images, they thereby violate the First Commandment, Fr. Simon went to say that there are, however, all sorts of people who regularly violate this Commandment because they “create a god to their own convenience.”

By that he means:

They create a god who will allow divorce and remarriage. They create a god who will allow abortion. They create a god who allows artificial birth control. They create a god who allows them to live without thought for the poor. They create a god who will allow them to fight wars unjustly.

They will allow a god who will do what they want, or he’s not God. That’s idolatry.

To make God over in your own image and likeness is idolatry. And we need to look at the Scriptures with a clear and unjaundiced eye to hear what God says and to know Him as He chooses to reveal Himself, not as we choose Him to be.

Clergy for Choice want to believe that God condones abortion.

Be that as it may, He doesn’t.

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