By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Critical question for NARAL?
FR. DEAN McFALLS
Placeholder Image
Given the crusade of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) on behalf of unrestricted access to abortion, I have a burning question: how many people have died as of today from the Fort Hood shooting rampage?

Think about that question yourself while I relate it to another recent event.

Congress’s restriction of abortion coverage from the health-care overhaul passed so narrowly last Saturday has caused a great deal of emotional pain and distress to the membership of NARAL.  Referring to the Stupak-Pitts amendment which passed shortly before that historic vote by a margin of 240 to 194, Nancy Keenan, president of the militant abortion-rights group, protested: “It is unconscionable that anti-choice lawmakers would use health reform to attack women’s health and privacy, but that’s exactly what happened on the House floor tonight.”  Here are some of her comments:

“…[Representatives] Stupak and Pitts took their obsession with attacking a woman’s right to choose to a whole new level. We will hold those lawmakers who sided with the extreme Stupak-Pitts amendment accountable for abandoning women and capitulating to the most extreme fringe of the anti-choice movement.  In short, the fight is not over.  That’s why we will continue to mobilize our activists and work with our allies in Congress to remove this dangerous provision from the health-care bill and stop additional attacks as the process moves to the Senate.” (NARAL PCA)

For further commentary by “Pro-Choice America”, you’ll have to access their website yourself.  Be careful, as they are seasoned experts in rhetoric and in a selective presentation of the facts.  If you can find any description of what really happens in an abortion in their online-material, please let me know.  Women who learn the truth about these horrendous procedures, who are informed adequately of alternatives to taking the child’s life, and above all who see their own child through today’s more sophisticated sonograms tend almost universally to choose life.  NARAL, together with their partner Planned Parenthood, have a vested interest in restricting a woman’s vision.

That’s why they don’t promote those three ways in which a woman would most likely choose to reject abortion and to embrace the life of their baby.

And that’s why NARAL’s venom seethed so uncontrollably last Sunday.

At the same time, our nation was reeling from the shootings at Fort Hood.

Just two days before the Stupak-Pitts amendment and the historic vote in Congress, the rampage of a man convinced he was making the right choice led to the death, ultimately, of thirteen people.  “Army officials have said they believe Hasan acted alone when he jumped on a table with two handguns, shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ (‘God is great!’) and opened fire inside a building at Fort Hood”, according to the AP (Angela Brown, Friday Nov. 13).    Major Nidal Malik Hasan was a medical doctor.  He, in the language of NARAL, was exercising his faculty of choice.  Like Bernard Nathanson, the founder of NARAL, and later a convert to the pro-life position who’d become one of NARAL’s adversaries, he used a table to take innocent life.

According to the same AP article, “The 13 people killed included a pregnant soldier and at least three other mental health professionals.  Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman Chris Grey has said Hasan could face additional charges.  It had not been decided whether to charge Hasan with the death of the soldier’s unborn child, officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the case publicly.”  Clearly, this is an issue about which we need to hear from NARAL.  After all, they ought to be honest.

If they say the number killed is only thirteen, they are denying the obvious fact that another life was taken, and thus further lose their credibility.  But if they acknowledge that the unborn child represents a fourteenth victim, they undermine their own campaign for unrestricted access to abortion.  In the end, their own position on “choice” is self-defeating, as their founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson testifies, because it contradicts its own pretention to defend the dignity of the human person, and undermines the well-being and the health of the very women it claims to promote.  The “choice” they are pushing is always, in the end, the choice to take the life of an innocent human being.  For this reason, they call pro-life advocates “anti-choice”.

Bernard Nathanson once claimed to have performed 60,000 abortions, both legal and illegal, without a single fatality.  He was instrumental in pushing through, by stealth and often by deceit, legislation increasing access to abortion.  Roe v Wade might never have been possible, were it not for him.

Having left behind him a bitter legacy of countless broken lives and babies beyond number torn and scalded from their mother’s wombs, the one they used to call “Doctor Abortion” now dedicates himself to the defense of the unborn and the ultimate dismemberment of the abortion industry.   May his campaign for life be successful. And yes, NARAL, the answer is: fourteen.

Fr. Dean McFalls, St. Mary’s Church, Stockton, CA 95202  Nov. 13, 2009