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I spotted the above graphic on the Holy Angels Youth Group website (out of Chagrin Falls, Ohio).
Although the graphic was certainly well-intended, it bothered me.
The annual March for Life is scheduled on or near January 22, the anniversary of the infamous U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion throughout all of America in 1973.
Although the M4L website states it is “the collective effort of grassroots prolife Americans to assure that our state and federal laws shall protect the right to life of each human in existence at fertilization,” I think clearly the March is by-and-large a huge demonstration taking a stand against abortion.
Particularly for the above graphic to state the March is to make a statement “against the death penalty,” and to even list it first – before abortion – offends me.
There is a large segment of the pro-life movement that supports the death penalty as the most profound statement in support of life. Someone who takes an innocent person’s life must pay the highest penalty. This is how significant human beings are.
Even while many Catholics oppose the death penalty, the Catholic Church still condones it in extreme cases.
This post is not to launch a debate on the death penalty. It is to state that virtually all pro-lifers attending the March oppose abortion and can coalesce against this evil. But not all oppose the death penalty.
I know members of the Schindler family have spoken several times at the March against euthanasia, so I know this is a concern enveloped in the larger battle, as is human embryo experimentation – not listed on the flyer.
We all also, of course, oppose human trafficking. And we know this epidemic, and in particular sex slavery, can be linked back to abortion and the shortage of females, who abortion often targets in particular.
I think my problem, aside from including the death penalty as an unquestioned pro-life plank, is trying to make the March into some generic social justice, “seamless garment” movement. Will the next inclusion be war? wages? illegal immigration?
Abortion kills 1.2 million babies a year.
To date abortion has killed 55 million babies in America since 1973.
Approximately 45 million babies are killed worldwide every year (my estimate based on these Guttmacher stats: 46 mil in 1995 and 44 mil in 2008). That’s almost one billion in the past two decades alone.
No other human genocide throughout human history – or plague, or war, or hurricane, or tsunami – can possibly compare to what we are seeing right now via abortion.
Abortion is the greatest human atrocity committed – ever.
It cannot be lumped in as equal to others.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.