57,762,169

Dear Parishioners,

They say that we can ask the computer any question.  Whether it’s Siri, Google, Galaxy, Cortana or some other voice recognition device or system, we can now ask, and the answer will be given to us.  Sounds almost biblical, doesn’t it?

So I asked Google: “How many abortions have been performed in the United States since 1973?”  I chose this year since it was the date of the historic United States Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade (January 22, 1973) which legalized abortion.  The answer I was given was 57,762,169—referencing a 2015 article from www.LifeNews.com.  The number would actually be greater if we bring the statistics to our current 2016 date.  Sounds like a lottery jackpot.

Just how many people is that?  It is more than the entire population of the following countries:  South Korea, Ukraine, South Africa, Spain, Colombia, Sudan, Argentina, Poland and many others that have a total population of less than 50 million people.  We have literally aborted the population of a fairly large country—just in the United States alone.  Imagine what the worldwide number of abortions is!

This statistic tells me a couple of things.  First, I believe that many people have no Idea how tragic this situation truly is.  As a nation we have become complacent with slogans like: The Right to Choose! or Keep Abortion Safe and Legal! The right to choose what?  Death . . . extermination . . . murder . . . infanticide?  Maybe we should label it differently.  Is abortion ever safe and legal for the unborn child?  Is it not, rather, a death sentence for him or her?  And how about the physical, psychological, and spiritual damage that is done to the woman herself?  One cannot just expect to rip a developing baby from the womb and then anticipate there to be no consequences whatsoever.

Next, it is unbelievably tragic that a moral evil (abortion, the taking of an innocent, human life) can be seen and touted as something good for women, for civilized society, or for humanity itself.   As if we have some moral right to kill innocent human life?  When a society abandons God’s moral law, distorts its meaning to suit its own selfish purposes and/or replaces it with a deception advocating and glorifying the means by which a large portion of humanity is exterminated, we are in grave danger.

 

We, as a nation, have drunk the Kool-Aid.  The Rev.Jim Jones was not the only one leading a mass amount of people astray and to the ultimate consequence of death.  I am continually hearing politicians advocate the choice for an abortion as a right, as something good, as something that must be defended.  And Americans will continue to drink the Kool-Aid.  And babies will continue to die, in numbers too great to even imagine.

Just think of the loss of potential human life.  Did we already abort the one who would cure cancer or Alzheimer’s?  How about the next great composer or inventor?  Has he or she already been poisoned or ripped apart?  Did the next great political or church leader already wind up as medical waste?

 

I know that I have been pretty blunt.  Yet, somehow I don’t think what I say is going to change things dramatically.  I fear that we have become too stiffed-neck (see Dt. 9:13) or hardened of heart (see Heb. 3:15), as those previously condemned in the Bible.

January 22, 2016.

Almost 60 million babies.

Does it matter?

Fr. Ed Namiotka

Pastor