Dear Editor
We Christians and we Catholics in particular have recently been increasingly “encouraged” to voice our support for more and more stringent laws prohibiting abortion.
Let’s take a deep breath and examine this deeply human, deeply religious and very political issue logically.
I am a committed Catholic and though neither God nor Jesus referred to abortion specifically, Exodus gives us a pretty clear picture of how he values us and what our job is here on this Earth, this creation of his.
We are his children and the offspring of Adam and Eve. He gave us free will to act within that creation, for good or ill.
Very simply, while he deeply loves all his creation, fetuses, despite the views of many religious these days, do not yet have actionable free will, and therefore are not yet his fully formed and tasked children. I.E., they cannot act and therefore they cannot sin.
So, committing a wrong to them is a “sin”, but not at the level of committing a wrong to his living, breathing children.
God is with us always and weighs every action we take through that free will he’s given us to assess our acceptance of his love and our love for him, our fellow man and all his creation. He weighs our intent, our fears, our knowledge and our willfulness in all our actions.
I took up arms for us in Vietnam and saw my fellow man, his children, end the lives of others of his children.
While Coroner, I saw others of his children through anger, hate or despair, end their own or others’ lives.
I look around me every day in sorrow and see the evidence of my fellow man, near and far, whether legally sanctioned or not, through explicit action, thoughtfulness or willful ignorance, do harm to his fellow humans, God’s children and his blessed, irreplaceable creation.
These are by all accounts explicit, immeasurable, tremendously accountable sins in God’s eyes. So for any of us who claim to embrace God, to support laws which in any way contribute to the harm of women, while sanctioning, minimizing or ignoring political positions which do immeasurable harm to not only millions of his children, but potentially irrevocably to his irreplaceable creation itself, almost certainly must be weighed by God as abhorrent and unaccountable.
Jim Martin
Perryville
