Abortion's prevalence ought to make us question our beliefs

After 60 million-plus abortions in America since Roe v. Wade in 1973, we have another entrant to the Flathead Valley in the redoubtably resilient Ms. Susan Cahill’s clinic to add to that total, and it illustrates a variety of things upon examination, far beyond the oft-typical bestiality of Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer.

Those things include our emaciated commitment to Christ. His commandments, womanhood in our country, and true — as opposed to apparent — self-respect and inherent dignity of both men and women. For there will be now a cheer from pro-choice advocates, but in reality, this national and now local business is a destructive. Pyhrric victory as to what was really gained, and, crucially, what was lost.

There are thus some telling questions posing themselves: Are young women truly deep down eager to terminate their unplanned pregnancies‘? Or are they often scared, bullied into a “necessary” abortion which will often cause them psychological, emotional problems — not to mention posthumously if they ?ercely die unrepentant, or even later in marriage, be sterile?

More. Has the lauded “Sexual Revolution“ begun in the ’60s not seeded a “harvest” which is “poisonous,” destroying mutual regard of one sex for the other, as made in the image and likeness of God, and intended to behave commensurably? Is not the nuptial embrace holy and sacred ground, not solely because of a possible child, and where the Mystery and vulnerability of the Other, as well as the circuminssesional “movement” of the Trinity is expressed in the human condition?

So just as a college degree doesn’t make a person educated, chronological age de?nitely doesn’t make a male a man, nor a female a woman: Age is irrelevant, but virtue, honesty, dignity, chastity and self-mastery are traits in mature people, and unfortunately, we have many more males in our society than men. And a growing number of females are growing up into their late teens and 20s to behave in a likewise pagan lifestyle regarding their intimate sexual lives, but the women themselves receive the psychological brunt of that, males being who they are.

The Atlantic ran an article a year ago of an anonymous survey of 40,000 college co-eds about this life. The result? The Average college co-ed had 14 “hookups” in a four-year career, ranging from making out to intercourse. This telling statistic says a great deal about women. And contemporary, “educated” men as well. Jesuit Georgetown gives out free condoms in its mixed dorms. and it’s far worse in the “dating scene” at most typical non-sectarian universities, and many Planned Parenthood clinics are close by such colleges and universities. But the woman with a “problem” is expected to “deal with it” if there is a pregnancy, and often she’s marked for life.

When did it become de rigeur in our society that sexuality was rarely mentioned from most Christian pulpits. gliding by the Judeo-Christian code with a benign and blind eye and comforting sermons on spiritually arcane matters, less on threatening matters of the hard sayings of the Church and the Gospel which would intrude on the congregation’s “No Trespassing” sign on their treasured “private lives?” When did the Sixth Commandment no longer become crucially germane as to what is conventionally called “salvation?” Why are many ninth-graders in mixed classes taught sex ed with condoms and cucumbers?

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” says Flannery O‘Connor, and it’s true for a good woman as well, although women generally are the superior gender, not having to beat the false hair on their testosterone-fueled chests. Women have often become a kind of objecti?ed prey; reluctantly yielding to that prevailing pickup scene of the bar and Match.com scene with its implicit “Put out pretty soon, or I’m going elsewhere.” With many males, even in their 30s (or divorced) there is a kind of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” darkness descending upon them as they spread and absorb a honky-tonk pursuit of pleasure without regard to the inherent dignity of any woman they purport to “love,” manifesting it with a halfway coerced abortion, and therefore bringing themselves far lower than even bestial existence.

Is Christ being just rhetorical when He says. “The road to the Kingdom of Heaven is narrow and steep, and few ?nd it, while the road to perdition is wide and spacious and many take it?” Do we believe it’s the heresy of the other way around? Does not this harvest the bitterest “fruit” of so many innocents slaughtered? Does anything coarsen a man’s soul faster and deeper than rampant fornication, possibly true for women as well. Is a putatively “sexually liberated” male or female in our society, spiritually deeply unhappy, lapsing often into despair, even suicide because of the fiercest longing to love and be loved. which NEVER comes with a narcissistic or solipsistic manipulation of the Other.

Do we now have an emaciated and ignored Christ, or not? Are we papier-mache Christians or the Real Thing? Are Jesus’s standards congruent with our own, the self-liberating standards about holiness in our sexuality co-operating with Grace before the One Who made sex “very good,” and joyous for one’s spouse and oneself? Do we honor the God Who made sex to be used in His Paradigm rather than arrogantly in our own? Questions to be posed for all.

I do not wish Ms. Cahill ill in her resilient, yet presumptuous, venture, and hope that she will make an in-depth consideration about, ultimately, Who she is dealing with, how and why. For the All Families Health Care clinic will affect the inner and outer lives of many Flathead County residents with her work.

She has her own soul to save, and must look to her relationship with the One Who cannot deceive, nor be deceived: nor will that Basic Encounter be so casual and laissez-faire. but indeed be a particular judgment less facile and more divinely just than she would wish.

Hensleigh is a resident of Kalispell.