By Robert J Morrison
T.S. Elliot wrote in The Wasteland, "April is the cruelest month." I never understood why. Now I do. And April 10 is the cruelest day, the day when the bill to ban partial birth abortions was vetoed, the day when the country was distracted by the seemingly endless funeral ceremonies for Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. It was a veto from hell.
I generally complain when my wife usesthe term "the commute from hell," a common term used around the Washington, D.C. beltway, because I thinkthe term trivializes something we Christians are supposed to take very seriouslyùhell.
But I use the term "veto from hell" advisedly when it comes to the veto of the ban on partial birth abortions. It seems that the act itself is so horrifying as to qualify as hellish. If stabbing a child in the base of the skull with surgical scissors minutes before birth and sucking out the child's brains with a suction device in order to collapse the skull is not hellish, then we have no earthly understanding of the term.
The Prince of Liars
The veto was the capstone of a campaign characterized by such low cunning, such craft, such brazen mendacity as to give every sign of being a pet project of the Prince of Liars.
Despite the written testimonyfrom one ofthe few abortionists bold enough to claim credit for doing these ghastly procedures, the defenders of the indefensible claimed again and again on the floor of the House and the Senate that the partial birth abortion was done only for severe health complications of the mother, or for a profound handicap ofthe child. Martin Haskell, who boasted of having developed this technique in an article in American Medical News , himself admitted that eighty percent of the partial-birth abortions he does are elective. It was breathtaking to watch Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Pat Schroeder stand on the floor and deny what Haskell had plainly written. But, then, there is literally no abortion thai these two would not defend.
Then, there was the crowning lie: the abortionists tried to claim that the late-term babies did not feel a thing because the anesthesia had already killed them. That gross fabrication brought a howl of protest from honest anesthesiologists who rushed to form a truth squad before a congressional committee. If that bold lie were to go unchecked, millions of pregnant women might put off needed surgery for fear of harming their unborn children.
April is the cruelest
April's title to the cruelest month cannowstandunchallenged. Itwasin April that our War for Independence began bloodily. April also saw outbreak of the fratricidal struggle we call the Civil War. April is the month of Lincoln's assassination, 'when lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed.' Oklahomans will not soon forget the deadly attack on the Murrah Building of April 19, 1995.
"I'm struck by the fact that April more recently has become the month of Remembrance for our now dwindling numbers of survivors of the Holocaust. The selection of the month is made more poignant by the fact that Allied forces liberated many of the death camps in that month in 1945.
Each year during April, I try to read something to deepen my understanding of that world historic catastrophe. This year I read Nightly, Nobel Prizewinner Elie Wiesel. It is a haunting work. We find ourselves in the cattle car being transported to Auschwitz. Weheartheshrieksofthe young mother who, maddened by thirst, has a vision of flames and cries out to the doomed Jews to heed her warning. In the midst of horrors, for they have seen babies tossed from windows to be caught on bayonet points, the victims in the car cannot conceive of greater horrors yet.
Wiesel has received a gift from God. It is his ability to recall and to communicate with such force and clarity the feeling of the Holocaust. Jewish friends recoil when I mention the Holocaust in the same breath with abortion. But is the partial-birth abortion sodifferentfrom pitching living babies onto burning pyres? If so, how?
Whether or not we have Elie Wiesel standing with us, we must resist this sickening new descent into barbarism. If this is the starting point, to what depths might we descend by the year 2000? As our Lord asked on His way to the Cross, "If they do these things in the green wood, what will they do in the drv?"
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban isn't hard to understand. Unborn babies who have been in their mother's womb five, six, seven monthsùand even longerùare delivered except for the head. Then they are killed.
The stroke of a pen could have saved their lives. Now these precious children will be killed in the most pagan, barbaric, and painful way imaginable. The bill was written to stop an abortionist from stabbing a baby in the back of the head and suctioning out his or her brains. It wasn't a complicated piece of legislation. It was a simple choice between good and evil.
World Reactions
Worldwide reaction to the veto was swift and unmistakable. TheU.S. ambassador to the Vatican broke with the Administration and denounced the veto. All eight American Roman Catholic cardinals and the President ofthe National Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the veto. Their letter said in part, "Your veto of this bill is beyond comprehension for those who hold human life sacred. It will ensure the continued use of the most heinous act to kill a tiny infant just seconds from taking his or her first breath outside the womb."
Next, evangelist Billy Graham went to the White House and chastised the president for his veto....Even the leadership of his own church denounced the veto in unflinching terms. Dr. Richard D Land of the 15.6 million member Southern Baptist Convention wrote, "The president has now made it unmistakably clear that there is no circumstanceùeven a baby who is fully delivered except for his or her headùin which he will make it illegal for the mother to instruct the doctorto execute thechild." ùWanda Franz, Ph.D.
*Morrison is the former director of the LCMS Office of Government Information. His remarks are excerpted from Living, Summer 1996