Thus saith the Lord: A voice was heard
on high of lamentation, of mourning, and
weeping, of Rachel weeping for her children,
and refusing to be comforted for them,
because they are not.
Jeremiah 31:15

If anybody actually reads this, I'm sorry that I haven't been posting lately. It's been a tough winter, and I really haven't had the time or the energy to think much less put my thoughts down. I decided that the thing I would start back up with would be a though about yesterday's anniversary of Roe v. Wade, especially in light of what has happened recently in my neck of the woods that has cast some light on what actually goes on at the clinics that provide abortions throughout our country.

I'm sure that people throughout the world, not just in the Philadelphia area, have been hearing about this. I remember when this guy's office was raided back at the beginning of last year, the details then weren't as clear as they are now but it was known that horrible things were going on in that clinic. Now, of course, we know all the gruesome specifics. This "doctor" is charged with killing one woman and seven children, and that's just the deaths that can be documented. God only knows how many other women and born children died because of the conditions there, not to mention how many viable unborn children were killed and whose deaths will never be remembered because of the horrible mentality that exists in this country about the value of unborn life.

This man's practice was particularly horrible because he was known to take cases where the woman was far along in her pregnancy, cases where the child may very well be born alive in the course of the abortion. Still, he is not the only so-called physician who takes such late-term cases and the conditions that exist at regular abortion clinics are no doubt just as horrible. When you deny the humanity of one child it becomes easy to then deny the humanity of all children, and then even further to deny the humanity of pregnant women and indeed of all people. As far as Gosnell seemed to be concerned, the children he murdered were just lumps of cells and the women he neglected were only worth the amount of money they put in his pockets. Closing ourselves off to compassion for one human life risks destroying our compassion for all life, and that is certainly what we have here. That this was one clinic does not mean that the abuses seen there aren't present elsewhere, certainly they are not universal but they are probably more widespread than the media will ever let us think about.

On this weekend where we remember when the U.S. Supreme Court made conditional the very right to life, perhaps we should look at this case and think about how 38 years under the shadow of abortion has made our society colder and less concerned about humanity. Perhaps we should think about how many people in our country will ignore this story, or worse yet try to justify his actions. We should definitely pray for the women who are making these decisions, that they may not be coerced into destroying their children's lives and that they will accept the grace of God to say "yes" to life both for their children and for themselves. It is 38 years later and things in our country have only gotten worse over time, we need to pray that God will steer us back on a path of peace and love that will heal the wounds that have been created and bring us back to life.