40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and the Single Biggest Gift the Pro-Life Movement Has Ever Had

The 40^th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and the single biggest gift the pro-life movement has ever had is the Subject of this Big B File.

Today is January 22, 2013 . . . today is a very sad anniversary. That is because 40 years ago today, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a woman has a right to an abortion . . . .a right, as the president would say, to terminate her pregnancy.  In other words . . . a right to end a human life.  Legalized murder is basically what it is  . . . . was made legal by an activist Supreme Court four years ago today in 1973.  By the way, that decision was handed down a year and half before my twin sister Melissa and I were born . . . which means that my mom could have aborted us . . . but, thank God be praised; she didn’t and decided to say yes to life.    [more]

At the time of the Supreme Court decision, the majority of people In America were in favor of it. Now, fast forward to the mid to late 1980s . . . . 1987 or 1988 . . . and there is a program on PBS that still on the air today called The McLaughlin Group.  Now, as many of you know, PBS is not allowed to air commercials by federal law. So, at the beginning and end up each program, they will air what their version of a commercial is called an underwriting spot.

Now, from that point in 1987-1988 on . . . give or take a few years, and going on continuously for at least 10 years . . . one of those underwriting spots was by General Electric or GE. In that spot, what was about 10 to 15 seconds long, they showed a sonogram.  That’s right...they shall a sonogram which consisted of The majority of the spot.

This was not the normal still image of the sonogram . . . this sonogram was an animated one that showed the baby inside the mother’s womb moving. And I was making about that very spot while reflecting on the Baby Bottle Brigade campaign that the local Knights of Columbus council at my parish (Incarnate Word Parish in Chesterfield, MO) which was followed by numerous councils in the St. Louis Metropolitan area and then in the state of Missouri.

My first thought one know spots aired as it is now is simply this . . . .that the GE underwritings bought but the sonogram showing the baby moving all round in the mother’s womb is the single biggest gift that the pro-life movement as head to this very day!   I believe that the GE underwriting spots was most likely the inspiration for the pro-life groups in New York City to set up and operate mobile mammography units at locations where a woman that was going to planned parenthood or another abortion clinic . . . or an abortion mill as I would call it . . . go inside the vehicle upon invitation by the pro live people and receive a free sonogram showing the woman what is moving inside their womb.

That little program in New York City was so successful that it inspired other pro-life groups across the country to do the same thing . . . including here in St. Louis were the pro-life group ThriVe St. Louis, in coordination with the Knights of Columbus Council at Incarnate Word Parish in Chesterfield and other councils to date have raised over $400,000 and counting for the mobile mammography units to go all round and set up across the street from planned parenthood and other abortion clinics across the state of Missouri  to show all mothers that what is inside of the them is not a blob of tissue, a disease, or illness . . . but a brand new human life that is developing and just waiting to come out of the womb and into the world.

Now, the pro-life movement has made great strides over the past four years to the point where are for the first time in numerous polls, the majority of Americans do not say that they are broad choice (in other words, support abortion on demand and unrestricted) but, instead say that they are pro-life . . . that they are for life at all stages.

There is a mass intention that is said by Fr. Bill Baier, who is currently the Senior Associate Pastor of St. Ferdinand Catholic Church in Florissant, MO in north St. Louis County.  The mass intention goes something like this (paraphrasing) . . . .

“Let us pray that this country may soon once again reverence the sacred right to life of all people . . . especially the unborn, the elderly, and the mentally and physically challenged.  For this, we pray to the Lord.  (Response: Lord, hear our prayer.) "

-          Fr. Bill Baier, Senior Associate Pastor of St. Ferdinand Catholic Church in Florissant, MO

Father Bill inserts this mass Intention at every mass that he celebrates for as long as I can remember. I believe that this mass intention is so powerful and straightforward, that may repeat it once again . . .  “Let us pray that this country may soon once again reverence the sacred right to life of all people . . . especially the unborn, the elderly, and the mentally and physically challenged.  For this, we pray to the Lord.  (Response: Lord, hear our prayer.) ".  I would encourage every priest or begin reading those to incorporate this mass intention into every mass that the priest presides at or the deacon assists at, no matter where the mass is said.

There is a versed in the bible that says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you” (Jeremiah 1:5 – New American Bible: Revised Edition [NABRE]).  Let me repeat the first two parts of Jeremiah 1:5, which says “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you . . .” Basically, what god is saying to the prophet Jeremiah and to us is this . . . . that we were not only alive at the moment of conception, but that we had a reason and purpose for being as well.  That was not a profit or some persons saying this, but God himself saying it.

And going back to that saw ground in the GE underwriting spot in mentioned earlier . . . .the enraged in the spot was not crystal clear, but clear enough that you could tell that it was a baby inside the mother’s womb . . . not to a blob of tissue or a malfunction of the woman’s body. Since that underwriting spot aired, but sonograms have become a 10 to 20 times clearer from the mid-1990s until now. So, if anyone had any doubts that life begins at the moment of conception and that there is a human life in that womb . . . they would be hard pressed to have doubts about the truth of when the life begins and to hold onto that same line more so now than back in the 1990s or at any other time in the last 40 years.

You can literally tell in a sonogram image, whether a still or animated sonogram image, the lines of the sonogram image are so well defined that you cannot say a what President Barak Obama said to Pastor Rick Warren when the pastor asked the president did tell him when he believed when life begins.  President Obama responded by saying to the pastor that it was above his pay grade to answer that question with any specificity. Obama’s republican challenger that year, Senator John McCain, did not hesitate at all when he answered Pastor Rick Warren by stating that he believed that life begins at the moment of conception . . . .at the moment of conception.  Above his pay grade to answer that question with any specificity?!?  This is very telling on where President Barak Obama stands on the culture of life and when life begins.

Today, not one person who say that they are pro-choice can explain how a baby can just come out of the mother . . . just magically appears in the mother’s womb full term and then come right out the mother . . . . which is a scientific impossibility. However, this is when the people who say that they are pro-choice believe when life begins.   That baby has to be formed somewhere, somehow. It did not begin with the sperm and the egg meeting outside of the mother, developed, and then is tucked inside the mother at full term to be born . . . it’s just scientifically impossible, which is exactly why they have this thing called a pregnancy.  It is in that time . . . .that nine months . . . that the egg and sperm meet, combine, form the first cells, then multiply those very cells over and over to the point that nine months later, the mother gives birth to a brand new baby boy or girl.

Just after a few months in the womb . . . the eyes of the year, the baby becomes aware, the heart starts beating, and it starts breathing.  Another gift to the pro-life movement was a NOVA episode on PBS that originally aired in 1983 called “The Miracle of Life” in which NOVA followed up with another episode on PBS that originally aired on November 20, 2001 called “Life's Greatest Miracle”.  Both episodes talked about the birth of a baby and how that baby is formed in the womb of the mother.   They even showed live video sonogram images along with graphic animation of the process of how the baby is formed in the womb during the pregnancy. The pro-choice people can deny it all day long . . . but thanks to the internet and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the truth is getting out. The truth is getting out to people unlike it ever has before.

Will abortion ever become illegal in our lifetime?   The short answer is that I do not know.  If not in our lifetime, but in the lifetimes of our kids and grandkids. The tide has turned from America being a mostly pro-choice nation to being a mostly pro-life nation, embracing as the late Blessed Pope John Paul II referred to as the Culture of Life. And this is demonstrated in our beliefs . . . our faith.  Right now, the single best example of the attacks on the unborn and those who are working to bring about the culture of life is the attacks on not only the Catholic Church . . . but also on other Christians, Muslims, and Jews overall in the form of the mandate for the United States Department of Health and Human Services or HHS requiring all employers and insurers to provide insurance coverage for all forms of contraception . . . what they’re doing so violates your images beliefs or not.  Just look at who President Obama's "nation's leading medical experts" are.

Private sector employers and are already having to deal with this mandate and, this coming august . . . the Roman Catholic Church, Knights of Columbus, Catholic Charities, St. Vincent de Paul Society (SVDP), and all religious groups and religious based organizations will be forced the violate their first amendment rights . . . their religious beliefs . . . and pay for what they see as an intrinsic evil.

In closing . . . Let me leave you with the very same mass intention I spoke about earlier, which goes something like this . . . Let us pray that this country may soon once again reverence the sacred right to life of all people . . . especially the unborn, the elderly, and the mentally and physically challenged.  For this, we pray to the Lord.  Lord, PLEASE hear our prayer.  And that is the Big B Files. Click on the comments link below and let me know what you think . . . . I’m Bryan Hewing.