I’m trying to figure out how to explain to my grandchildren that they are growing up in a society, mostly of my own generation’s making, which has put its stamp of approval on some of the vilest practices ever known to civilized man.
Like the loss of one third of an entire generation to abortion.
There are encouraging signs in the most recent polling. For the first time in the last quarter century, 51 percent of those surveyed describe themselves as “pro-life.” These numbers are being fueled primarily by younger Americans who are waking up to the hideous nature of what we have done to them with this barbaric practice.
But while we have been inching ever closer to that magic pro-life majority, the corrosive effect of four decades of unrestricted slaughter of the innocent has taken its toll on us as a nation. It has seared us and hardened us and made us blind to the reality of our folly.
This was never more obvious than it was last week when the United States House of Representatives failed to pass a bill to stop the practice of abortion for the purpose of sex selection. We have known for some time that baby girls are either aborted or killed outright after birth in some Asian countries, most notably, China. There is now growing evidence that Asian immigrants in the United States may be practicing the same sort of “gendercide.”
Of course, the nation’s leading provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood, which receives hundreds of millions of our federal tax dollars every year, is more than willing to abort normal, healthy fetuses — for sex selection or any other reason — no questions asked. This was dramatically demonstrated recently by the head of the pro-life group Live Action, Lila Rose, who, a few years ago, exposed Planned Parenthood’s cover-up of abortions on underage girls who had been impregnated by older men.
This time, Miss Rose posed as a young woman seeking an abortion for sex selection. She entered several Planned Parenthood clinics and told them she wanted to wait until an ultrasound revealed the gender of her child. Then, if it was a girl, she told them, she wanted to abort.
Guess what, America. The PP folks didn’t even blink. In fact, in many cases they informed her that they make no judgments on any woman’s reasons for terminating her pregnancy. Lila Rose has videotaped evidence of this. This brave young woman is doing the kind of undercover investigative work the media used to do before they became a wholly owned subsidiary of the wacko wing of the Democrat Party.
“This is violence against women,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-NJ, about the abortion of female babies. “This is the real war on women.”
Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, agreed. “Those who recently have embraced contrived political rhetoric asserting that they are resisting a ‘war on women’ must reflect on whether they now wish to be recorded as being defenders of the escalating war on baby girls,” he said.
Apparently, many were willing to be so recorded, including 7 Republicans. On the other side of the aisle, 20 brave Democrats supported the legislation.
The House bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz, who says there is evidence of sex-selection abortions in the United States among certain ethnic groups from countries where there is a traditional preference for sons over daughters.
“We are the only advanced country left in the world that still doesn’t restrict sex-selection abortion in any way,” he said. Which begs the question of how much longer we will be an “advanced country.”
I will tell my grandchildren about the evil of the murderous dictators of the 20th Century — Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the notorious terrorists of our time — despots whose madness destroyed a hundred million people. That will be the easy part. What will not be easy is explaining to them why tens of millions of babies were murdered voluntarily by their own mothers, some of them for reasons as trivial as their gender.
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© 2012 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns of sage political analysis are published the world over by legions of discerning bloggers, courageous webmasters and open-minded newspaper editors.
