Would someone please explain to me what the hoopla is over the Catholic Church burying those aborted fetuses?
A Roman Catholic church buried the ashes of hundreds of aborted fetuses Sunday, a day after the 32nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, drawing criticism that the church was exploiting women’s grief to make a political statement.
A crowd of 250 parishioners prayed as the ashes were buried in the Sacred Heart of Mary Church cemetery, while a handful of protesters gathered nearby holding signs that read, “This church is a grave robber.”
A grave robber? Isn’t a fetus just an overgrowth of unwanted tissue? Would the church have been “grave robbing” if they had buried an excised tumor or a cancerous lung?
Organizers said they wanted to give the fetuses the burial they deserved and provide a place for women who have had abortions to grieve and mourn.
“I think they misunderstand what we’re doing,” service organizer Susan LaVelle said. She said the parish has held unannounced burials twice a year since 2001, but the parish priest agreed to make the burial public this year.
LaVelle said the timing of the service so close to the Saturday anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision was a coincidence.
Well . . . I’m sure that’s not entirely accurate, but why does it matter?
But Kate Horle, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, has said many of Hern’s patients were devastated by the news of a religious service.
They were “devastated by the news of a religious service?” That statement is intriguing in and of itself.
Horle said most of [Dr. Warren] Hern’s patients have fetuses with fatal anomalies. His clinic specializes in “late abortion for fetal disorders,” according to its Web site.
Hern did not immediately return a message seeking comment Sunday, but called the service last week “a cynical exploitation of private grief for political purposes.”
Or, arguably, it was the Catholic Church corporally standing by their moral respect for life. In days of old, it was considered indecent and disrespectful to leave a body unburied. The Catholics consider these little “someones” to be worthy of burial. The common pro-choice understanding of this “biohazard waste” would allow it be disposed of in (approximately) the same manner, sans ceremony. So why do they care?
I am reminded quite forcefully of that scene in the Magnificent Seven when Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen drive the “Old Joe” Indian to the cemetery in a shotgun hearse . . . because the undertaker is unwilling to stand up to the hostility of the town. When asked how long Boot Hill had been an “all-white” cemetery, the undertaker responds: “Since the town got civilized.” I suppose it’s yet another mark of “civilization” that we decide today who is human enough to be buried . . . and who is not.
