By Dave Andrusko
David Alton
Twice in one day. Rather than a coincidence (or an annoyance) in this case it is a blessing. I have a chance to write about a speech that is so brilliant it almost takes your breath away–and to refer to the speech itself.
The Speech was delivered by David Alton (Lord Alton of Liverpool) at the River Thames Right to Life Summer Event. It can be found here. The speech is very long, but every paragraph ripples with Lord Alton’s deep compassion and keen intellect.
I will make two quick points, because I want you to read his remarks and share them with friends.
First, his opening paragraph places the deaths of the little ones in a different and memorable framework. He writes,
It was Victor Frankl in “The Doctor and the Soul,” who said “sometimes, the unfinished are among the most beautiful of symphonies”. The unborn child and lives prematurely ended are the unfinished of our generation. We are here tonight because we believe every life is precious from conception to natural death, that every life once begun must be given the chance to be completed; to be finished.
Second, the assaults on life that Lord Alton details in a fresh and thoughtful manner are interwoven. We know that, our opponents know it. But they must deny that the assaults on the unborn, those with disabilities, and the medically fragile elderly are of a piece.
More he explains that justifications for killing the innocent are as old as man. He cites three: “The Spartans used weakness as a justification for killing; the Nazis used race or genetic inheritance; Rwandans used tribal allegiance.”
But in a sense there is a built-in limitation to each of these. Not so with “perhaps [the] most grotesque of all these.”
“Choice,” Lord Alton writes “is the umbrella under which any number of justifications can shelter.”
Thank for reading National Right to Life News Today, and especially for taking the time to click on the links to Lord Alton’s speech and to the op-ed of the Rev. Joanna Jepson.
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