By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation
Dictionary.com defines “prescience” as “knowledge of things before they exist or happen; foreknowledge; foresight.” See what has come to pass, see how pro-lifers knew how it was inevitable.
On the night of January 22, 1973, CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite led off his newscast with a report on Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that had been issued earlier that day. (You can see the clip by visiting Youtube.)
The report included a comment from Monsignor James McHugh, who was identified as a representative of the U.S. Catholic Conference. Msgr. McHugh stated, “In this instance the Supreme Court has withdrawn protection for the human rights of unborn children and it is teaching people that abortion is a rather innocuous procedure, provided that there are proper legal safeguards. I think that the judgment of the court will do a great deal to tear down the respect previously accorded human life in our culture.”
Over 64 million aborted children later, how right he was. Prescience. Foresight. Foreknowledge
In the same CBS broadcast, Cronkite said that Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia termed Roe “an unspeakable tragedy.” “An unspeakable tragedy,” indeed.
Prescience.
In the past 50 years, millions of mothers have been left to grieve children lost to abortion–often silently, as the abortion industry fails to recognize the pain and suffering of its dissatisfied “customers.” Research has shown that in as many as 60% of cases, women are coerced into abortion–meaning that a boyfriend, husband, parent, grandparent, or someone else is pressuring them to end their baby’s life.
Fathers? They often wordlessly grapple with their role in the decision to end the lives of their offspring.
The major media are virtually silent on the death toll from abortion. They are equally mute about the physical and emotional toll it can take on women.
Too often, alas, parishioners observe they rarely hear the subject of abortion addressed from the pulpit.
Five years after Roe a Pennsylvania Pro-Life Convention featured a workshop entitled, “Abortion Doublespeak,” which delved into such deceptive and dishonest pro-abortion slogans as the “fetus (is) not (a) person,” and a woman’s “right to choose.”
Decades after Roe, promoters of abortion continue to deny the humanity of the preborn child. They do so even when that child is giving a “thumbs up” in an ultrasound.
Pro-abortion politicians conveniently omit the overriding fact that half of babies inside the womb are female. None is given a “choice” whether they will live or die.
A 1978 workshop called “Women’s Viewpoint” pointed out how women are viciously exploited by the abortion industry. This was years before a woman named Karnamaya Mongar walked into West Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” and ended up dead. And long before Gosnell was convicted of murdering three full-term babies he had intentionally delivered alive and then “snipped” their spinal cords.
“Abortion Doublespeak” on full display.
“Women’s Viewpoint”–ignored, unless it follows the talking points of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion operation, which takes the lives of an astonishing number of baby boys and girls each year–more than 320,000, by its own count.
The foreknowledge of the pro-life movement can be evaded but not denied. The predictions that Roe would undermine respect for life in our culture…give rise to an unspeakable tragedy…result in abortion double-speak…and cause the exploitation of women…all have all come to pass.
Thankfully, a significant number of the children who survived Roe, who are now adults often with children of their own, are dedicating their lives to exposing the tragic fall-out from that 1973 Supreme Court decision. They have both the benefit of the lessons of history and the blessing of foresight to know that our nation will be stronger…women will be empowered…and millions of children will be saved once Roe is reversed.
Truth and goodness and justice will win in the end. That is the prescient promise of the pro-life movement.