Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. By traditional count, 14,000 infant boys under the age of 2 were slaughtered under Herod’s orders in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Messiah who could usurp his throne. (It has been suggested that given historical evidence, the number was nowhere near that number, but even one is too many.) In the western church this feast is celebrated on the 28th, not the 29th, so I had a gazillion hits on Lost Innocents yesterday from people searching for “holy innocents”.

   We have our own holocaust of holy innocents now: 50 million babies a year are killed by abortion, 1.2 million in the U.S. alone. I had this feast on my mind yesterday as I was on Pinterest and I was searching for pro-life pins. Seeing pro-abortion propaganda is one of my triggers so I should have known better, but live and learn. I came across a pin (that had “pro-life” in its description, hence the appearance) that was short, to the point, and an out-and-out lie. It claimed that 10,000 women a year were killed by “unsafe” abortion before Roe vs. Wade, and none afterward. [The implication being that if abortion were made illegal 10,000 women a year would die again.] The truth is that many women die each year from “safe”, legal abortion. This is a fact and you don’t have to look too hard to find it. Another fact is that only a few hundred (tops) women a year were dying from “unsafe” abortion before it was legalized. Have a look at this:

I am personally responsible for
75,000 abortions. This legitimizes

my credentials to speak to you with
some authority on the issue.

I was one of the founders of the
National Association for the Repeal

of the Abortion Laws (NARAL) in the
U.S. in 1968. A truthful poll

of opinion then would have found
that most Americans were against

permissive abortion. Yet within
five years we had convinced the

U.S. Supreme Court to issue the
decision which legalized abortion

throughout America in 1973 and
produced virtual abortion on demand

up to birth. How did we do this? It
is important to understand the tactics

involved because these tactics have
been used throughout the western

world with one permutation or
another, in order to change abortion law.

THE FIRST KEY TACTIC WAS TO CAPTURE THE
MEDIA

We persuaded the media that the
cause of permissive abortion was a

liberal enlightened, sophisticated
one. Knowing that if a true poll

were taken, we would be soundly
defeated, we simply fabricated the

results of fictional polls. We
announced to the media that we had

taken polls and that 60% of
Americans were in favour of permissive

abortion. This is the tactic of the
self-fulfilling lie. Few people

care to be in the minority. We
aroused enough sympathy to sell our

program of permissive abortion by
fabricating the number of illegal

abortions done annually in the U.S.
The actual figure was approaching

100,000 but the figure we gave to
the media repeatedly was 1,000,000.

Repeating the big lie often enough
convinces the public. The number

of women dying from illegal
abortions was around 200-250 annually.

The figure we constantly fed to the
media was 10,000. These false

figures took root in the
consciousness of Americans convincing many

that we needed to crack the
abortion law. Another myth we fed to the

public through the media was that
legalizing abortion would only

mean that the abortions taking
place illegally would then be done

legally. In fact, of course,
abortion is now being used as a primary

method of birth control in the U.S.
and the annual number of abortions

has increased by 1500% since
legalization.

(continue reading)

   So, to get back to Pinterest, I left a comment on the pin, linking to the above article and another one, completely disproving the alleged “facts”. The person who had pinned it commented back and questioned the veracity of the sources and claimed that the entire argument was one of “supremacy of control over your own body”. At this point my blood pressure was probably 200/130 and my hands were shaking. I left another comment (that did not have profanity in it, despite how I felt) and then refused to respond to further comments. An hour later I looked and the pin had been taken down. One small victory, I thought.

   I was very, very angry and as that started to settle down I felt very despondent. I have prayed for years and years that abortion might end. I said ages ago that this was one thing I would not stop fighting as long as there is breath in my body. I have begged a woman not to kill her miraculously surviving twin but carry it and I would adopt it. She said adoption was “cruel” and aborted him anyway. This is not the only example. I realized I was magnificently failing to distinguish the sinner from the sin and was frankly hating people who persisted in their delusions and either killed babies or supported and encouraged other people to do so. I knew that if I had the knowledge that any of these people were about to land in Hell I wouldn’t feel sorry. What a terrible thing. Lord have mercy.

   I felt like my prayers had been useless all these years. That I had never helped one person, never changed one heart, never saved one life. I have found out a woman who I fervently prayed for aborted her 14 week baby anyway and within a couple weeks was on drugs and alcohol, suicidal, and had her living children removed from her. What happened to all of those prayers?

This morning as part of my daily reading I read this:  

Fortunately I had the grace to laugh at myself (a good night’s sleep helps). There’s my answer.