Pro-life's foot soldiers

Today is Ecumenical Sunday, a day when Christians are encouraged to pray and work toward unity. Great conception, but is it making any headway? One place where it is unified and growing is the opposition to abortion. Groups from across the nation including Northumberland County will assemble Monday for the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. More than 300,000 Catholics and Evangelical Protestants will provide a clarion voice to the voiceless.

The march is the pro-life community's collective effort to remind all Americans that the war against the unborn has been an ongoing slaughter since the Roe v. Wade decision on Jan. 23, 1973. On that infamous day in American history, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that ending an unborn child's life was a constitutional right. Unequivocally, Roe v. Wade is the most fatal court decision in history and contradicts everything our founding documents prescribe.

The Founding Fathers plainly wrote that life is an unalienable right from God, our Creator, but the members of the court in 1973 pretended not to know when life begins. In turn, they made abortion not only a constitutional right, but another ubiquitous form of birth control readily available and relatively cheap. Their shared malfeasance has resulted in more than 52 million abortions.

With less than one year to go before the presidential election, the Obama administration continues to advance its pro-abortion stand on multiple fronts. Obama has insisted that the federal government continue funding Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider. Your tax dollars have resulted in the abortion of 350,000 babies since Obama took office.

It doesn't end there. When and if ObamaCare goes into effect, it would require church-related institutions to include coverage for sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients in employee health plans - subtle means to the same deadly end.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 22 percent of all American pregnancies end in abortion and more than 41,000 are carried out in Pennsylvania yearly. The number in the black community is overwhelming, with six out of 10 pregnancies ending inside an abortion clinic.  

In an irony for the ages, this abortive-genocide that is thriving within the black community is not a problem for the nation's first black president. When asked to explain his support for Planned Parenthood in 2008, Obama replied, "I've got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." How do you think the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King would respond?

Over the next four years, the biggest abortion-related issues lie with whoever is elected president as the president selects new justices for the Supreme Court. Presently, the court's membership is closely divided between pro-life and pro-abortion justices. Depending on who leaves, the balance can tip in either direction. Obama has remained committed to naming supporters of Roe v. Wade that remains a core detriment to the pro-life movement.

All the news, however, isn't discouraging. The efforts of pro-lifers have been bearing fruit, but you'll never hear that from the liberal mainstream media. Last year in Washington, more than 300,000 attended the march on the coldest day in nearly half a century. Their commitment and fortitude is edifying. So, why is Fox the only network covering?

New pro-life laws have been passed in 24 states. Last year alone, 52 new restrictions on abortion were put into place. Many include requiring an ultrasound test before an abortion. Some include barring abortion after the baby becomes able to feel pain (about 20 weeks) and cutting or eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood. In Texas recently, a federal appeals court upheld the state's sonogram law, which requires that women seeking abortions view a picture of their baby before aborting. Some of these decisions are bound to wind up before the Supreme Court.

That's why three buses full of pro-lifers ranging in age from 16 months to 90 years representing the northern part of the Northumberland Catholic Deanery, will converge on Washington, D.C., to tender a voice for those who have none.

In a local ecumenical effort and for the fourth consecutive year, Steve and Michele Resuta will lead one of those three buses with a group from Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Church in Elysburg. The Resutas will report live from the march to Larry Weidman on WGRC, an Evangelical Christian station with studios outside of Lewisburg.

It is ecumenical crusades like this that are sowing the seeds that may one day finally put an end to this heinous American albatross.

(Maresca, a local freelance writer, composes "Talking Points" for each Sunday edition.)

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