Anne Lastman A Reflection “Peter,” The Holy Father, Pope Francis, without breaking the line of…
A Ritual Dishonoured.
Dear friends in my last issue of newsletter (issue 132) I spoke about a service that some abortion facilities offer the aborting women, that is, the services of a Doula. A doula is meant to be a pregnancy and delivery support, one could say, companion for this last part of the journey.
Abortion facilities have taken this noble task and now use it to stand by the woman as she has her abortion. It seems that abortion facilities (never use the word clinics because clinic implies medical care, healing not killing) are able to take some beautiful life element and turn it into something
grotesque.
A new “service” came to my attention in early September. Service whereby a late term abortionist in USA (Dr? Leroy Carhart) offers to the aborting woman/parents the opportunity of viewing, holding, cuddling, taking photos, having a footprint of the baby, funeral services. This after the baby has been killed by abortion and delivered dead.
I must admit to sitting down and shedding many tears of anger and frustration. After twenty three years I keep thinking that I cannot hear anything more that will distress me but yes this story broke my heart.
I’ve held a dead baby (not abortion) in my arms over thirty years ago and then followed with the mum behind the tiny white coffin and to this day I cannot forget the look of the dead infant or the unnatural stillness of her mother. Her mother was in shock and distant. Away. During the burial she did not look at the tiny coffin, or little doll like infant. Holding her hand it was like holding the hand
of a person dying. Cold. No tears, just not there.
I’ve seen my week old baby sister in her little white coffin and remember the look on her face. Her gently closed eyes and beautiful lashes. I can still see them. This over 45 years ago. I remember the coffin sitting on our laps in Dad’s car and his stoic face as we drove to the cemetery (mum still ill in hospital) to bury her. I still have her certificate and her plot number. I remember the awful grey, different, unusual weird colour on her face and her gently closed eyes.
Like they would open any minute and she would smile. Like a little baby doll in a beautiful white lacy dress and such tiny hands. I remember Carmelina and the image of her and the image of my friend’s baby and I remember the image of our family friends whose 7 month old little boy died of SIDS and the parents so still. Not crying. Just still.
These images of death of infants never go away because the death of a baby is so unnatural. It’s not meant to happen that way. Babies are born and they grow and become older and so forth. And when they die through miscarriage or stillbirth (unintentional death) are never forgotten. The day, time, moment remembered.
So how can this abortionist invite parents who have ASKED that their baby be killed by him in some gruesome method then offer them what he considers consolation?
How can he offer spiritual recommendations? How can he offer or place in their minds an image of the infant that they asked to have killed and then this image, in the dark of night returns to memory to haunt them. ?
How can he suggest that they hold the baby that he killed at their request?
How can he suggest a viewing, just like any “normal” death?
How can he suggest that once the process of healing begins they might want a memory of their child?
If the abortion and death requires a “process of healing” then surely the murder of their child must mean something to them because there is a “process of healing” which will happen.
How can he convince himself and others that he and his practice offer the parents “kindness, courtesy, justice, love and respect for over 45 years?”
Who’s the courtesy, kindness etc. for? The Parents? what about the
baby? Big enough to be viable, what does he offer the child? A Potassium injection to the heart, Partial birth abortion or some other more gruesome death?
Has he killed so many babies that he has lost all sense of right and wrong? All sense of humanity? All sense of being himself human being. Of simply feeling. This surely must be it.
What kind of wickedness has overcome this society that these things can happen?
Are these deaths sacrifices to atone for the sins of parents, women eating of the fruit again, and men being absent, society, and humanity?
He has much information on his website which one can read with horror and shudders.
He does not shy away from the term “baby” he knows what he is doing. Indeed his response in an interview when asked if he has a problem with killing a baby, he said “I have no problem if it’s in the mother’s uterus”
Is this where the theory about a child not being human being until it is outside of the mother’s body? So what is it immediately after the birth if not the same baby before birth or is this law cop out?
We gave to Caesar something that he should never have had and I suppose Caesar plays god with it.