Your point that pro-“choice” advocates focus on the aesthetics and not the morality of abortion is a really fascinating insight.  At the same time, calling the AFP reporter a ‘fool’ seems a little unnecessary.

Andrew Wolfe,
picking on Mark’s observation that the AFP reporter is a fool seems a bit aesthetic. Would you perfer something a bit more tidy and clean?

Michael K

As a reporter, Mr. Mansour, should not be taking a position on the issue but stick to reporting the facts.  He does not do that but crosses the line by suggesting abortion is the best solution to this situation which bring these same young lives to the same end - death.  How would it then be any better?  He, is a Mark states, a fool (speaking imprudently and unwisely) by doing so. 

The author does not seek to challenge the Muslim laws against women working, their refusal to see the power and strength of their women or any of their other extreme laws that have created this problem.  The only solution he can is the abortion/murder of the next generation of women.  Perhaps he then agrees with the laws that keep women as second-class citizens (at best).

A friend of mine made a good point the other day. When a person rapes someone he is never given the death penalty, so why give the baby the death penalty. It is not that babies fault. I was adopted….i could have been the product of rape.
Abortion is not tangible. We can not envision 52 million dead babies and we never see the abortion itself. It is obscure, it makes it sound better and eases consciences. That is why we have verbiage like, terminate a pregnancy, anti abortion, yadayadayada
When we pray outside of an abortion clinic more than one mother has come out crying while her baby lies inside of her dying. The so called dr’s have the nerve to let them watch the baby on the sonogram as he is injecting the needle into the baby’s heart. Now they have to go spend the night in a hotel or home, if they live close, and come back the next day for the “extraction”....pretty sick

While they are not morally equivalent, the ways abortion and the death penalty are dealt with suggests that it really is not something society is or should be comfortable with. 

With abortion, you never hear pro-choice advocates refer to the unborn as babies or persons, even though the most honest of them that there is no real moral distinction between a new born and a 40 week old unborn (while I disagree with him about almost everything, I at least have to grant Peter Singer kudos for admitting this).  We keep abortion out of sight, in clinics labeled Planned Parenthood, Women’s Health Clinics, etc.  Many pro-choice advocate fight very hard to make sure that the mothers considering abortion don’t have to look at sonograms of their babies before they abort them.

Meanwhile, even when we celebrate it, executioners have often been isolated from the communities they serve.  In modern times, we don’t isolate the executioners from society, but we do try to isolate them from feeling personally responsible for the execution.  Firing Squads traditionally have one rifle loaded with a blank; most execution protocols in the United States divide the procedure into a number of small tasks, each performed by a different person.

Knowing you killed someone can take a serious toll on people; particularly when you can in any way see the person killed as defenseless.  We will do anything to limit how much we acknowledge it.

The world makes it seem that abortion is no harder than having a procedure to have your tonsils removed. 21 years ago I was pregant with my son and it was a hard pregnancy. The doctors kept saying there was something wrong with the baby and did I want to have a procedure that would end the pregnancy. They called it a procedure. No memtion that it was murder. Of coarse I said no and my baby was just one big baby and very healthy and strong. Today we, my son and I take our turn to pray outside of the abortion clinics. My son is a strong witness that God has much better plans then anyone of us.Killing is killing no matter how you discribe it. Women need to know it is killing. God created those babies. He has a plan for each one of them.He doesn’t need procedures. He loves!  This is so simple that many women do not see it. God help us all.

To all of you out there who support abortion I have only this to tell you.  No conception is an accident.  God wills that conception to take place because He wants that person to live.  He breaths into that tiny person His immortal soul.  So, even if the pregnancy is 2 weeks old, God has already created a person out of His Omnipotent Love and wills that person to live until He is ready to take back His Soul unto Himself.  No one has a right to kill because no one can give life. FULL STOP

Not to get off topic or anything, but this is somewhat related.  I hate that all those who support abortion and yet try to cover up the issue with other issues like the Middle east.  When President Bush went to Michagan once, a group of boys went to go see him to show their support for him.  At the event one of the tv news stations interviewed them seeing that they were the youngest people there.  WEll the first question was about The US in Iraq and Afganistan.  ONe of the boys immediately answered ” DOn’t bring this topic up because it does not compare with the amount of Americans being aborted every year.  It makes no sense that there have been more Americans who have been killed by abortion than all the Americans who have died in all the Wars that America has been invoved in.” 
In my view we can only stop all these othere problems in the world if we first start to respect the dignity of the human person, since all men and women have been created in the image and likeness of God.  I could go on but i wont, and this is already too long.  Thank you and Let us all raise our prayers to CHrist that he give the strength to those who can change this world, and that those leaders act upon that grace.

Does it have to be either/or?  I doubt the thousands and thousands of innocent civilians killed in our adventure in Iraq, or their loved ones, would buy the notion that opposition to abortion means nobody should speak out on their behalf.  Opposition to abortion does not take away the sins of the world.  Our call as Catholics is to be faithful to the whole of Catholic teaching, not just the bits we like.  If the war in Iraq failed to meet just war criteria (and it did, which is why two popes and the overwhelming consensus of the bishops opposed it) we have every bit as much obligation to speak to that as we do to speak to abortion.  Erecting some false dichotomy between opposition to abortion and opposition to unjust war is specious.

Justsomebodyoutthere:
I agree that the solution to many of the world’s problems is for us, as a culture, indeed as all people in the world, to have a proper respect for human life.  That being said, the boy’s response is, to me, almost equally troubling.  The boy did not seem to show support for the war, rather he seemed to think that the evil of the war somehow could be ignored because fewer Americans had been killed.
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This is disturbing in two ways.
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The first is that he specifically seemed to suggest that the biggest potential evil of the Iraq war was the number of Americans who had been killed; ignoring the number of dead amongst the Iraqis and our allies.  While a certain amount of patriotism is healthy, a Christian cannot value the lives of his fellow citizens more than the lives of people of other nations.
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The second and to me more disturbing way is the way in which it seems to measure evil as a pure number’s game; i.e., if x kills more than y, x must be more evil than y.  This sort of accounting could lead to us ignoring all sorts of real and very dangerous evils in the world simply because they are not as “serious” as abortion.  Indeed, consider contraception versus abortion.  All too many pro-life supporters think that one of the answers to the abortion is easy access to contraception for everyone.  Meanwhile, as Catholics we know that contraception, most importantly failed contraception, is a leading cause of abortion.
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As Christians, specifically as Catholics, we must learn that evil is evil period.  Mortal sin is mortal sin.  We are called on to oppose all evils.  Until Catholics as a whole embrace the whole of the church’s moral teaching, you are going have the problem of people picking and choosing what they see to be the worst evil.  I believe that Poverty, war, contraception, pornography, abortion, the secularization of Western Civilization and most other evils are all linked.

Back in my pro-choice days, I really thought (as much as I could be said to have thought about it at all, which was not much) that an abortion made a woman “unpregnant.” Like most people I thought that the vast majority of abortions took place when the baby was so small that it didn’t count as killing a person. I am not defending this confused way of looking at things, just explaining it. I didn’t think about it much at all, I just accepted it as what most people thought.

I imagine that many people who call themselves pro-choice don’t know anything about abortion, and don’t understand that you can never be “unpregnant,” and thus never a mother—a pregnant woman is already a mother, and the only possible outcomes of pregnancy are a live baby or a dead baby. Americans are very practical people, they aren’t big on nuance. They don’t want to think about this stuff too much, because they know they might be uncomfortable.

On the other hand, since I saw the light and became adamantly opposed to abortion, I have been astonished and appalled at how many people know exactly what it is and what it does, and defend it anyway.

Truly, we are experiencing first hand the Culture of Death of which Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have spoken and written about prophetically.  We are already seeing and experiencing in our culture what was predicted 38 years ago; i.e., the slippery slope of destruction with its devastating consequences.  First contraception and abortion, then infanticide, embryonic stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization selections, cloning, assisted suicides and euthanasia among other evils. The number of casualties, personally and as a nation, is staggering as we watch our country beginning to implode.  All we have to do is be aware of increasing violence and disrespect for human life in our country and around the world as well as the demographic winter and subsequent problems which Europeans are experiencing.  One thing we must remember:  ABORTION FIRST…YOU NEXT!  CONTINUATION OF THE CULTURE OF DEATH…THE DEATH OF AMERICA! THE SOLUTION…CHOOSE LIFE!

When internall thinking and praying about the abortion issue, I recall a debate I once got into on an online bbc page.  I remember (before I met my husband) when his previous fiance’ was pregnant, and he wanted the baby but she didn’t.  He begged her not to get an abortion, but she did it anyways and called him crying about how bad she hurt.  He tried to be understanding, but she killed his baby, and understandably he couldn’t just “get over it” like she wanted him to.  So I asked that simple question…what about father’s rights?  And WOW, the mean and angry comments I received about how men have no rights.  How I’m a failure of a woman for considering that the issue is in any way bigger than a parasite in my womb.  The lies, the comments made me sick.  My babies are not parasites, but God given life, and quite frankly it takes two to tango and I see no reason why both don’t equally have the right to say “I love this baby and I want this baby”.  maybe it’s a whole different take on the culture of death, but this just reminded me of that.

Nothing in your article addresses the fact that this is Mulims and their faith issues.  Saying what Jesus Christ would do doesn’t really apply unless you are advocating sending missionaries.  So what is the Christian response to Muslim culture? Boycotting? Evangelizing?

Pam, It is still murder and murder is wrong. So if a Muslim kills a Christian we are not to punish them because their faith believes it is ok? Hello!!

@Pam: Yeah, ‘cause only ignorant fundamentalists would advocate sending missionaries to Muslims.

d.dunn and leo: Within the Muslim faith tradition these people are sinning.  My thinking is that God made Ismael a nation as well.  Therefore it would seem more effective for our religious leaders to reach out to their religious leaders and work with them for a solution.  All faiths are losing their way to secular pressures and the issue is really not that different.  We all struggle to give individuals the knowledge of their God to make the tough choices.  It is easier to listen to the world.  Jesus would remind them of their God.  Boycotting would not be his style.

Pam, Our Popes do reach out to the Muslims on matters of faith. They try to maintain peace throughout the world.

I am aware, but I was thinking Christian leadership that is more local and living among the Paskastani people.  From the article it seems alot more complex than just abortion and infanticide.  There seem to be class issues, misogeny issues, financial issues.  It isn’t just a problem of abortion.  It is a whole cultural climate that is setting female children up for danger and women in general.  Matt says Jesus’ answer is stop choosing death, but the real answer is to find out what true love is in this environment.

Pam, You mean to get to the root of the problem. I see. Look at it holistically not just from this stand point, then this issue would fall into place. I see what you are saying.

@d.dunn: Yes, that’s correct.

I can understand that Pam.