LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)–Cal Thomas believes the double-murder charge facing the husband of a slain California woman demonstrates the illogical nature of America’s abortion laws.
Speaking at an annual right to life banquet in Louisville, Ky., the nationally syndicated columnist noted that Scott Peterson is accused of killing both his wife and their unborn child.
Yet, if Laci Peterson had sought to take her fetus’ life at an abortion clinic, state law would have called that permissible, Thomas said.
Both California and Minnesota’s supreme courts have ruled that fetal homicide differs from abortion because it involves destruction of a fetus without the woman’s consent, Thomas said.
“This stretches logic and credulity to a breaking point,” Thomas said at the April 25 gathering. “This just boggles the mind. There is no change in the status of the child; it is only the intent that matters.”
Nor are such policies the end of the road, said Thomas, whose column is syndicated to about 530 newspapers nationwide.
About five years after the legalization of abortion, Everett Koop – a pediatric surgeon who later became U.S. surgeon general — and the late theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”
In the book, the authors warned that once abortion gained a foothold, it would be followed by infanticide and euthanasia, the political commentator said.
While at the time many Christians considered them alarmists, Thomas said partial-birth abortion demonstrates the existence of infanticide.
Thomas predicted that euthanasia will appear as baby boomers retire, increasing financial pressures on the nation’s Social Security system.
The children who favor euthanasia will have been programmed by their elders to accept the practice because of today’s popular teaching that there is no meaning to life beyond this earth, Thomas said.
“It certainly followed in the Netherlands and it’s coming quickly here,” Thomas said.
“The great irony is that as the pressure builds for euthanasia in this country, the generation that gave us abortion is going to be faced by their own children who will make them subject to the threat of euthanasia. Talk about what goes around comes around.”
Although legal abortion is now 30 years old, the columnist fears the battle will continue much longer. It is a struggle for information, he said, with women often denied the truth about alternatives to abortion and that they are carrying an infant, not a mass of cells.
A speaker at many crisis pregnancy centers, Thomas has met many women at these facilities who told him they had an abortion, but if they had known the truth they would have given birth.
He questioned why some oppose women being allowed to see sonograms of their child, saying abortion rights advocates consistently fight efforts and laws that would provide full disclosure about the procedure.
Thomas said women receive more federally mandated information about groceries, bank loans and car purchases than life in their wombs.
“This whole idea of choice is as bogus as it would be if you went to the supermarket and found only one product there,” he said.
“My question is, If we can have truth in labeling, lending and a sticker at the automobile dealer, why can’t we have truth about unborn life? What do we have to fear from giving women more information?”
The nation has not reached this stage because of a failure of government, Thomas said, but of society’s failure to answer a simple question of identity: “Who are you?”
Thomas then outlined the two basic answers:
— We are matter and energy shaped by pure chance in a random universe, without an author of life, purpose for living or a destination after death.
— We are unique creatures, created in the image and likeness of an infinite, personal God who loves us, knew us in our mother’s womb and has a plan for our lives.
People have largely forgotten the latter answer and, instead of worshiping God, idolize the golden calf known as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Thomas argued.
“In Dow we trust, not God,” he said. “When you begin to worship things and the created, you begin to ignore the Creator. When you reverse the order, things get out of order, don’t they?”
Quoting from a national proclamation written by Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War, Thomas recalled how the 16th president called for citizens to acknowledge their dependence on God, humble themselves and pray for forgiveness.
“This is the way back,” he said. “The problem is not going to be solved in Washington, D.C. [They] will be the last place to get it. Washington is merely a reflection of the soul of the nation.”
Noting the lack of any television stations or secular newspaper reporters at the banquet, Thomas recalled how the media never wrote about a touching encounter he observed once in Greenville, N.C.
There, the director of a crisis pregnancy center introduced her 18-year-old son, who was born shortly after her husband died. Since she already had children and faced financial hardship, her doctor advised her to terminate the pregnancy.
That night, the doctor met the woman’s son for the first time. As they embraced, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place, Thomas recalled.
“There was no TV there and no newspapers reported on it because this would give women hope, perspective and meaning,” Thomas said. “We ought to report those things.
“Is that censorship? In many ways, I think it is. This is the premier moral issue of our time and we, the people, have never had a chance to debate it among ourselves because an unelected judiciary handed down a decision without consulting the American people.”
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(BP) photo posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: CAL THOMAS.
