There is no reason we should want to tolerate the slaughter of innocents just because it’s regulated to protect some of those involved (by ensuring the clean and efficient slaughter of others).  But there really is a reason to press for laws which insist that the killing of babies not actually be more dangerous than real life-saving care, especially that it not be sold as “safe, legal, and rare” only to actually be less safe than going to the ER with a serious illness.

One reason is that it will actually shut down clinics that profit from the slaughter of children.  That’s a really good reason, and nobody should disclaim it.

But there’s another reason, and that reason has everything to do with the astonishingly, even irrationally, vehement opposition of so many allies of the slaughter industry to even the most common sense medical reforms:

Those who slaughter the innocent for a living, and the profiteers and ideologues that organize them, promote them, and build an industry on the body parts of babies, do not want regular health care personnel anywhere near the process.

Nurses, you see, tend to become unreliable when they are actually required to participate in murder.  Real doctors do, too.

For more on this see Coenhoven’s excellent article on forgiveness. This is from the introductory essay of a special issue on the subject:

attempts to strip forgiveness-talk of cultic particularity have obscured the ways in which the purportedly secular talk of forgiveness that plays a significant role in our culture remains indebted to Christian thought.

As an example of an interesting admixture of both trends at once, consider the briefly popular recent news story about Lucy Mangum, a six-year-old girl who, after undergoing surgery to repair a leg severely bitten by a blacktip shark, told reporters that she forgave the shark because she believed it had not meant to harm her (Fox News 2011). I do not mean to chide Lucy for applying the idea of forgiveness to a creature that lacks the agential credentials I consider necessary for forgiveness; she is a guide. The “folk” concept of forgiveness on which she drew involves the idea that forgiving is not being angry at, or visiting retribution on, something that has caused you trouble. This approach does not tie forgiveness to repentance; indeed, Lucy rightly perceived that forgiveness is now commonly justified on the basis that the perpetrator is not really to blame.

It seems to me that this way of thinking—popularized in best-selling books that tout the benefits of forgiving everything from God to the weather—drains the idea of forgiveness of its significance, undermines the sense of meaning and inspiration the term still widely stirs, and avoids the profound questions about grace in the midst of fault that it has traditionally evoked. If this is all that one means by forgiveness we might as well use less freighted terms, such as “overlooking” or “getting over it,” which would seem to serve just as well.

(source: The Possibilities of Forgiveness)

Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no help.
When his breath departs he returns to his earth;
on that very day his plans perish.
…………
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the sojourners,
he upholds the widow and the fatherless;
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

(source: Psalm 146 RSVCE – Praise for God’s Help – Praise the – Bible Gateway)

My favorite line from this, so far, is his reference to Aristotle’s definition of a “nobleman” as “one who plays the flute, but not very well.”

We bow before the martyrdom of those who, at the cost of their own lives, have given witness to the truth of the Gospel, preferring death to the denial of Christ. We believe that these martyrs of our times, who belong to various Churches but who are united by their shared suffering, are a pledge of the unity of Christians. It is to you who suffer for Christ’s sake that the word of the Apostle is directed: “Beloved … rejoice to the extent that you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that when his glory is revealed you may also rejoice exultantly” (1 Pet 4:12–13).

(source: Joint Declaration of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill – Vatican Radio)