Just finished a blog by The Anchoress about pro-abortion protesters responding to pro-life protestors' rendition of Amazing Grace with chants of "hail, satan". It makes me sad that these people are so ignorant of spiritual realities that they would invoke that name. They really don't know what they are doing. They are so assured that it's correct and cool not to believe in God, that they use this chant for shock value. If they saw a baby in the womb, and then saw it being torn apart or writhing in pain while chemicals are being used to murder it, I'm convinced that they would be completely repelled. I think that they would immediately turn from pro-abortion to pro-life.
It happened to me when I was pregnant. An ultrasound and a physical examination showed that something was wrong. When we were told that she might be Down's Syndrome, I agreed with my lover to seek an abortion, but I told him that we would be damned to hell for killing our child. I went into the bedroom and prayed that God would not force me to make a life and death decision for the baby.
We didn't take any action on the abortion, but started going to specialists who were monitoring the baby's growth and trying to figure out what was happening to her. I was put on bedrest because they thought that the baby wasn't getting enough nutrition. It was terrible to know that she was starving to death and there was nothing I could do to help her. She finally died, and I went through years of grieving. That grieving broke my pride and opened me up to the possibility that I might be wrong about God and what He wants from us. That people who obeyed the magisterium, the traditions, and the teachings of the Church might not be deluded, but instead were on the right path, the secure way to union with God and eternal happiness with Him in Heaven. It took years before I finally completely surrendered to the Church, but that is the big gift that God and my baby gave to me through the means of her death.
After my baby died, my sister gave me a wonderful book on grieving the death of a child. As I read it, I found out that 35,000 women a day lose a baby or a child to miscarriage, abortion, sickness, starvation, etc. I also found out that they all experience the same grief that I was experiencing, EVEN IF THEY DIDN'T KNOW THAT THEY WERE PREGNANT until they lost the child. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to face that pain and know that I had CHOSEN to murder my baby. I suffered enough guilt just knowing that I had been willing to end her life to keep from displeasing my lover. Since that time I have regarded abortion as murder of a child, and have felt so sorry for the women who are convinced, or forced, or frightened into joining the ranks of the 35,000 women a day who enter the ranks of those who are grieving the loss of a child. I also started feeling sorry for the people who participate in murdering a child because of the damage they are doing to their psyches and their souls with every murder.
I still believe that this is a nation of kind people who are being deceived into accepting this unspeakably cruel practice. Although when I look at teenagers attacking one another with cruel posts on facebook, etc., it does shake my faith in them a little. Maybe there's just a lack of empathy created by never having suffered disappointment, being less than, etc. I don't know. However, even if they are genuinely mean, if they are taking pleasure in someone else's pain, I wager that they still don't know that there are terrible spiritual consequences to being cruel, to killing, to judging, etc.
My part in all of this is to continue to pray to the God of Love, who loves them more than I do (He REALLY loves people more than I do!). I pray that people supporting abortions will have their eyes opened to what they are doing. I pray that I will open my eyes to areas of sin in my life. Because of Original Sin, and our own concupiscence, all of us are blind about something - about many things.
I hope that the people, including me, who would no more say "hail satan" than cut off our limbs with a chainsaw, are saved from being pharisees, thinking that we have no sins of our own. I hope that the people who think they are protecting others by supporting abortions are saved from thinking there is no such thing as sin, and/or that they have no sins of their own. Open our eyes, Lord! Thank You for Your Love and Mercy. This is a good nation being led astray, draw us back to You with Your Love. Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
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