This is a June 27, 2000 letter I sent to the Austin American Statesman, and they published it. They titled it. Medicated society
We now have a pill to kill children in the womb (‘FDA approves abortion pill,’ Sept. 29). This is in addition to a pill to keep children from being conceived and one to control them if they do manage to somehow escape the other two. Pity we have yet to make a pill to control adults who cannot control themselves. Rev. Paul R. Harris, Austin
Why do I share this letter 16 years later? Because someone else should have written it. In all of my parishes I have written letters to editors concerning baby-killing on demand. Not once has an official representative of Synod – circuit counselor or district president – written one.
Why not? It’s not popular; it’s not politic. If foolish consistency is the hobgoblins of small minds; convenient inconsistency is the god of politicians.
The Abortion Pill – Bombs Away!
The facts of this post are taken from an article entitled “Bitter Pills” by Jamie Dean, published in World Magazine, January 21, 2017. In 1988, a French drug company began marketing mifepristone. The abortion drug also known as RU-486. In 1999 the FDA, under President George H.W. Bush banned the drug in the U.S. because of safety concerns. Three days into office President Clinton used an executive order to lift the ban in 1993. The FDA in 1996 declared the drug safe, but the ban wasn’t lifted till 2000. Many doctors won’t prescribe the drug, but Planned Parenthood does, and often charges as much for a chemical abortion as for a surgical (34). Still I will show you more evil things than these, and we’re no were near the bomb bay door’s even opening.
The Guttmacher Institute, which is pro-abortion, estimates 25% of abortions are chemical. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of abortions, reported in 2016 that 43% of their abortions were “drug-based” (34). Still there are more evil things to see.
There is a definite push toward this type of abortion. In 2016 the FDA approved the use of the killing pill for up to 10 weeks instead of the original 7 and reduced the number of required doctor visits from 3 to 2. Three states, Ohio, Texas, and North Dakota had required doctors to follow the stricter protocol, and when they were required to relax their standards, they reported killer pill requests tripled. Yet the darkness deepens (34).
In 2008, Iowa Planned Parenthood centers began providing the killing pill without a doctor on site. A woman goes to a center. Gets an ultrasound to confirm that she is pregnant. The pregnant mom speaks to a doctor via a webcam. The doctor clicks a link on his computer. A drawer pops open in front of the woman. Inside is one pill to kill her baby and another to expel her dead baby from her body (34). The darkness can only get deeper faster if men continue to insist it isn’t dark at all.
The manufacture of the baby killing pill say their drug is safe, not of course for the unborn baby, but for the mother. However, a 2009 study in Obstetrics and Gynecology demonstrated chemical abortions have 4 times more adverse effects than surgical abortions (35). There may yet be a little light before we open the bomb-bay doors.
One doctor reports a success rate of over 50% in reversing murder by medicine. Some challenge his rate saying that mifepristone alone doesn’t always end a pregnancy. But since mifepristone blocks a women’s progesterone in order to kill the unborn baby, giving her progesterone in large doses may counteract the kill pill – if it’s given soon after (36, 37). Now “Bombs away!”
I don’t remember hearing this till the advent of the B-52 bomber’s use in Vietnam. They are able to fly so high, compared to World War II prop-planes, that the man with the finger on the bomb release doesn’t even see what he is bombing. It’s true that heavy artillery from land or sea can be miles away from the target, but you still are there, in the moment of battle. Bombers, flying miles above their target, perhaps taking off and landing a thousand miles from the battlefield, are removed from the act of violence.
This is true more so in the case of drone warfare. The serviceman can be sitting somewhere in the U.S., deliver his payload of death, and go home to supper with the wife and kids. Although this sounds like no more than a macabre equivalent of shopping in your pajamas or doing your taxes in your underwear, there is something darker going on due to the remoteness. Remoteness gives you the luxury of not having to think about and therefore not having to face what you are doing. That’s how it is with putting a pill in your mouth to a kill baby and then expel him from your body.
However, you won’t be able to maintain that distance forever, maybe not for long at all. Eventually, the distance will close and you’ll find the bomb you sent away falling into your lap. Bombardiers and drone pilots can deal with it by remembering their real remoteness is that they are tools of the State which is ultimately responsible. Such a way out of the darkness doesn’t exist for women and girls swallowing poison to take the life of someone else. The only way out, the only way back for them, is the Light of the world who drank the poisonous wrath of God to forgive them and free them.
