I got this email the other day from our local columnist, the Rev. Young. Its subject heading was “a correction is required.” I emailed back and said that I would respond to it when I could find the time. I also told Rev. Young that I never received his letter and that no one brought a subsequent correction in the Duluth Budgeteer to my attention.
Dear Harry,
It was brought to my attention that you were still running your response, “A mass murderer replies,” to one of my columns on your site. I was a little surprised to see it yet, as I did write you back. A correction to your statement was even run in the Budgeteer. I had even copied Tom West with my response to you prior to your letter appearing in the Budgeteer.Â
In any event, here it is again, in case you have the courage to post it, and make an apparently long standing correction. Russ Young
Here is the letter originally sent 2/4/06, three days after I received your note. Dear Harry,
Thank you for taking the time to write. After considering all that you wrote, it seems much could be accomplished if your objections to the use of the term baby could be satisfied. I will offer some legitimate answers to your objections in hope that you may yet be persuaded. To begin with, it is of note that female ovum are the largest cells humans produce. They are the only single cells which are viewable to the naked eye, and never microscopic. Upon fertilization they at once contain all the basic building blocks that define human life. Our entire biological, and genetic make up is present at conception. It remains unchanged in content from that moment all through the life span of an adult. In a very real sense the only biological difference between babies you hold in your arms and an adult is their physical size. The same is true for a fertilized egg and a newborn. In each case one is simply at a different maturational stage than the other.
To say that a newly conceived life “is little more than DNA with no differentiated cells let alone a heart or a brain.,” only underscores your own heart condition, and indifference to what you hold as human life. Even those who are seeking to increase chemical abortions, and therefore push the killing process back as close to conception as possible, recognize that what is being terminated is a baby. Plan B and RU 486, though differing in their means, both seek to end pregnancy. All one has to do is ask “If a woman is pregnant, what is she pregnant with?” The answer is not undifferentiated DNA. The answer is always a baby. It is part of the deceit of abortionists to diminish the reality of what they are doing, by trying to deflect away from that reality, to refer to babies by other terminology to obfuscate and confuse the issues. The use of “fetus,” is a perfect example of this. Fetus is Latin for “little one,” in others words a baby. In an effort to deflect the reality of what the abortionist is doing, they have reverted to a Latin term to dehumanize that which is human.
Finally, every expectant mother almost immediately begins to refer to her child in the womb as a baby. A local OBGYN (Scott Johnson) has said that in all his years of practice he never heard a mother refer to her unborn child as a fetus. Therefore, while the term “baby” is not a technical term, it is however, perfectly legitimate to refer to babies in utero, no matter at what point in a woman’s pregnancy. If it is “charged” to say “baby,” it is only because your soul recognizes the truth that babies are dying from abortions, not because of any misrepresentation. Your letter makes no recognition of surgical abortion, and how it is regularly practiced. It would be very profitable for you to go the Building for Women, and ask to watch the abortions. What you would find is that the abortionist carefully works to account for all the parts of the child he is removing. To do so they lay out all the arms, legs, heads and other body parts. These are all well enough formed to be recognizable by the time the vast majority of surgical abortions are done. As they remove the baby, their tiny limbs are set out on a table to make sure it is all there. They do so because, once killed, any remaining parts will cause an infection in the mother, if left to decay in her womb.
It is another piece of misinformation abortionists use, to deflect from the reality of their trade, they suggest that what is being killed is only a blob of cells. A baby’s heart begins beating at least by the 8th week, and the brain has already begun functioning as well by the time almost all 1st term abortions are performed. Again, these are the most prevalent time frame for abortions, between 8 – 12 weeks. To perform them, the babies are burned out with strong salt solutions which act like acid on the baby’s skin, they are vacuumed out by a suction machine, or just pulled out by surgical tongs. These are the realities of 1st term abortions. The later an abortion is performed, the more gruesome the procedure. Your letter only seems to think of abortion in terms of chemical abortions. Do you presume to make your DNA analogy when a partial “birth” abortion is performed?
As for your theology, it apparently is a pragmatic as your biology, and holds the same pitfalls. Are you really suggesting that if one believes that all aborted souls go to heaven that we should rejoice in their murder? I believe Dietrich Bonhoffer went to heaven when he was murdered by Hitler, being stripped naked and then hung by a piano wire. Should I rejoice at that? Yes, I can rejoice that he entered Paradise and that his suffering ended. But I am horrified that another could act so barbarously. Were the men who committed this atrocity better off for having done so because Bonhoffer’s soul was saved?
Harry, you are badly mistaken about the implications of such thinking. That you could be happy for the loss of so many who will never be held in their mother’s arms is a tragedy. The ends do not justify the means. Hitler wanted to make a master race: that doesn’t sound so bad. But his plan entailed the systematic murder of millions that did not fit his picture of what he wanted. Your rationale opens the door to the very same kinds of abuse that others have made who make decisions for pragmatic reasons alone. The road is wide that leads to destruction, but the way that leads to life is narrow. I hope you will see your error and turn away from it, and turn to God before it is too late.
Through the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, it is possible to know if we have souls. More so, it is possible to know where we are headed in eternity. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him,” (John 3:36). Harry, as you now sit, you are under the wrath of God, but if you turn from your own way and seek God, it may be that he will show you mercy and yet bring you into his kingdom, and into his arms. That is my prayer for you.
Blessings, Russ Young
